good, or was Justen Close just that bad? Looking at the numbers it doesn't appear we controlled 100% of the game as Minnesota had more shot attempts and shots on net.
Whatever the reason it was nice to see a blowout win on the right side of the ledger. Minnesota had been playing good hockey and was a more complete team than the one we split with in Minneapolis in November. And after taking 14 penalties for 61 minutes last weekend it was good to see Notre Dame play with a little more discipline, only playing 4 minutes of the game a man down. I also see Henry Nelson was not in the lineup.
Notre Dame is now 15-1-1 when they manage 3 or more goals. They are 0-13-1 when they don't. Wisconsin has yet to lose a game when they score 3 or more goals but the other 5 teams in the Big Ten have managed to lose 24 times when they hit that total. For the Irish it really is a magical number. Had they scored exactly 3 goals in the 14 games they failed to reach that total, all other factors being the same they would be #10 in the pairwise and we'd be wondering what regional they'd be going to and could they sneak into a last-change seed?
One truly hopeful sign continues to be freshmen contributing. 37 goals so far with at least 5 games to go. The previous 4 season combined freshmen managed to contribute 37 goals. I don't know how far back you have to go to find a season with more goals from rookies, and I am not sure how that stacks up against the rest of the NCAA, I just know that we haven't seen it around here in quite some time. Even more promising is only 6 of those goals came in Notre Dame's first ten games, so 31 freshman goals have been scored over just 21 games. Hopefully they keep developing and are playing even better in the years to come.
Close wasn't the issue in net, the Gophers looked and played