Senior forward Landon Slaggert skates during Notre Dame's game against Michigan State at Compton Family Ice Arena on Mar. 3, 2023.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish hockey team has a quick turnaround following its split with No. 9 Boston University last weekend. The Irish are back in action as they host Mercyhurst University for two games beginning Thursday night.
Scouting the Fighting Irish
Notre Dame has its sights set on a rebound after being drubbed by Boston University, 8-2, on Saturday night. It was a rollercoaster weekend for the Irish who played their best game of the season on Friday night, beating the highly touted Terriers 4-1 before the night two blowout. After such a contrast of highs and lows, the key for Notre Dame this weekend may just be to have a short memory.“I’m just going to try and wash [that game] from my system,” Irish head coach Jeff Jackson said post-game Saturday.
Whether or not the Irish can embrace Ted Lasso’s “goldfish” mindset remains to be seen. Regardless, injuries will challenge Notre Dame’s attempt at a bounce-back this weekend. The Irish defense corps are particularly banged up: freshman defenseman Paul Fischer did not play at all last weekend but was back to full practice this week; sophomore Michael Mastrodomenico played Friday’s game but did not play Saturday night, and is day-to-day. So is senior Jake Boltmann, who exited Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury.
By the end of Saturday’s game, Notre Dame was playing with only four defensemen due to a combination of injuries and penalties. Freshman forward Danny Nelson, who has experience playing defense, even had to take a few shifts on the back end late in the game.
That will likely not be the case this weekend when the Lakers come to town, with Fischer likely to return. The Irish will need Danny Nelson back at center on the top line with captain Landon Slaggert and graduate student Patrick Moynihan on his wings. The new trio was a bright spot in Friday’s win. Slaggert leads the team in goals with three (all on home ice), while Nelson is not far behind with two.
Another bright spot so far this season for the Irish has been the penalty kill. The unit is quietly among the early leaders nationally, killing penalties at a 90% clip through five games. Notre Dame only allowed Boston University to score once in 11 power-play opportunities over the past weekend. The success comes off the heels of a tactical change, headmanned by new Irish associate head coach Brock Sheahan.
“We changed our tactical approach to killing penalties,” Jackson said last week. “Because we changed our approach to more of a push-down style as opposed to a fronting style, it’s an adjustment for some of these guys. Overall, I’ve been pretty pleased, and again we have a number of freshmen who are killing penalties, not only up front but on the back end. It’s just going to be a matter of getting experience doing it at this point.”
The adjustment, which allows opponents to shoot from the flanks and emphasizes protecting the middle of the ice instead, seems to be working so far. After leading the country in penalty-kill percentage in 2022, the Irish were fourth to last last season. A return to form this season, even if it isn’t a national best, would be a boon for Notre Dame.
Scouting the Lakers
Mercyhurst arrives in South Bend without a regulation win to start the 2023-24 campaign. Oddly, this weekend will be the Lakers’ first set of back-to-back games this year. They have played a single contest on each of the last three Saturday nights, opening their season with a 4-3 loss to No. 16 Ohio State before stringing together shootout wins over Robert Morris and Niagara. The Lakers have been nothing if not consistent on paper — their last two games have both ended 3-3 and have gone to a shootout.Mercyhurst is led in scoring by senior Philip Waugh, who has scored twice with points in all three games this season. Sophomore Owen Say has performed strongly in goal for the Lakers so far. He has started all three games and boasts a .920 save percentage. He made over 40 saves in each of the first two games against Ohio State and RMU.
Despite the fact that Mercyhurst has yet to win a game in regulation, their two shootout wins already stand as improvement from last year’s start to the season. The Lakers got off on the wrong foot in 2022, starting their year 1-10-2 en route to an eighth-place finish in the 10-team Atlantic Hockey Association. This year, they’ve already got four conference points in the books. Mercyhurst has not won the AHA regular season title since 2018 and has not qualified for the NCAA tournament since 2005.
Series History
Notre Dame is 4-0-1 all-time against Mercyhurst. The Irish were actually one of Mercyhurst’s first opponents in their inaugural 1987-88 season. The two teams met in Erie, and Notre Dame won 7-3. The Irish were competing as a non-scholarship Division I independent at the time in their first season under Ric Shafer and their fourth season back after the University announced it would not sponsor hockey in 1983. Mercyhurst was playing its first season of hockey, doing so at the Division III level.The last time these two Catholic schools matched up was a 6-6 tie in 2018, played at the Erie Insurance Arena on night one of the Ice Breaker Tournament. Notre Dame beat Providence on the following night, while Mercyhurst lost to Miami. The last time Mercyhurst journeyed to South Bend was 1990, a two-game sweep (7-3, 7-6) by the Irish at the Joyce Center.
In an odd twist of fate, in the two most recent seasons Notre Dame has played Mercyhurst (2008 and 2018), the Irish have made it all the way to the national championship game at the Frozen Four. It is important to remember that correlation does not always imply causation…
On both Thursday and Friday, the puck will drop inside Compton Family Ice Arena at 7:30 p.m. Peacock will provide coverage of the two games.
