Six seniors leave a winning legacy
The Ohio State men’s hockey team will stage its annual senior night on Saturday when the Buckeyes wrap up the final two-game homestand of the regular season against Wisconsin, but it won’t the home swan song for those six players.
The Buckeyes have already clinched the No. 2 seed for the Big Ten tournament, which means they will host Michigan State in a best-of-three quarterfinal series starting a week from Friday.
“It’s good to know it’s not our final (home) game,” senior forward Matthew Weis said of the doubleheader with the Badgers on Friday and Saturday nights. “But I think still, for me at least, emotions will be high. My family will be in the building again.
“Just seeing all the stuff we do before the game for senior night will get me going.”
He and his fellow seniors have been a major part of putting OSU hockey back on the national map these past two seasons. Playing for coach Steve Rohlik, they will enter Friday night ranked No. 6 in the polls and sporting the nation’s No.1 penalty kill unit, among other high points.
“Sophomore and freshman year was a little bit of a struggle, and then to turn it around the way we did — it’s a really lasting impression,” senior forward Luke Stork said. “So it’s nice.”
The Buckeyes (198-5, 12-8-2-1) are a win away from their first back-to-back 20 win-plus seasons since they capped a fourseason run in 2005. The seniors, who also include defenseman Matt Joyaux, forward Christian Lampasso, forward Kevin Miller and defenseman Janik Moser, have been at the center of the resurgence, Rohlik said.
“They are six guys who really have truly embraced the culture of this program,” Rohlik said. “When you’ve got a group that has played as many games as these guys have, and obviously buy in to what we’re trying to do in the classroom, off the ice, on the ice, it speaks volumes for what they’ve accomplished.
“Wins and losses are part of hockey and all that, that speaks for itself, but to me it’s the character and what these guys are going to leave as their legacy of what we want out of Ohio State hockey.”