Axel Kumlin just didn’t want to look stupid.
The senior defenseman had the puck on his stick in overtime with an open net to shoot at.
“I tried to not miss, instead of trying to score,” the Stockholm, Sweden native said postgame. “It would have been embarrassing if I missed it, I think.”
Spoiler alert: Kumlin did not miss. He took the cross-crease pass from graduate student forward Sutter Muzzatti and shot it over the top of sliding Nittany Lion sophomore netminder Kevin Reidler — a storybook ending for a pair of graduating players on senior night. Final score: Notre Dame 4, No. 5 Penn State 3 in overtime.
To understand the catharsis of emotion that followed at a sold-out Compton Family Ice Arena on Saturday night — when the green-clad Irish poured off the bench to mob Kumlin and Muzzatti — you have to go back at least three hours, if not three months.
You have to go back, at least, to warmups.
Just after the stadium DJ cued the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” and the ushers opened the gates, Irish first-year head coach Brock Sheahan sat down on the bench next to his young daughter Evelyn. Clad in her full youth hockey gear and a replica Irish jersey, the two watched intently as Notre Dame twirled around the ice. With music blaring, arena public address man JP Joubert announced Evelyn as the night’s Irish youth captain. With the camera and the jumbotron focused on her, her Dad gave her a hug.
“She was a little nervous, said she wanted to do it, and then she didn’t want to do it,” Sheahan said. “She loves hockey, she loves our team.”
There’s no hiding that it’s been a long season for Sheahan in his first year. The Irish took a long time to adjust to the coaching transition, at one point losing 16 of 17 games between the end of October and the middle of January. Since, they’ve been playing some of their best hockey, but results have remained elusive. Just the night before, the Irish held a 3-0 lead in the first period against the very same Nittany Lions, only to see that lead evaporate into a 4-3 shootout loss.
“She doesn’t like when we lose. It’s been a tough year for her,” Sheahan said. “She said we had to win.”
Warmups finished, the lights came down, and the band introduced itself as usual with the playing of “Do You Love Me?” by the Contours. Compton Family Ice Arena went from empty to full in the blink of an eye.
When the lights came back on again, the Irish honored their six graduating players — defensemen Michael Mastrodomenico and Kumlin, forwards Niko Jovanovic and Muzzatti and goaltenders Jack Williams and Luke Pearson — in a pregame ceremony. The players met their parents on the ice with flowers. The team also recognized its three senior managers: Avery White, Taylor Girard and Katherine Devine, as well as team radio voice Tyler Reidy, himself a graduating senior.
Editor’s Note: Tyler Reidy, radio play-by-play voice of Notre Dame hockey, is a sports writer for The Observer.
Even after a 6-22-25 season, smiles abounded. Before the game had even started, Notre Dame showed it had much left to play for in this strange and difficult season.
When the Irish took the ice in their green alternate jerseys, which they only wear once a year for senior night, they started slowly anyway. Nittany Lion junior defenseman Casey Aman took a pass from freshman star Gavin McKenna behind the net and beat Irish sophomore goaltender Nicholas Kempf five-hole to put Penn State ahead just 2:58 into the game.
But with so much to play for, Notre Dame did not go quietly. Appropriately, it was Jovanovic who dragged the Irish back into the game. A chemical engineering major who has spent most of his time at Notre Dame out of the lineup, Jovanovic has made an impact for the Irish since January second, creating an identity on Notre Dame’s fourth line and forcing Sheahan to play him.
“Some guys weren’t ready to go, [but] he was ready to go,” Sheahan said of Muzzatti. “That got us going as a group.”
Jovanovic was on the ice for Notre Dame’s tying goal late in the first period, when his puck pressure forced Nittany Lion junior forward Aiden Fink to flip the puck high and out into the neutral zone. Mastrodomenico knocked it down there for junior forward Maddox Fleming to skate onto, and he beat Reidler with a shot to the blocker side.
Mastrodomenico, also a four-year senior and captain, collected the primary assist on the play. Fleming had been scratched in Friday’s loss, but his goal continued Notre Dame’s trend of depth scoring. Seven of Notre Dame’s 11 goals in the last two weeks have been scored by players outside of their top-six forwards.
Notre Dame’s top-six came through to give the Irish the lead just moments later, though, when junior captain Danny Nelson cleaned up a rebound on the power-play to put the Irish ahead just 1:44 after Fleming had tied it.
Then, after Nittany Lion sophomore defenseman Cade Christenson squared the score in the second period, Nelson came through again, ripping a wrister past Reidler to make the score 3-2 in the third. The Irish led by a goal with just 10:43 to go.
“We came to play,” Nelson said. “That was something coming into today we really wanted to do, was string together two consistent games, and I feel like we really did that.”
But even when they’ve come to play, wins have not come easy for Notre Dame all year. Even in the green jerseys on senior night, nothing could be expected to the contrary. On Friday night, Fink tied the score at three with 14:37 to play, and on Saturday night, he assisted on freshman forward Luke Misa’s high slot tip that eluded Kempf to tie the score at three again. This time, with just 2:15 remaining, overtime seemed inevitable.
And so for the sixth time in 10 games, Notre Dame went to overtime with no expectations. The Irish had not won a game in overtime all season in seven tries. They won possession of the puck to start the extra frame, but lost it just 30 seconds later.
Then, it happened.
With Kumlin’s family at Compton to see him play for only the third time in his two years with Notre Dame, the Swede jumped over the boards. McKenna made an errant pass. Irish junior forward Cole Knuble, a factor all night, tracked it down in the Nittany Lion zone. He passed to Kumlin at the faceoff circle, but his shot was easily stopped by Reidler. Kumlin jarred the rebound free. Muzzatti picked it up on the near post, just as Kumlin got his stick free on the far post. One pass. One shot. Kumlin did not miss.
“We’ve played well enough to win more than we have, but that moment was the result of us doing it maybe the most that we have,” Sheahan said. “We stuck with it.”
When Kumlin and Danny Nelson walked into the postgame interview room 20 minutes after scoring the overtime winner, Kumlin was still wearing his full uniform. While Nelson had changed into his street clothes, Kumlin had stayed out on the ice, taking pictures with friends and family and soaking in the moment he and his team had been working toward all year. It was Notre Dame’s first win of the season over a top-20 opponent.
Maybe there was just a little magic in those green jerseys after all.
“You wear it once a year, and guys have been talking about it for weeks, months. You see other sports wear their green and we’re like, we can’t wait to put it on,” Kumlin said.
“It just means a little bit more,” added Nelson “You walk in there and you get a little smile on your face [when] you get to see them for the first time, you kind of look back to last years when you get to wear them and it’s only once a year, so it just makes it definitely a very very cool moment.”
In a year, the Irish will walk into the locker room, see those green jerseys, and look back on this moment. It’s a long way away, but if they find themselves in a better position in the standings — not, say, 53rd of 63 teams nationally and dead last in the Big 10 — Notre Dame will be served a reminder of how they got there when they see these green jerseys again.
Due to the commitment of their coaching staff and the steady hand of their graduating players, the Irish are trending up over the last month. They found what they have to play for. That culminated Saturday.
The Irish will now play one more regular season series March 5-6, at Ohio State, and then face the second seed in the single-elimination Big Ten tournament the following Wednesday. Though they won’t wear them for another year, the Irish have to hope that the magic they found Saturday in their green jerseys lasts.
Said Kumlin: “I don’t ever want to take these off.”
