Notre Dame hockey played its final home series of 2024 this weekend, losing by 6-3 and 5-3 scores to No. 4 Minnesota at Compton Family Ice Arena. Now at 5-9-0 overall and 1-5-0 in Big Ten play, the Irish have a seven-game losing streak, their longest in the Jeff Jackson era. Minnesota, meanwhile, improved to 12-2-0 overall and remained unbeaten in conference play at 6-0-0, bypassing Michigan State atop the league standings with six points in South Bend.
Minnesota’s power play takes over game one
The weekend began with Notre Dame still in rough condition health-wise. Sophomore defenseman Henry Nelson would miss his fourth consecutive game, and graduate blue-liner Zach Plucinski joined him on the shelf. That forced head coach Jeff Jackson to deploy both of his freshman defensemen, Jimmy Jurcev and Jaedon Kerr, among the top six for the first time all year.
“You can only control what’s in front of you,” Jackson said after the series. “Obviously putting a bunch of young guys in against a team like Minnesota, you get a little nervous, but you just put them out there, and they handled it pretty well.”
Given the circumstances, the series couldn’t have started any better for Notre Dame. Less than three minutes into Friday’s game, the Irish scored twice. Although graduate forward Grant Silianoff’s initial tally came off the board due to an offside zone entry, Notre Dame officially made it 1-0 on the very next shift, as senior forward Hunter Strand beat Nathan Airey as the trailer in a 3-on-2. Minnesota would answer less than four minutes later on a Brody Lamb one-timer.
Late in the first period, Notre Dame took its first of four penalties on the night, and Minnesota capitalized just 38 seconds into period two. Defenseman Sam Rinzel’s point shot caught the Irish stick of junior defenseman Michael Mastrodomenico, hopping past junior goaltender Owen Say for a 2-1 Gopher lead. Minnesota would make it 3-1 at 14:36 of the second period, as Matthew Wood somehow made a tape-to-tape pass while falling down at the netside and Oliver Moore tapped it home.
Needing a spark in the final three minutes of period two, Notre Dame got one from freshman forward Jack Larrigan. After senior defenseman Ryan Helliwell went in on a physical and effective forecheck, sophomore forward Carter Slaggert found the open Larrigan on a low-to-high pass. Staring down Airey from the hash marks, Larrigan buried his first collegiate goal and trimmed Notre Dame’s deficit back to two.
Unfortunately for the Irish, the newfound momentum would evaporate quickly. As Minnesota moved back into the Notre Dame zone after the goal, senior forward Justin Janicke caught Lamb with a knee-on-knee hit. The officials needed only one look at the monitor to send the Minnesota native off with a game misconduct, putting Minnesota on a five-minute power-play. The Golden Gophers, who entered the weekend converting on an impressive 33 percent of man-advantage chances away from home, would score twice while up a man. Just before the second period ended, Rinzel sent another distant shot that caught Helliwell’s twig and deflected past Say again.
“That’s the breaks of the game,” Jackson said. “... [Say] was doing fine. The hardest shots to stop are the ones that go cross-ice for one-timers, and then the other ones are deflections — especially high-low deflections, which two of those were. We’ve probably scored more goals on ourselves than we have for us in the last couple of weeks.”
Minnesota then took its power play to the opposite end of the rink and scored again to start the third period. This time, Aaron Huglen ripped a wrister past Say from the high slot.
The Irish would notch a power-play goal of their own to make it 5-3 with 4:16 left in regulation, but graduate forward Blake Biondi’s third goal in as many weekends would be the last Notre Dame marker of the night. Connor Kurth’s empty-netter sealed up a 6-3 Minnesota win.
“You can’t take that many penalties and give up three power-play goals and expect to beat a team like Minnesota, especially when you’re shorthanded and especially on defense,” Jackson said. “You can’t kill penalties when you’ve got two freshman defensemen back there giving us as good of minutes as they can, but it makes it hard.”
Say finished the night with 32 saves on 37 shots faced, while Airey turned aside 25 of the 28 shots he saw. Minnesota’s power play converted on three of five opportunities, with Rinzel, Huglen, Moore and Wood all registering two points. For Notre Dame, Biondi collected a goal and an assist to follow up his three-point effort the game prior at Michigan State.
Costly penalty denies Irish rally in game two
Notre Dame would go even more shorthanded into Saturday night, as Janicke received a one-game suspension from the Big Ten for his hit on Lamb and sophomore forward Cole Knuble sat out with an injury for the third time in four games. As a result, Larrigan and Slaggert slid up to the third forward line while freshman Michael Schermerhorn made his collegiate debut on the fourth line.
Minnesota also threw Notre Dame a curveball while starting Airey in game two of a weekend for the first time all year. Golden Gopher head coach Bob Motzko had used Penn State transfer Liam Souliere in every Saturday game up until this weekend but held him out in South Bend.
Regardless, the Irish would draw first blood again during an abbreviated power play 8:10 into the first period. Off of a faceoff win, junior defenseman Axel Kumlin skated down to the right dot on the weak side and roofed a wrist shot. However, another redirection by Minnesota, this one beating freshman goalie Nicholas Kempf off the stick of Moore, sent the game to its first intermission tied at 1-1.
Notre Dame’s discipline would again slip away across the final 40 minutes, as the Irish took five minor penalties between the second and third periods. En route to a three-point night, Jimmy Snuggerud made them pay just 1:45 into period two, ripping an Auston Matthews-like wrist shot underneath the bar for a power-play goal. Nevertheless, Notre Dame’s penalty kill would finish the night with a respectable five kills on six attempts.
“Our penalty kill did a good job tonight,” Jackson said on Saturday. Minnesota, he asked, “got how many first-round NHL draft picks on that first unit? It’s a challenge, but they did a good job.”
All of the shorthanded play would still take a toll on the Irish. Snuggerud struck again on a rebound six minutes later, as Notre Dame struggled to find its footing with so much special-teams play early in the second period.
But that wouldn’t stop the Irish from making a push late in the frame, as Kumlin toe-dragged at the point to set up sophomore forward Danny Nelson’s sixth goal of the season with 5:12 left. Notre Dame soon after went on a power play, leading to a rebound goal from sophomore forward Brennan Ali that tied the game at 3-3. Both Kumlin and Ali finished the night with three points.
Overall, Notre Dame’s power play had a terrific weekend, scoring three times. The problem? Minnesota only gave the Irish five chances to go a man up.
“As good as a team as [the Golden Gophers] are, they’re probably one of the top five least penalized teams in the country,” Jackson said. “That’s an indication that you’re not putting your top players at stress, your goalie at stress, you’re not killing penalties all the time.”
Minnesota would find the game-winning goal with 6:45 to play in regulation, as the Irish collapsed on Snuggerud near the half-wall, leaving several Gophers with space on the weak side. The puck found Rinzel, who faked a shot from up top and slid the puck over to Ziemer for a one-timer and 4-3 lead.
Notre Dame held the Gophers there over the next four minutes, preparing to play 6-on-5 hockey and push for a tie game in the final two minutes. But a check from behind by sophomore forward Maddox Fleming derailed those hopes, forcing the Irish to pull their goalie just to skate at even strength. After Fleming’s penalty expired, Mike Koster clinched Minnesota’s sweep with an empty-net goal, his first of the season.
“Again, we shot ourselves in the foot with a chance to maybe tie the game by taking another bad penalty,” Jackson said. “ So I’ll keep sitting guys out for taking bad penalties. It’s the only recourse I have … Losing is tough, but I’m not gonna let us beat ourselves with the discipline issues. It’s been a consistent problem, and it just doesn’t seem to want to go away.”
If the losing streak won’t die on American soil, perhaps the Irish can put it to bed overseas. Notre Dame, after flying to Dublin on Sunday, will play next in the Friendship Four at SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The four-team tournament will pit the Irish against Harvard at 2 p.m. on Friday ahead of a Saturday game against either Boston University or Merrimack.
