As the first half of the season begins to wind down, the Fighting Irish aren’t where they’d like to be.
With a record of 7-7-2, Notre Dame is 15 points out of first place in the Big Ten standings and is lowish – for Notre Dame, anyway – in the very early PairWise Rankings.
None of this is ideal, but coach Jeff Jackson is the pragmatic type. Given some of the annual player turnover, adjustments this season were inevitable.
“We lost pretty big pieces from last year,” said Jackson, “mostly I think on the back end with Stastney and Karashik.”
In 2021-22, the Notre Dame defense was anchored by senior Spencer Stastney and grad student transfer Adam Karashik. Gone, too, is goaltender Matthew Galajda, who transferred as a graduate student from Cornell and who had a .933 save percentage with the Irish and a 1.90 GAA.
At the end of last season, Notre Dame had the fifth-best defense the country and the Irish penalty kill led the nation, allowing just seven opponent power-play goals in 136 attempts.
There are big changes in that aspect of Notre Dame’s game this season. Currently the Irish sit at 36th defensively with the 52nd-best PK nationally.
The Irish PK has improved since their opening weekend in the Ice Breaker Tournament, though, when Notre Dame allowed five power-play goals – two in a 5-2 loss to Denver, three in a 5-5 tie against Air Force – which is two opponent power-play goals fewer than the seven total PP goals Notre Dame had given up for the entire 2021-22 season.
“We had a bad weekend,” said Jackson. “We’ve paid the price for that ever since as far as our percentage goes.”
Notre Dame’s challenges don’t end with defense.
“Even though we lost those two difference makers on the back end, the bigger problem is our offense,” said Jackson. “We’re just not scoring the way I thought we would.”
The Irish is averaging 2.38 goals per game, down from the 3.20 they averaged at the end of last season. Gone is Max Ellis, who as a junior led Notre Dame last season with 16 goals. Stastney had seven goals of his own from the blue line. Graham Slaggert had 12 goals last year before graduating. Cam Burke had eight in his senior season and then transferred to Boston College.
Beyond that, said Jackson, returning scorers have yet to find their groove.
“Landon Slaggert just got his first goal against BU,” noted Jackson. “How do you predict that stuff? It’s not like he’s not trying. It’s not like he isn’t getting chances. He’s just not scoring.”
Slaggert had a dozen goals last season.
“The same thing applies to other guys that we thought hopefully were going to take the step offensively for us and it just hasn’t happened yet,” said Jackson. “It doesn’t mean that it can’t still happen. That’s where we’ve gotten ourselves into a little bit of trouble.”
Complicit in all of this, said Jackson, has been Notre Dame’s schedule. After beginning the season against Denver at the Ice Breaker Tournament, the Irish have since dropped two games to Minnesota, have split with Ohio State, Michigan and Western Michigan, have played to a win and a tie against a reborn Michigan State team, and played on the road the last weekend in November against Boston University and Boston College. After losing to the Terriers 5-2, the Irish beat the Eagles by the same score.
“We’ve had a bear of a schedule, to be honest,” said Jackson, “and that plays into it a bit. We haven’t been consistent, but we’ve been playing a lot of teams that are top-10, top-20 in the country on a pretty regular basis, so when we have an off night, it shows up. It shows up bigger. Let’s put it that way.”
An off night like Notre Dame’s 5-2 loss to Ohio State Nov. 18, when the Irish surrendered three third-period goals. Or an off night like that 5-2 loss to Boston University, when the Irish trailed all game and once again allowed three third-period goals.
“I always say that when we don’t play well, we’re not possessing the puck, we’re not managing the puck like we should be,” said Jackson. “If you’re giving it up, you’re chasing, you’re playing defense with a top team. You’re playing defense at a high level.
“We can’t score ourselves out of trouble. We need to get things on track. That’s probably where we’ve been spending the bulk of our time, on generating more offense.”
The Notre Dame power play, which clicked along at nearly 20 percent last season, is just 7 of 56 this year so far (12.5%).
“We have more ability, more talent than what our power play shows,” said Jackson.
Through 16 games, the Irish are led in goal production by grad student defenseman Nick Leivermann, whose five total goals are one shy of the career high he set as a senior last year for Notre Dame. Newcomers Chayse Primeau (Ohama) and Jackson Pierson (New Hampshire), both grad student transfers, are expected to add offense as the season progresses.
Then again, so is everyone else.
“I’ve always been a big believer that it’s not so much the individuals, it’s about the collective,” said Jackson. “It’s about the chemistry in the group. We just haven’t found that chemistry yet.”
To bolster the blue line, Notre Dame brought in Ben Brinkman after he finished his initial four years with Minnesota and junior Drew Bavaro, who transferred after two years with Bentley. Additionally, the Irish have highly touted freshman Mike Mastrodomenico.
“I think the three have played pretty well for us,” said Jackson.
Returning to Big Ten play after a bye week, Notre Dame hosts Penn State. Jackson knows what the Nittany Lions are bringing to South Bend.
“In the second half of last year, they didn’t lose much,” said Jackson. “They’ve got a lot of returning guys, and they made some good pickups in the transfers, some offensive guys.”
Jackson said that he hopes that the difficulty of Notre Dame’s early schedule and the lessons his team can learn from that will prepare the Irish for the remainder of the season, games that are all in conference from now until the end of the season with the exception of a home series against Alaska to ring in the new year.
“There’s no soft ice in the league,” Jackson said. “The Big Ten is hard top to bottom.”
Jackson said that he and his coaching staff can’t think about how some early losses may affect Notre Dame’s fate come March. The Irish have made six consecutive NCAA appearances dating back to 2016 and excluding 2020, when the tournament was cancelled because of the pandemic.
“If you don’t make some hay in nonconference, then you get in trouble,” said Jackson. “We have to just focus on the present. We can’t worry about what happened or what’s going to happen.”
Jackson said that every week, the Irish are working on improving.
“That’s the approach of the coaching staff,” said Jackson. “We’re trying to simplify things, just work on the fundamentals and the details of the game. It’s not about structure. It’s more about execution of that structure.”
Notre Dame is 17-7-3 all-time against Penn State. The Nittany Lions have never won back-to-back games against the Fighting Irish. Last season, the Irish won all four meetings with Penn State, outscoring the Nittany Lions 19-8 in those contests.
