Ohio State used a pair of power-play goals to overcome an early deficit and earned a sweep of its two-game series at Minnesota State with a 3-1 victory over the Mavericks.
Special teams were critical in both games as the Buckeyes were 7-for-12 on the power play during the weekend. They scored twice on the power play Saturday, and a third goal came three seconds after Minnesota State finished killing a penalty.
“No doubt, special teams were a key,” Ohio State coach Jackie Barto said. “We really worked the puck well on the power play and I’m happy with both of our power-play units. I just wish we didn’t have to work so much on the penalty kill tonight. We need to make some better decisions and stay out of the box.”
The Buckeyes gave up 12 power-play chances on the weekend, including seven Saturday, four of which came in the final period. For the Mavericks, however, it was youthful inexperience that seemed to be the factor in the Mavericks missing on all seven chances.
“We’ve got young kids on our special teams,” MSU coach Jeff Vizenor said. “We had three newcomers on our first power-play unit and we threw them into the fire this weekend. They did a great job of creating chances but we just didn’t finish around the net.”
For the second night in a row, MSU got on the board first. Sophomore transfer Melanie Salatino tipped a centering pass from Tristin Stephenson five minutes, 24 seconds into the first period for her first career goal and it looked like the Mavericks would take that lead into the first intermission.
OSU tied the game with a controversial goal with just three seconds left in the opening frame when Creary beat Vogt through the five hole to even the score at 1-1. The game clock did not appear to start immediately after a faceoff in the Minnesota State zone in the final seconds of the period and the Mavericks had lost their momentum.
The scored remained that way until late in the second period when the Buckeyes snapped the 1-1 tie with 5:19 to play in stanza. Emma Laaksonen intercepted an MSU clearing pass at the blue line, skated into the right circle and fed a pass across the slot to Creary, who one-timed the puck over goalie Shari Vogt’s glove hand.
Freshman Jana Harrigan scored her third goal of the weekend at 7:24 of the final period when she knocked in her own rebound on the power-play.
Creary, who figured in the scoring on all three OSU goals Saturday and had seven points on the weekend, hooked up with Laaksonen on five goals during the series.
“We really worked the puck well up high,” Creary said. “Our defense did a good job of moving the puck and, with Emma, she sees everything. I don’t even have to know where she is because she always seems to find me with the puck.”
Ohio State’s goaltending appears to be in good hands despite the loss of Melissa Glaser, who was expected to be the team’s number one goalie, to offseason knee surgery. April Stojak and Natalie Lamme will compete for the top job and Lamme, making her collegiate debut Saturday, stopped 28 of 29 shots to earn the victory.
“I thought they both played well,” Barto said. “We certainly will need them in the next couple of weeks.” The Buckeyes begin a four-game home stand next weekend with New Hampshire and follow up with WCHA opponent and second-ranked Minnesota.
The Mavericks are back in WCHA action next weekend when they travel to No. 1 Minnesota-Duluth, Oct. 18-19.
