Sam Herr and the Irish will open the postseason against Northeastern on Friday night.

#10 Irish To Host Northeastern In Hockey East Quarterfinals

March 6, 2016

By Dan Colleran

NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The tenth-ranked Notre Dame hockey team will play host to Northeastern in a best-of-three Hockey East quarterfinal series that is slated to begin on Friday, March 11 at the Compton Family Ice Arena.

Friday’s game will begin at 7:35 p.m., while Saturday and Sunday’s (if necessary) games will start at 7:05 p.m. It will mark the first Hockey East playoff meetings between the two teams.

Notre Dame claimed a first round bye and the right to host a quarterfinal series by placing third in the Hockey East standings.

After finishing the regular season in sixth place, Northeastern defeated Maine in back-to-back overtime games this past weekend (March 4-5) to advance to the quarterfinals.

It will be the Huskies’ second trip to the Compton Family Ice Arena this season, having also played a weekend series against the Irish on Nov. 12-13.

Notre Dame took game one of that series, 3-2 (Nov. 12). Jordan Gross had a pair of first period goals, while Andrew Oglevie netted what proved to be the game winner in the second period.

The following night (Nov. 13), the teams played to a 2-2 overtime tie, with Jake Evans and Connor Hurley providing the Notre Dame goals, while Cal Petersen stopped 32 of the 34 shots he faced.

Northeastern has been one of the hotter teams in the country of late and is 16-1-2 over its last 19 games. The Huskies have won nine games in a row.

In his 11th season at Notre Dame, Irish Head Coach Jeff Jackson has now lead Notre Dame to a first round bye six times (the previous five byes came when Notre Dame played in the CCHA). In each of those seasons that Notre Dame earned a first round bye under Jackson, it went on to win its quarterfinal series and three of the five times (2007, 2009 and 2013) it won the tournament championship.

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— ND —

Dan Colleran, associate athletics communications director at the University of Notre Dame, has been a part of Fighting Irish Media since August 2015 and coordinates all media and publicity efforts surrounding the Notre Dame hockey and men’s golf programs. A native of Walpole, Massachusetts, Colleran spent the previous three years working with the men’s hockey and soccer programs at Providence College. Colleran also spent two years as an Assistant Executive Director of Communications & Championships at the Ivy League and is a graduate of Providence College (’06 & ’08G).