Down To A Dozen: Notre Dame Hockey Comes To Town

The UNH men's hockey team is down to six weekends - a dozen games - left in the regular season.

The next half dozen game are particularly telling.

No. 13 Notre Dame arrives in Durham for a pair of games this weekend – Friday night at 7 and Saturday at 5 p.m. - to start a stretch of tests against teams that are near the top of the national rankings and are also the leaders in Hockey East.

A limited number of tickets are available for the Notre Dame games and may be obtained by CLICKING HERE or calling 603-862-4000.

Over the next three weekends, the Wildcats will play the top four teams in the league standings. They are teams that, after Notre Dame, are ranked No. 3, No. 4 and No. 8 in the country at the moment.

"We're going to take it as an opportunity," said freshman defenseman Matt Dawson. "We had a kind of tough (last) weekend. It's almost like a good thing right now playing all these top teams. We can really move up in the standings here playing those top teams and get an idea what playoff hockey's going to be like."

The Wildcats are coming off a rough weekend and a pair of losses to Northeastern, 4-2 in Boston on Friday and 6-2 on Saturday night at the Whittemore Center.

Coach Dick Umile was unhappy with his team's effort on Friday night and its defensive execution on Saturday.

"It was a painful weekend," Umile said. "We were not pleased with that and talked about it Monday and watched a lot of video. Now we've moved on."

Notre Dame is 12-4-7 overall and 8-1-2 in Hockey East and is undefeated in its last 10 games with seven wins and three ties. The Fighting Irish swept Merrimack, 7-2 and 5-1, in a series in South Bend last weekend.

"They've got it all," Umile said. "Their power play is good. They've got a lot of skilled players. Their goalie is playing well. They've got good size."

Sophomores Anders Bjork (nine goals, 15 assists for 24 points) and Jake Evans (4-19-23) lead Notre Dame in scoring and sophomore defenseman Jordan Gross is at 7-12-19.

Sophomore goalie Cal Peterson's 2.20 goals against average and .927 save percentage are both fourth best in Hockey East.

After Notre Dame, the Wildcats are on the road for four games. They play a pair at No. 3 Providence next Friday and Saturday and then are at No. 4/5 Boston College on Feb. 5 and at No. 8 UMass Lowell on Feb. 6.

The next home games are against Vermont on Feb. 12 and 13.

UNH is tied for eighth with Vermont and Massachusetts in the league standings. All have eight points. Merrimack is a point ahead with nine points and UConn another point ahead of that in sixth.

The top four teams in the standings earn a bye for the first round of the playoffs and then have home ice for the quarterfinals. The teams that finish fifth through eighth get home ice for the first round.

Now is the time to make a move, said UNH junior forward Tyler Kelleher.

"I think as a team we can talk as much as we want," Kelleher said. "We're trying to stay loose. We can talk as much as we want about what we're going to do, but I think it really just comes down to actually doing it and I think we all know that now. I think we're all ready to show what we can do on Friday night."

Kelleher has six goals and 29 assists for 35 points. The 29 assists lead the nation.

Sophomore forward Andrew Poturalski continues to lead the country in scoring with 18-20-38 totals.

Freshman forward Marcus Vela had two goals in UNH's first 20 games and scored three of UNH's four goals last weekend against Northeastern. Vela has totals of 5-5-10 and he and classmate and linemate Ara Nazarian at 4-6-10 share the team lead for scoring among freshmen. Chris Miller, another freshman, will be on a line with Nazarian and Vela on Friday night. Miller is at 3-4-7.

Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu

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Matt Dawson

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