NOTE: Notre Dame's 2019-20 campaign begins Friday night when the it hosts the Air Force Falcons at the Compton Family Ice Arena.
Winning the 2019 Big Ten Tournament last March and then ending its 2018-19 season with a trip to the final eight of the NCAA Tournament doesn’t seem to fit the profile of a program that actually slipped a bit from 2017-18.
But with the sustained success Notre Dame hockey is having, just about anything short of a national championship appearance is becoming a disappointment.
In 2017-18, the Irish enjoyed arguably the best season in program history, rolling to both the Big Ten regular season and the Big Ten Tournament championships before reaching the national title game that ended in a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to Minnesota-Duluth.
Notre Dame was so dominant two seasons ago, it cruised through the first half of the Big Ten season undefeated during a stretch where it won a school-record 16 straight games.
Last season, the Irish finished a respectable 23-14-3 and repeated as Big Ten Tournament champions. But Notre Dame went just 11-11-2 in conference regular-season play and won only five of its 12 league games at home.
And as the Irish begin their 2019-20 journey with strong leadership and five 20-point scorers returning, Notre Dame head coach Jeff Jackson expects this group to be back in the hunt for more Big Ten hardware, a fifth straight trip to the NCAA Tournament — and hopefully even more.
Up next, Jackson said, is to win a national title, something the veteran Irish coach has been unable to do in his 15 seasons on the Notre Dame bench, despite 11 NCAA Tournament appearances and four trips to the Frozen Four.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position to win one and we haven’t taken the next step, it’s a matter of having all the right ingredients,” Jackson explained. “First, it starts with the culture of your team, the right group of kids with the right attitude.”
And Jackson is confident his recipe for success is in place again this year.
Notre Dame did lose its top two scorers from last season in defenseman Bobby Nardella and forward Dylan Malmquist. That’s the bad news.
The good news comes when scrolling farther down last season’s stat sheet and finding that six of the top nine scorers return on this year's roster.
PERSONNEL MATTERS
Senior forward Cal Burke is back after finishing third on the team last season with 29 points (12 goals, 17 assists).
Burke, who was named this year’s team captain, said the goal for the five seniors and six juniors on the roster is to use the past to make their own mark in the present.
“We don’t try to think about or compare ourselves to teams; we try to think more about what we’re capable of,” Burke said. “But I think the past success has shown us a little bit of guidance in what we’re capable of and how to get there.”
Two other returning senior forwards, Mike O’Leary and Cam Morrison, both finished with 21 points last season, with Morrison particularly continuing to be clutch in post-season action.
The top-four goal scorers from last year are all back, among them sophomore Michael Graham (12 goals, 10 assists) — who came into his own as a freshman around the halfway mark of the season — and junior Colin Thiesen (11 goals, nine assists).
But on a team that struggled to score in 2018-19 — Notre Dame finished sixth in the seven-team Big Ten with 2.80 goals per game — Jackson challenged his three senior forwards to find even more firepower this year, especially on the power play.
“If we get those (power-play lines) going, then I think we can be a three-goal-a-game team, at least,” Jackson said. “We have to get to the point where we are a threat every time we have a power play.”
While Notre Dame’s scoring production slipped slightly last season, its typically terrific defense and goalkeeping did not. The Irish allowed only 2.27 goals per game last season, the best mark in the Big Ten.
Jackson’s teams are traditionally stingy defensively, but this is the area where his roster suffered the biggest losses.
Last year’s captain Andrew Peeke and leading scorer Nardella both left for professional pursuits, and Jackson explained that his returning group has a lesser margin for error when it comes to clearing and attacking from its own zone.
Senior Tory Dello and junior Matt Hellickson will lead the group of defensemen trying to cover those two prime player losses.
“We cannot make weak plays with the puck in the offensive zone We've got to get out of our zone fast,” Jackson said. “If we start going back with the puck and start getting deep in our zone, we’re going to get ourselves in trouble.”
Fortunately, its last line of defense might be its best line of defense. Back for his senior season, All-American and 2017-18 Mike Richter Award winner Cale Morris gives Notre Dame an almost impenetrable backstop in net.
The numbers for Morris slipped slightly last season from 2017-18, which is hard to believe because he still finished with a remarkable .930 save percentage. Morris enters this season with an upper-body injury and may miss some time for precautionary reasons, Jackson said.
If Morris ends up out for any extended period, junior Dylan St. Cyr provides more than adequate relief. In five starts last season, St. Cyr went 4-1 with a .935 save percentage.
“We know we’re going to have goaltending,” Jackson said matter-of-factly.
Interestingly, Notre Dame has four goalies on scholarship this season, not the ideal situation, Jackson admitted, because it thins his roster of skaters. But in a college sport where many of the top players leave for the NHL after their junior years, it’s a roster hiccup Jackson has to deal with.
“It’s the nature of our game,” Jackson said. “You’re gambling every year trying to figure out what juniors might leave. If you guess the right way, you’re in great shape, and if you guess the wrong way, you've got four goalies.”
THE SCHEDULE
Notre Dame’s Big Ten schedule will once again be loaded with plenty of heavyweights, most notably league favorite Penn State, Ohio State and Minnesota.
But Jackson also wanted to test his team during non-conference play, and the highlight of these match-ups is a home-and-home series in early December with USA Today preseason No. 7 Boston College. 2019-20 Schedule.
“I think they’re one of the best teams in the country,” said Jackson, whose Irish are a unanimous top-10 pick in the various preseason hockey polls.
Jackson also singled out doubleheaders against Bowling Green, Lake Superior State and Western Michigan as six other tough non-conference challenges for his team.
“Our non-conference schedule is really sneaky and we’re going to have to be really prepared,” he said. “And college hockey is so close right now, it doesn’t matter who you are playing.”
“I don’t think anybody underestimates us anymore, and that’s good,” Burke added of the tough schedule. “Our guys know that they are part of the best team, so that plays into their own confidence.”
As with the start of any season, the immediate and long-term goal of Jackson and his players remains the same — improve incrementally with the small stuff so the big picture falls into place.
“The only name that we need to look at on our jerseys is ours,” Jackson said, “and make sure that we are working towards getting better.”
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