john deere 318 help, i think the Onan is done for good?

New to this forum, and i must say it looks fantastic! lots of helpful people, and lots of great tractor stuff. I bought my "new" 318 in the fall. My first real garden tractor. I searched for quite some time for a machine that could bag vast amounts of leafs, and clear alot of sloped, fairly steep, slippery driveway, and decided on this 318. came with power blower/catcher for leaves and the auger snowblower. It did a great job with the leaves. I was so excited to plow the driveway on this first winter storm in chicago. Well, i tried plowing without the chains, (1st mistake) and the driveway was too slippery, so i went to go get the chains and while doing that, the engine started sounding different, almost like it was on choke. Well, the engine then quit, and now won't start. The starter seems to want to crank it over, but can't so i get a grinding noise. I fear the worst, a siezed engine. There was oil in it, my only concern is that it was parked on a hill for a while, could the oil have drained back leaving no lubrication? is there an oil pump on these Onan engines? I am fairly mechanical, but haven't dealt with tractors too much. Usually if instructed well i can find the problem. my question now is, where do i start? What can i look for to figure out if this engine is done? I'm assuming that since it started ok that it is nothing electrical, and the snow thrower wasn't on and it was in neutral so i don't think its anything related to those two issues. I'm just praying someone with a good knowledge of these machines has seen this before. I don't really want to have to start the post of "so what's the best repower engine" :banghead3 although i'm pretty sure that that is coming.