Penn State dropped its fourth straight Game 2 against No. 17 Ohio State. It is becoming an unwanted trend for the Nittany Lions that they still don't have the answer to.
"I think it's more mentality. It's not different types of players or changing the way we play, but everyone buying in 100%," Paul DeNaples said after Saturday's loss.
While not closing out series has been a trend for the Nittany Lions, there were two trends that were evident in Game 2: self-inflicted wounds and bad bounces.
Special teams were going to be the difference in this series. Penn State's power play had been clicking, 6-for-27 in its last six games, and Ohio State had the best PK unit in the Big Ten. On the scoresheet last night, it said Penn State was 0-for-5 on the man-advantage. However, two of those power plays were wiped out because of Penn State taking penalties of its own before its power play could go to work.
"Our power play has really gotten us momentum and gotten us goals and we completely took that out of our hands twice," coach Guy Gadowsky said.
The first power play the Nittany Lions got was 24 seconds into game when Cam Thiesing got sent off for interference. Unfortunately, Christian Berger fumbled the puck off the faceoff and was sent off for slashing just six seconds later.
Fortunately Penn State scored thanks to Kevin Wall, but the Lions failed to sustain the momentum and the Buckeyes responded just 24 seconds later.
"We're always pushing back in the third and that's when we are playing our best," DeNaples said. "We need to do that first and second period, so some adjustments need to be made."
The Nittany Lions did get another power play chance after the Buckeyes tied the game, but failed to convert. Penn State would then get its third power play opportunity with eight minutes go and still trailing 2-1. Same story happened again except this time it was Ben Schoen heading off for interference just five seconds after play resumed.
So Penn State had the opportunity to gain momentum, but failed to do so because of penalties.
"There's a saying that playing from behind hockey is losing hockey because you end up taking chances and costing yourself," Gadowsky said. "It sort of felt like that in the first. We were playing really really well. but every time we made an error it seemed like we were paying for it."
Now let's move to the second trend of the game: bad bounces.
The first goal for the Buckeyes was off a blocked shot in front and the puck bounced its way to Jake Wise's stick. There was nothing Liam Souliere could do. Jarod Crespo failing to clear the puck also did not help.
The second goal was after Dalton Messina chopped the puck to center ice finding an open Jaedon Leslie. Crespo broke up the initial pass, but Messina did a good job following up on the play.
The game-winning goal from Dunlap was a textbook deflection that Souliere had zero chance on. Patrick Guzzo made a great play threading the needle, and Dunlap was in perfect position for the redirect. That goal was a combination of fortunate bounces and textbook hockey by the Buckeyes.
Penn State will look to clean up its game as it heads to South Bend to face off against Notre Dame to conclude the first half of the season.
