Essentials

Yes, I found a college hockey line.

BASICS

Notre Dame is 19-10-7 on the year, 15-5-2 in Hockey East. They enter the tournament on quite a skid, having lost five of their last six games. Those games were against Providence, BU, and Northeastern—all participants in this year's tourney—so at least their losses have been against good teams and not, say, Ohio State, but that's not the ideal way to enter win-or-go-home time.

ND's offense curled up and died during this period. Just one of their last six games has featured more than two goals, that a 6-4 loss to Northeastern that knocked them out of the HE tournament. Their single win was a 1-0 shutout of BU.

ND has the statistical profile of a team that is responsible but less than overwhelming. Leading scorer Anders Bjork has 11-22-33—less than a PPG. Leading goal scorer Thomas DiPauli has 13. They're deep, though, with six double-digit scorers. They're slightly getting outshot on the year. They haven't given up a shorthanded goal this year; they've only scored one.

This is a team short on high-end talent but one that goes three lines deep in reasonably prolific dudes.

COMMON OPPONENTS

Notre Dame split against Minnesota, BU, and Penn State this season. Michigan was 3-2 against the Gophers, split against BU, and nuked Penn State into orbit.

OFFENSE

DiPauli has 13 goals on the year

Despite recent struggles the Irish have still scored a healthy number of goals this season, albeit often against the lower reaches of Hockey East. Those lower reaches were not much different than the Big Ten's: Maine and UMass are below even MSU in RPI; UConn is just above the Spartans; Merrimack, Vermont and UNH barely edge out Wisconsin.

ND has bombed the aforementioned schools and nonconference opponent WMU, who is in the same RPI range and faced ND three times this year. In those 15 games ND scored 67 goals, 4.5 per outing. In their other 21 they managed just 46, 2.1 per. That is a stark difference. ND really struggles to score against good teams.

Now, you are probably thinking "does Michigan qualify as good in this department?" and I'm like… uh.

Maybe? The Ohio State series is a blip in what is otherwise a long stretch of games against decent to good teams that did not make me want to boil myself alive after the opposition hit double digits in odd man rushes. Since a 4-4 tie against Wisconsin, Michigan has played

• that series against OSU, guh
• a 5-2 win over Ferris State, which is in the tourney at RPI #30 thanks to a WCHA tourney win
• six games against Penn State and Minnesota, bubble teams, in which they gave up an average of 2 goals per game. PSU and Minnesota are 6th and 13th in scoring nationally.

I'm not saying they've turned the corner. I'm not saying they haven't, especially since some of those goals came in sloppy third periods with Michigan up a zillion.

DEFENSE

Bjork spearheads ND's defense from center

Notre Dame is the #14 D in goals allowed, and while this is almost identical to where they stand in goals scored it's a much more consistent strength. Until that 6-4 loss to Northeastern in their most recent outing ND hadn't given up five since October (against PSU). They almost never scored shutouts and almost never gave up more than three goals (just five times all season and twice since November). ND can make it rough sledding against anyone.

Often that rough sledding means giving up 3 goals against tourney-level competition. Goals allowed this season against top 20 RPI opponents: 6, 3, 0, 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 1, 3, 4, 2, 2, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 5, 4. You get the idea. They're not impregnable, or even particularly good at shutting down good teams.

Bjork, an Andrew Copp type, is by far ND's best forward defensively—consider that he is +27 with just 33 points and that the next-best F on the team is +15—and ND will seek to match him against the CCM line. Michigan has last change, which could be a factor.

Goalie Cal Petersen, drafted in the fifth round by the Sabres, is a major strength with a .928 save percentage.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Surprise: Notre Dame will want to stay out of the box. Michigan's rampant power play is #1 nationally at 32%, having scored on an amazing 17 of 29 opportunities over their last six games. Notre Dame's penalty kill is 20th at 84%—decent but nothing spectacular. They have just one short handed goal to their name this year.

Michigan will also want to stay out of the box, because their penalty kill is 45th and ND has a solid PP unit of its own, 10th nationally. The two teams are about even in penalty minutes.

A FEELING OTHER THAN TERROR?

Mostly terror.

I think this is a reasonably good matchup, though. RPI and KRACH both agree that this is a 7-vs-12 game. Those metrics don't take goal margin into account; ND has made a lot of hay against a slate of HE opponents that are more or less equivalent to Wisconsin and MSU. So has Michigan, of course, but the gap between performances against good teams is not nearly as large. Also Michigan is outscoring the opposition by 1.9 goals per game; ND is at .8. Michigan just bombed teams slightly worse than the ones ND lost to repeatedly. ND's defense doesn't look capable of shutting CCM down; they haven't shut down many good teams this year. Michigan is and should be favored.

Unfortunately for Michigan, their bell curve is so wide that being favored might not mean a whole bunch. Jeff Jackson is a very good coach and Michigan can struggle when the opposition has a high-energy forecheck going, as OSU did in that series.

If the defensive improvement over the past month holds, Michigan should get a couple of ridiculous goals from CCM and ND will struggle to get past two or three. These days I call two goals a "Michigan shutout" since that's enough to win. If Jackson gets in Michigan's grill with his coaching chops something like OSU could go down, albeit tighter since ND is not much of an offensive team against reasonable opposition.

I think it's a W, but hockey plinko.