When Notre Dame opened Big Ten play against Wisconsin at the start of November, the Fighting Irish carried a 4-2-0 record into the series and improved to 5-2-0 with an OT Friday win.
The following night, the Irish lost 2-1, the first defeat in a string of seven that ended only when they traveled to Northern Ireland for the Friendship Four, where they beat Harvard 5-2 Nov. 29.
In the tournament’s title game, Notre Dame led Boston University 3-1 at the start of the third, but the Terriers scored three unanswered goals in the final 20 minutes – two just 20 seconds apart late in the game – and the Irish fell 4-3.
“I thought we played well both games,” said Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson. “Slow start, both games, but I thought we came on as the games progressed.
“Just based on how things have gone for us in the first half here, it may have been the best weekend of hockey as a team. In that regard, it was just disappointing in how it finished.”
Jackson, set to retire in 2025 after completing his 20th season behind the Notre Dame bench, said that the season so far has been “frustrating.”
“I really like our guys,” said Jackson. “I like the group. I think we haven’t figured some things out on how we need to play, although this past weekend was probably the closest we’ve been to doing a good job managing the puck and not turning pucks over.”
The weeklong trip was more than just hockey, of course. Hosted by the Belfast Giants of the UK’s Elite Ice Hockey League and held nearly every year since 2015, the Friendship Four has provided a rare opportunity to play abroad for 22 different men’s Division I teams since its inception. Notre Dame is the first Big Ten team to have participated.
“It was a neat experience for the guys, a cultural experience, fun for the staff, too,” said Jackson. “It’s a good event. They run it well. Great crowds.”
Jackson said that this tournament was part of why he wanted to come back for his 20th season at Notre Dame. In 2023, Jackson tried to take his team to Dublin when Notre Dame football traveled to Ireland to play Navy.
“We’d never gone overseas, as a team, and most of the Notre Dame teams go overseas quite regularly,” said Jackson. Had they been able to arrange it in 2023, the hockey team would have attended the football game and try to play an exhibition game or two, but Jackson said the timing was off. “It was the first week of school and we couldn’t miss that much academic time.”
Jackson, who turns 70 next June, said he started thinking seriously about retirement when he saw the way that the transfer portal and NIL were changing college hockey.
“I just knew it was probably going to be a bit of a challenge for us in a number of ways,” said Jackson. “We can’t get transfers in very easily. Grad transfers have been fairly easy [but] undergrad transfers almost impossible. We’ve got a few right now, but it’s a challenge. And the NIL thing.
“They say adapt or die, and I didn’t really adapt.”
Jackson has definite opinions about “the NIL thing.” At first, said Jackson, the university wouldn’t let the team raise money for the NIL, something that’s changed in recent years. Without the opportunity to capitalize on NIL, said Jackson, “We’ve had some really high-end recruits we’ve lost in the last few years,” adding that NIL impacted Notre Dame’s recruiting.
“For me, it’s pay-for-play and if you want high-end kids and you want first-round draft picks, you’re going to have to give them cash,” said Jackson, “and that’s just goes against everything I believe college athletics is supposed to be.”
Jackson supports student-athletes earning money from NIL, but not up-front fees for signing on with a program. “I totally believe that an athlete has the same right as any other student to use his name, image, or likeness to make money,” said Jackson, using former Irish goaltender Ryan Bischel as an example of how he thinks NIL can be used. “He did some bank commercials locally, he ran some camps, and that’s the way it should be.”
Before going to former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick to discuss retirement, Jackson wanted to make sure that Notre Dame hockey would be in good hands. When looking around for “elite” coaching talent, said Jackson, he turned to Irish alum Brock Sheahan, who’d first been a volunteer assistant at Notre Dame in 2013-14 before spending four years as an assistant at Holy Cross. Sheahan spent four years coaching in the USHL before a year as head coach of the Chicago Wolves (AHL) in 2022-23. The following year, Jackson convinced Swarbrick to hire Sheahan as a third assistant, and when Jackson’s retirement was announced in June, Notre Dame also announced that Sheahan would replace him as the next Irish head coach.
“He’s got all the right tools to be an exceptional coach at this level,” said Jackson. “He’s 40 years old and he’s an alum. Notre Dame’s in his veins. He’s well respected by our guys.
“Part of the reason I did it this way, too, is that I didn’t want to say that I was going to retire at the end of the year and all of a sudden, we’d lose five guys to the transfer portal. It was much easier to make that transition without losing players.”
Jackson cautions that this season “isn’t a farewell tour.” He said, “I just want to get our team back to where we can be.”
The Fighting Irish have a bye week following their trip to Belfast, and the timing is perfect for helping some guys heal a little before Notre Dame travels to Ohio State Dec. 13-14.
“We’ve had three or four other key guys out up front and in the back end, we don’t have the same depth that we’ve had in the past and we’ve had a couple of injuries back there,” said Jackson. “I don’t think we’ve played a game where everybody slated to be in our lineup actually played in a game together since the start of the season.
“We’ve been dinged up and everybody goes through it and I’m not going to use that as an excuse, but it is a factor.”
It doesn’t help that Notre Dame’s leading scorer, Cole Knuble, has missed four games this season. “I think Friday night was the first time he was healthy all season,” said Jackson, “and he got hurt at the end of the game, a different injury.”
Also not helping is the number of penalties the Irish are taking. Notre Dame has averaged nearly 11 penalty minutes per game, 16th in the nation. Notre Dame’s penalty kill is 40th nationally (78.8%).
“It’s been frustrating from a penalty perspective, from a discipline perspective, and it’s been frustrating from a turnover perspective,” said Jackson.
With a 6-10-0 record and just one win in B1G play, Jackson said that the Irish “still have a chance to do something” this season.
“We’re getting the guys to be better,” said Jackson. “This is a group that shows potential. Against BU, they may have won the first and last 10 minutes of the game, but we won the middle 40. We just have to find a way to play for 60 minutes.”
