The Nittany LIons settled for a weekend split with the Buckeyes.

Guy Gadowsky often preaches about how random hockey can be. With the randomness of goalies, officials and a rubber puck bouncing around, even the best performance can be hindered by a hot goalie or mental errors.

While that can make assessing his team’s performance difficult, there are a couple statistics Gadowsky refers to when needed — faceoffs and odd-man rushes. In Saturday’s 4-3 loss to Ohio State, Penn State was on the wrong side of both.

It may seem like an obvious correlation, but when the Nittany Lions are on the wrong side of either, their game is severely impacted.

“I think we were giving up the blue line worse than we have all year. Obviously, we got beat one-on-one a few times that really cost us,” Gadowsky said. “I don’t think we were, as a team, defensively, as good as we’ve been earlier this year.”

https://www.blackshoediaries.com/2019/11/23/20979519/penn-state-nittany-...