Christmas break cannot come soon enough for the Notre Dame hockey team.
After the Irish gained a glimmer of momentum with a win last week, it was snuffed out at home by the No. 2 Wisconsin Badgers this weekend. With 7-4 and 9-2 losses at Compton Family Ice Arena on Friday and Saturday, Notre Dame will head to its three-week holiday break losers of eight of its last nine.
“We just stub our toe,” first-year head coach Brock Sheahan said after Friday’s loss. “[It’s] what we do. Until that changes, it’s going to be frustrating.”
Indeed, at this juncture, frustration must be at an all-time high for Notre Dame. Stubbing your toe implies taking a step forward, then recoiling backward from something unexpected. There’s no doubt that, in many respects, the Irish have taken steps forward this season.They’ve almost always been sent reeling backward shortly thereafter.
But by the time Badger senior forward Simon Tassy scored Wisconsin’s 16th and final goal of the series on Saturday night, it became a question of whether the Irish have lost their footing this season entirely.
It did not start as badly as it finished. The Irish jumped out to a 2-0 lead in Friday’s first game. 3:11 into the first period, junior forward Evan Werner beat Wisconsin starting sophomore netminder Eli Pulver. A goal by junior defenseman Paul Fischer with 31 seconds left in the period chased a rattled Pulver from the game. He was replaced by freshman Daniel Hauser. The Irish were in the driver’s seat.
But the manner in which Wisconsin pulled themselves back into the series was a harbinger of things to come. Badger junior forward Quinn Finley snuck in behind the Notre Dame defense and beat Irish sophomore starter Nicholas Kempf on the breakaway 31 seconds into the frame. Then, a little over three minutes later, senior forward Christian Fitzgerald scored again on the breakaway. It was 2-2.
“I coached Quinn Finley in the USHL. He’s an elite hockey player. That’s in the scout video. He takes off,” an agitated Sheahan said Friday. “I coached him. He’s going to take off. When 19’s on the ice, be alert to 19. And you just watch him skate by you for a breakaway? So that’s a question I don’t have an answer to.”
Never mind that the Irish retook the lead a little over a minute later on a power-play goal by freshman forward Pano Fimis. Friday night’s game was tied three times. Notre Dame led twice. Yet a win still slipped through its hands. Junior defenseman Joe Palodichuk scored twice in the last half of the second period, giving Wisconsin a 4-3 lead at the second intermission. Then, after Werner tied the game early in the third, Notre Dame allowed Badger sophomore Ryan Botterill to put his team ahead 5-4. A turnover by senior defenseman Michael Mastrodomenico led to a shot that Kempf should have trapped in his glove, but it fell out right to Botterill.
“Under no pressure, giving the other team the puck and they have a three-on-one at your net, they’re probably going to score,” Sheahan said.
Two Wisconsin empty-net goals put the game away.
“The great thing is, we have an opportunity to do this better tomorrow,” Sheahan said Friday. “We’ll really see where our character is at. I expect us to be better than we were tonight.”
It became clear quickly that the Irish were not better on Saturday. They started the night by allowing their second four-goal period of the series. Finley scored 3:37 into the game, off the glove of Kempf and in. Freshman Grady Deering finished a rebound to put the Badgers up 2-0 less than two minutes later. Then the Irish conceded two goals in two minutes again, after a missed slashing call allowed Badger senior defenseman Ben Dexheimer to walk in and score before freshman Blake Montgomery followed up 55 seconds later.
The game wasn’t 12 minutes old and the Badgers led by four. The rest of the game felt like a formality.
Through the opening six games in Big Ten play, Notre Dame did not win because they couldn’t score. They’ve forced the issue in the four games since, conference and nonconference, but utterly collapsed within their own end. The defensive pairing changes made by Sheahan in the wake of Friday’s loss did not help.
The mistakes the Irish have been making that forced Sheahan to make those changes in the first place were compounded on Saturday. They conceded goals at horrible times, allowing the Badgers to score in quick succession, shortly after the Irish had scored or in the first or last three minutes of a period, killing momentum. They tried ill-advised zone clearances through the middle of the rink, attempted to skate through a maze of Badgers when a simple pass would do and went through three goaltenders over the course of Saturday night. While Kempf has not been the only problem, his glove hand side is clearly giving him some trouble, and that shone through in the first period.
A team that probably has not deserved to lose as much as they have this season very much deserved to on Saturday night. After the four-goal first period, Notre Dame played Wisconsin to a level 1-1 second. Then Notre Dame conceded their third four-goal period of the series in the final frame.
The game devolved into borderline fisticuffs with 1:59 to play, with tackling, swipes thrown, taunting across the benches and helmets and sticks littering the ice in a 9-2 contest. Not many of the 5,046 sellout crowd remained in their seats to see it.
So ended Notre Dame’s worst home loss since Dec. 2, 2011 — a 9-2 loss to Northeastern in Compton Family Ice Arena’s opening season. The 16 goals against is the most in one weekend in the arena’s 14-year history by a wide margin.
One bad night sometimes is exactly that — one bad night. Having taken steps forward and with nothing to show for them, Notre Dame ended 2025 in a fit of frustration. At least when play resumes on Jan. 2, the low point of its season will be three weeks in the rearview mirror.
“I believe that we’re close,” Sheahan said Friday. “But at the same time, we’re very, very far away.”
