OMAHA, Neb. — When a team wins the penalty battle and outshoots the opponent, it more often than not leads to a win.
Friday night proved that it doesn’t always work that way.
Nebraska-Omaha went up two goals in the second period and Evan Weninger made 34 saves as the Mavericks defeated Ohio State 3-1.
It was a confusing contest, one in which Omaha coach Dean Blais thought the Buckeyes outworked No. 6-ranked Omaha.
“Never criticize a win, but I thought it was sloppy,” Blais said. “Bad penalties, talk about being undisciplined and taking a step backwards, and we did that tonight. Ohio State outworked us.”
The Mavericks scored the first two goals of the game for the ninth time this season, doing so in all but one of their 10 wins.
Luc Snuggerud notched the first one at 1:12 in the second period. Austin Ortega found the sophomore gunning down the left wing and slung the puck past OSU goalie Christian Frey for his first goal of the year.
Not long afterward, David Pope scored a nearly identical goal, with Justin Parizek feeding him with the assist at 6:43 in the second period.
Ohio State made it interesting in the third period. Following an Avery Peterson penalty, the Mavericks’ seventh of the game, Craig Dalrymple scored to bring the Buckeyes back within one.
The Buckeyes soon pulled Frey from the net with less than two minutes to go, but Ortega broke free past center ice and scored on a pass from Frederik Olofsson to give Omaha the two-goal cushion and ultimately, the 3-1 win.
Omaha improved to 10-2-1 overall and the Buckeyes fell to 3-8-0.
The Mavericks killed six of their seven penalties and didn’t score on their three power plays. Omaha came into the night stopping 86 percent of power plays, which was good for No. 19 in the country. Despite succeeding on the penalty kill, it wasn’t the ideal scenario for Blais and the Mavericks.
“I didn’t think we had good flow and it started right away with three penalties in the first period,” Blais said. “Yeah, we killed them off, but we used a lot of energy out of a few guys again like last weekend in Miami.”
UNO was also outshot in the first two periods, but Omaha freshman goalie Evan Wenigner had another good performance between the pipes, with Blais calling him “the difference maker.”
Weninger praised his teammates for making his job easier by putting together a strong penalty kill.
“Our penalty kill is pretty stellar,” Weninger said. “I think there was one penalty where they didn’t even get shot. It’s big when you kill off a couple penalties in the first to get a little bit of momentum.”
While not converting until the third period, the Buckeyes worked the Mavericks hard and were just a few plays away from potentially flipping the outcome into a major upset.
“We had some chances, only got the one on the power play, but against a good team like that, you’ve got to play a complete game,” Buckeyes coach Steve Rohlik said. “We had a couple lapses and they took advantage of it.”
While the result was not good enough, Rohlik reiterated the team’s mindset when they come to Omaha to face a tough test.
“We know how good they are and we know where they’re at and our guys come down here always with the expectation to win hockey games,” Rohlik said. “And we certainly expected to come in here tonight to win. We didn’t get the job done, [but] we’ll regroup tonight and try to do better tomorrow.”
Blais hopes to see more from his squad that he thought took a step back from their last series.
“We didn’t take a step in the right direction from last weekend,” Blais said. “But we’re 5-0 at home and we’re 7-0 against nonconference [teams], so tomorrow night’s a huge night again.”
