Ohio State Women’s Hockey Advances to Sixth Consecutive Frozen Four With 6-1 Win Over Yale

By Dan Hope on March 14, 2026 at 8:17 pm
Ohio State women’s hockey with its regional championship trophy
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Ohio State women’s hockey clinched its sixth straight Frozen Four berth with a six-goal game.

The Buckeyes punched their ticket to the Frozen Four for the sixth year in a row with a dominant 6-1 win over Yale in a regional final at the OSU Ice Rink.

Ohio State scored its first goal just over six minutes into the game when Jocelyn Amos found the net on an assist from Joy Dunne.

Yale evened the score with 8:34 to play in the first period as Molly Boyle got a goal past Hailey MacLeod on a breakaway, and the score remained tied for the rest of the opening frame. The Buckeyes took full control of the game in the second period, however, with a trio of goals by Kaia Malachino, Sloane Matthews and Jordan Baxter.

The Buckeyes extended their lead to 5-1 less than two minutes into the third period as Matthews scored her second goal of the game on an assist from Sanni Vanhanen. Amos scored her second goal of the game with 1:25 left to play to officially put the win on ice for Ohio State.

Ohio State, which hosted a regional for the fifth straight year as the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, will face No. 5 seed Northeastern in the Frozen Four semifinals on Friday (4 p.m., ESPN+) at Penn State’s Pegula Ice Arena. If the Buckeyes win, they’ll advance to their fifth straight national championship game, where they’ll either play No. 2 seed Wisconsin – the team they’ve faced in each of the last three national championship games – or No. 3 seed Penn State.

The Buckeyes, who are now 35-4 for the season, are hoping to win their third national championship since 2022. They’ll carry plenty of motivation into the Frozen Four after losing last year’s national championship game in controversial fashion when Wisconsin was awarded a late penalty shot that sent the game to overtime. But Ohio State coach Nadine Muzerall said the Buckeyes need to focus on beating Northeastern before they can worry about a potential rematch with the Badgers.

“We have a lot of girls that that wound is still open, and even the new girls that came in that weren't a part of it have heard enough about it,” Ohio State coach Nadine Muzerall said. “But we gotta get through Northeastern before we even look at that, and they've got to get there themselves.”

That said, Muzerall said she takes an “immense amount of pride” in the Buckeyes reaching their sixth straight Frozen Four – the longest streak of any team in college hockey – knowing how far the program has come over the past 10 years, having never made a Frozen Four before Muzerall’s arrival in 2016.

“People know the Buckeyes as who we are today, but I remember 10 years that I've been here ... We can see the road that we've traveled down, and I don't forget it, because I don't want to get complacent of who we are with our recruiting or how we train or who we recruit or what parents we recruit,” Muzerall said. “I feel like a proud mom where you gotta get the horses to pull the cart, but it's not just talent that we're looking for, we're looking for the right kid. Because the Ohio State athletic department is the pinnacle of athletics and it's very bedazzling on the outside, and everybody wants to be a part of it. But once you get in it's hard, and it's not for everybody and that's OK. That's our job as coaches to weed out the weak and get the ones that we know are going to be the warriors and survive it.”

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