The 2022–23 Ohio State Buckeyes men's ice hockey season was the 60th season of play for the program and 10th in the Big Ten Conference. The Buckeyes represented the Ohio State University in the 2022–23 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey season, were coached by Steve Rohlik in his 10th season, and played their home games at Value City Arena.
After tragically missing the NCAA tournament last season, Ohio State entered this season with high expectations. With last years freshman phenom, Jakub Dobeš, as well as star defenseman Mason Lohrei both returning to the lineup, the team's only real question was who would replace the one-and-done Georgii Merkulov as the Buckeye's biggest offensive threat. Senior center Jake Wise initially stepped to the fore but he was eventually joined by another freshman, Stephen Halliday. Neither Wise nor Halliday had the scoring acumen to be big goal scorers but the playmaking centers helped their teammates post solid numbers, aptly replacing the lost offense.
Ohio State started off the season in good standing, going undefeated in the first 5 games. In the 5th match, however, team captain Gustaf Westlund was felled by an injury that would keep him out of the lineup for over 5 months.[1] In the wake of that loss, the team had one of its worst performance all season and were trounced by Connecticut. They bounced back afterwards and posted three more victories, including a defeat of #1 Minnesota, to run their record to 7–2–1 in the first month of the season.
After taking a week off, the team returned to the ice with a showdown against a surprising Michigan State squad. Unfortunately, that where the team was forced to deal with something they had not prepared for. In the game on November 11, Kamil Sadlocha was given a game misconduct for yelling a racial slur at Jagger Joshua.[2] The Big Ten supported the match penalty but, due to a lack of incontrovertible evidence, would not add any additional punishment. Because of the lack of action from either Ohio State or the Big Ten, Joshua went public with the incident a week later. Though Jagger did not name the offending player, Sadlocha was the only one to receive a match penalty in the game. After the full account of the incident was reported, the Ohio State athletic department sent Sadlocha home for an indeterminate time.[3] He eventually returned to the team in late January but finished out the remainder of his senior season without registering another point.
In the meantime, Ohio State struggled through a bad patch in November and went 2–6 over an 8-game span. While most of those losses were to ranked team, only being able to earn a split at Long Island damaged the team's postseason hopes and had them on the outside of the NCAA picture for a brief time. By December, the team appeared to recover their earlier form and a 6-game winning streak cured many of the Buckeyes' ills. Ohio State performed adequately in the second half of the season, finishing slightly below .500 but managed to take the regular season series from Michigan for the first time in 3 years.
When the Buckeyes entered the postseason, they were sitting 10 in the PairWise ranking and were virtually guaranteed an NCAA tournament berth if they could reach the semifinals. Their opponent in the quarterfinals was a collapsing Penn State team who graciously forgot how to score in the best of three series. Ohio State had troubles of their own but the Buckeyes were able to win two of the games and advance. While the team was outplayed by Michigan in the semifinal, losing a closer game than a 3–7 score would indicate, The Buckeyes were still in the top 10 in the national rankings and easily made the NCAA tournament. While they had finished with a worse record than they had the year before, Ohio State had played a far more difficult schedule and weren't punished as much for those losses.
While the team was ranked 8th, tied with Penn State, Ohio state had a slightly lower ranking and were given a 3 seed. Additionally, because they could not play their own conference in the first round, the Buckeyes were set against #7 Harvard for their opening game. The unfavorable seeding was supposed to have the Crimson as the favorites to reach the quarterfinals but the Buckeyes didn't take any notice. From the start of the game, Ohio State was in complete control. The scarlet and grey shut down the high-scoring Harvard offense in the first two periods, allowing just 8 shots to reach Dobeš, all of which he stopped. The Buckeyes, on the other hand, peppered the Harvard goal with a barrage, recording 34 shots in just 40 minutes. The Buckeyes netted two markers in the first but broke through with a 5-goal avalanche in the second to take an insurmountable 7–0 lead into the third. After an 8th goal early, Ohio State just sat back and played defense for the rest of the game. Harvard was finally able to get on the board late by that didn't affect the outcome of the game and the Buckeyes rolled to a 8–1 triumph.
Things appeared to be heading in the same direction in their next game when Joe Dunlap squeaked a goal through Yaniv Perets just 91 seconds into the game. However, after that the Buckeyes were totally stymied by the All-American goaltender and could not get another goal. Despite outshooting the Bobcats, Ohio Sate fell 1–4 to Quinnipiac, ending their season with a solid if unfulfilling campaign.
| Eric Cooley | Forward | Graduation (signed with Chicago Wolves) | ||
| Grant Gabriele | Defenseman | Graduation (signed with Providence Bruins) | ||
| Forward | Signed professional contract (Boston Bruins) | |||
| Ryan O'Connell | Forward | Graduate transfer to Michigan Tech | ||
| Quinn Preston | Forward | Graduation (signed with Toledo Walleye) | ||
| Will Riedell | Defenseman | Graduation (signed with Lehigh Valley Phantoms) |
| Scooter Brickey | Defenseman | 23 | Mt. Clemens, MI
| ||
| Davis Burnside | Forward | 18 | La Grange, IL | ||
| Tyler Duke | Defenseman | 18 | Strongsville, OH | ||
| John Larkin | Forward/Defenseman | 21 | Detroit, MI |
As of July 21, 2022.[4]
|-!colspan=12 style=";" | Regular Season|-!colspan=12 style=";" | |-!colspan=12 style=";" |
| 40 | 9 | 32 | 41 | 19 | |||
| 40 | 12 | 27 | 39 | 10 | |||
| 40 | 4 | 28 | 32 | 26 | |||
| 40 | 11 | 16 | 27 | 50 | |||
| 40 | 13 | 9 | 22 | 41 | |||
| 40 | 14 | 7 | 21 | 26 | |||
| 39 | 9 | 12 | 21 | 28 | |||
| 35 | 8 | 13 | 21 | 14 | |||
| 40 | 15 | 5 | 20 | 58 | |||
| 40 | 9 | 8 | 17 | 6 | |||
| 40 | 3 | 12 | 15 | 40 | |||
| 33 | 3 | 11 | 14 | 10 | |||
| 40 | 3 | 11 | 14 | 30 | |||
| 40 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 45 | |||
| 26 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 16 | |||
| 39 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 14 | |||
| 7 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 4 | |||
| 26 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 2 | |||
| 23 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 4 | |||
| 25 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 10 | |||
| 10 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |||
| 35 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 16 | |||
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | |||
| Total | 131 | 221 | 352 | 477 |
|---|
| 40 | 2361:16 | 21 | 16 | 3 | 91 | 1013 | 2 | .918 | 2.31 | ||
| 2 | 30:58 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 12 | 0 | .750 | 7.75 | ||
| 1 | 5:40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | .750 | 10.59 | ||
| Empty Net | - | 27:41 | - | - | - | 5 | - | - | - | - | |
| Total | 40 | 2425:35 | 21 | 16 | 3 | 101 | 1028 | 2 | .911 | 2.50 |
|---|
See main article: 2022–23 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey rankings.
| Poll | Week | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 (Final) | ||||
| USCHO.com | 16 | bgcolor=FFFFFF | - | 14 | 11 | 16 | 11 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 17 | 15 | 14 | bgcolor=FFFFFF | - | 12 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 8 | bgcolor=FFFFFF | - | 7 |
| USA Today | 18 | 18 | 14 | 11 | 16 | 11 | 9 | 11 | 13 | 12 | 17 | 14 | 14 | 14 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 7 | |||
| Mason Lohrei | Big Ten Second Team | [6] |
| Jake Wise | ||