Ohio State women’s hockey prepares for postseason run
Ohio State women’s hockey has done something nearly impossible in 2022-23.
After winning the program’s first national championship in March, the Buckeyes lived up to the hype, winning 28 of 34 regular-season games inside a packed Western Collegiate Hockey Association schedule while remaining the No. 1 team in the country for all but one week.
Coach Nadine Muzerall saw a team that met the outside expectations, something she said is often unrealistic. But with it, she said, Ohio State cultivated momentum and confidence as it prepares for an opportunity to repeat as national champions.
With that momentum, Ohio State did something it had never done before, winning the WCHA regular-season title.
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But Muzerall said there was no time to reflect on that accomplishment.
“It’s tough because you can’t even celebrate it, right?” Muzerall said. “You win it Sunday, then, boom, Monday practice because you got playoffs on Friday. So it’s something that you’re prideful of and then you got to move on quickly.”
Even with national title, focus remains for Ohio State
Ohio State took pride in last season’s national title. But it wasn’t something the team could think about heading into the 2022-23 season.
“I think in the back of our minds, obviously we want to win one,” Ohio State graduate senior forward Emma Maltais said. “But it’s pretty unrealistic from the beginning to have that goal. For us, we’ve really been focusing on our weekend performance day in and day out.”
That weekend-by-weekend focus put Ohio State in a position to secure its first-ever regular-season title heading into the final weekend of the regular season at Wisconsin.
And while Ohio State graduate senior defenseman Sophie Jaques admitted the team wasn’t at its best on the road against the sixth-ranked Badgers, she said the Buckeyes showed they could still find a way to win without showing that “extra level.”
Starting the weekend with a 6-5 overtime loss, Ohio State earned the 3-1 win Sunday, scoring three goals in the final five minutes to win the Juliane Bye Cup.
“We are never out of it,” Jaques said. “We can always fight back no matter what. … To show that we have that strength, that we’re never out of a game until the final buzzer sounds, I think, is really good for us going into playoffs. No matter what happens, we know at any point in the game, we can win.”
‘Higher stakes’ for Ohio State
As the postseason approaches, nothing really changes for Ohio State
It’s just another set of games, preparing with intense and competitive practice sessions Muzerall aims to be as game-like as possible.
And with an older roster, including five “super seniors” in Jaques, Maltais, Paetyn Levis, Gabby Rosenthal and Madison Bizal, the Buckeyes have a level of comfort and experience most teams don’t have heading into tournament play.
“All it is now, it’s just higher stakes,” Maltais said. “A lot of us have that confidence. We’ve been there. That’s the perks of having a lot of older players on your team and knowing what it’s like to play in a conference championship, to play in a national championship.”
As a veteran player, Jaques said it’s her and the other seniors’ jobs to be examples to the freshmen during the postseason, remaining calm and trusting in what gave them the top seed in the WCHA tournament to begin with.
But even with experience, knowing what tournament play is like, Muzerall still gets anxious.
The butterflies are still there, she said, even after finishing as tournament champions or runner-up in each of the past three conference tournaments.
But Muzerall has something most teams don’t — confidence.
“It’s just the composure and attitude of ‘You can get it done,’ ” Muzerall said. “‘Just don’t stress about it.’”
To Maltais, there’s no time to reflect.
For Ohio State, the focus turns to whatever is in front of them, something, she said, that’s not hard to do.
“I don’t think it’s very hard for us to move on to that next chapter,” Maltais said. “And we have really big dreams in mind.”
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