By Warren Kozireski–
“I’m taking as long as I can to take it off,” the senior said moments after Ohio State had their season ended at the Frozen Four in St. Paul. “For the last couple of games I would look at my jersey and say, ‘this could be the last time. But now I’m just sitting here in all my stuff marinating, and I’m just trying to soak it in, soak in the Buckeye nation.
“I’m not going to be a part of it anymore, so it’s amazing to see the support of all the guys and the emotion. We lost, but we’re still a group of friends, so no matter what happened today, if we lost earlier [in the tournament], or if we won the championship, we’re still a group of buddies.”
Lampasso’s Buckeyes fell behind 2-0 just 3:04 into their Frozen Four national semi-final against Minnesota-Duluth and were able to score just once to end their 26-10-5 season.
It marked just the second time Ohio State men had made the Frozen Four (1998) and came in the same season as the women’s program also made it creating quite the hockey buzz on the Midwestern campus.
The 5”10”, 177 lb. right wing set career highs with ten goals and six assists this season to better his output for the previous two seasons combined. And he was named the Ohio State Big Ten Sportsmanship Award recipient.
The Industrial & Systems Engineering major left home at 14 years old to join the Honeybaked program in Detroit after playing youth hockey with the Amherst Knights, Buffalo Regals and Rochester Alliance.
After three seasons with Honeybaked, the Haitian-heritage senior spent 2011-12 in the EJHL with Green Mountain (Vt.) before wearing three jerseys in two seasons in the USHL with Des Moines, Sioux City and Lincoln (Ne.).
And now he is a part of history raising the profile of hockey at the predominately football and basketball school after his four seasons wearing the scarlet and gray.
“I think so. I saw a tweet that said ‘oh, so we’re a hockey school now.’ I think during the course of my four years I helped build the culture; helped build the program into something makes to the Frozen Four. I think me and the other seniors did our part.
“It’s really cool to see that the whole school was getting behind the hockey program and I’m super interested and super excited to see what the next group of guys coming in will do.
“I know I am always going to be a Buckeye, but I’m not going to be able to put the jersey and skates on to try to have an impact on the ice.
“I’m just happy to put my brick in the wall for the program while getting it to where it is now. I hope seeing that Ohio State is a Frozen Four-bound team, and that we had a chance to win it, the fan base and Buckeye nation can look at it and see that we’re legit.”
