We're already 1/3rd through the season.

Where the heck does the time go?

We have 16 conference games to go and six non conference tilts left. Those 6 are home and homes with Bowling Green, Boston College and Western Michigan. All three are currently in the top-15 of the RPI so our strength of schedule should remain pretty high.

We need to find a way to pot some more goals. The power play would be a good place to start, and hopefully we saw them moving in that direction Saturday. The loss bothered me, as did the inability to score while at even strength, but if we can combine some PP success with the 5X5 success we were seeing, we'll be all right. Last year there was just one player, Joe Wegwerth, who came within a point of a point per game (11 points, he played just 12 games) and this year 4 players have scored more than or within 1 point of a point per game output.

I think the most worrisome stat I am seeing is the number of third period goals the Irish are giving up. We're getting our share, and both in conference and out of it we score more in the final stanza than we do in either of the first two. But in conference play we are also giving up more goals in the third than in either the 1st or 2nd and overall the number is almost as bad in the third.

Jackson has spoken frequently about how possession of the puck is defense by default. To score as frequently as Notre Dame has done in the last period indicates the puck spends a lot of time on Irish sticks. But to give up as many as we've seen means something else is lacking defensively or in net in the last period. Maybe I'm just focusing on it too heavily since the third period on Saturday was clearly a failure. Whatever the issues, if we can tighten things up in the defensive end in the final period, we will win a lot more games this season.