The Ohio State women’s hockey team lines up prior to the start of the game against Minnesota on Jan. 19, 2018. Ohio State won 3-2. Credit: Will Sharp | For The Lantern

Hopes are running high as the No. 9 Ohio State women’s hockey team looks forward to the first puck drop of the season this weekend. 

The team will face St. Lawrence Friday evening and Saturday afternoon for the weekend series. 

In the teams’ past meeting, Ohio State split the series with St. Lawrence after a 2-1 Game 1 loss and a 6-1 Game 2 victory. 

But this time, Ohio State isn’t looking to split.

“We paralyzed ourselves because we were in the penalty box an awful lot,” head coach Nadine Muzerall said. “We just did not play what we like to call Buckeye hockey, which is disciplined and competitive.”

The Buckeyes are coming off a 20-13-2 record, coming in third in the WCHA conference. On the other side, St. Lawrence is coming off a fifth-place finish in its conference with a 14-15-7 overall record.

If Ohio State comes away with a loss in its season opener, it won’t be due to a lack of confidence. In fact, confidence oozes from this team after Muzerall’s four years of crafting the team culture and ethic. 

“I would say we finally have it down, and we have it where everyone’s buying in, and the staff is bought in, and we’re all very much on the same page,” senior defenseman and team captain Olivia Soares said. “I think coming in freshman year, you can feel how it’s adjusted and feel the difference between the staff and even our locker room and culture that [Muzzerall] has been trying to build and that we’ve been focusing on for four years now.”

During her time at Ohio State, Muzerall has led the team to a Frozen Four appearance as well as back-to-back 20-win seasons, both firsts for the program. Now it’s up to the team to build on the momentum it has worked so hard to create. 

“We want to try to win our conference and then get on to that Frozen Four,” Muzerall said.

There are eight freshmen on the team this year, making up one-third of the team. New players always pose challenges for a team, but this incoming class also brings a lot of strengths.

“I really like their energy and their conditioning and their speed and their size,” Muzerall said. “They’re like spark-plugs, you know, and we just now have to get them a little more attuned to the actual systems.”

Noteworthy returning players for Ohio State include junior forward Emma Maltais and redshirt senior defender Jincy Dunne. Both picked up preseason conference honors when Maltais was voted Co-Player of the Year and Dunne made the All-WCHA team.

Maltais led the team with 43 points a season ago, and Dunne’s 68 career points are No. 10 among all-time defensemen at Ohio State.

Another key piece of the team is sophomore goaltender Andrea Braendli, whose .939 save percentage this past season is No. 4 in program history.

“She was by far the best goaltender, towards the end of the season there, in the nation,” Muzerall said. “We’ve got to let her see the puck, and we’ve got to do our job defensively, but I mean, there’s always so much more security when you know that you have that person between the pipes.”

While the Buckeyes return some of their best players, St. Lawrence has lost three of its top four scorers from a season ago.

Just one of its returning goaltenders, sophomore Jamie Rainville, saw playing time this past season, and she played just 25 minutes at the end of a blowout win over Rensselaer.

Rainville and St. Lawrence will be put to the test when the puck drops on its season opener at 6:07 p.m. Friday at Ohio State.