COLUMBUS — Until he was 11 years old, Dakota Joshua played house league hockey. His mom, Jullee, had played the sport her entire life and she’d talked him into following in her footsteps. But they didn’t have the resources to play rep.



Eventually, when there was no way to hold him back any longer, Jullee worked two jobs to pay for hockey — and Dakota immediately made the leap to Triple-A, bouncing between teams across Michigan.



More than a decade later, sitting on a plastic chair in the bowels of the Schottenstein Center as a senior on Ohio State University, that path isn’t lost on Dakota.



Dakota made the full-time jump to junior hockey a year after his peers when he was in Grade 11 not because he lacked talent but because he was late to the party. He committed to Ohio State because they were the first to call.



“It’s a weird path. But I took it and never looked back and it has turned out to be a good...