Notre Dame’s magical run continues in the NCAA Tournament
Notre Dame is defying everyone’s expectations and is on to the next round in the NCAA Men’s Hockey tournament. This team has become special.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are really becoming somewhat of a special college hockey team. They had a mediocre regular season that saw them go 11-11-2-2 for 37 points. That was good for the second seed in a rather weak Big Ten Hockey division behind Ohio State.
They went on to win the Big Ten tournament over Penn State. That earned the Big Ten a second representative in the NCAA Championship Tournament. Ohio State got in with an at large bid and Notre Dame got the automatic bid for being conference champions.
There were a lot of thrilling hockey games played that saw last second goals and sweet overtime winners get them this far. They were given the three seed in the Northeast region of the bracket. Their first opponent of the tournament was Clarkson. The Golden Knights of college hockey are a great hockey team and the Irish knew this would be a test.
Clarkson went up on a bad goal scored from the goal line. Colin Theisen would have none of that though as he tied the game at one just a few minutes into the second period. And it was par for the course for Clarkson to regain a 2-1 lead and have the Irish on the brink of elimination. Bobby Nardella didn’t like the sound of that, so the defenseman walked in with the goalie pulled and scored a crucial goal to tie the game with just 2:20 left. That was about as exciting of a hockey game as you can watch.
In overtime, Cam Morrison gave us what we wanted when he scored the game-winner to send the Irish to the second round of the tournament. They will now play UMASS in the Northeast regional final on Saturday at 5:30 PM CT on ESPNU. UMASS won a great game against Harvard earlier in the day. This will be the ultimate test for them and if they win they should have the confidence that they can beat anybody.
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The Irish Men’s hockey club has a knack for the dramatic and we can all hope that they have a few more in them. The program has been very good over the past few years and they are turning a mediocre year into one to remember fast.