Nov. 29, 2014
Notre Dame, Indiana – Ohio State’s Tanner Fritz scored a pair of goals and the Buckeyes got single goals from Blake Doerring, Victor Bjorkung and Darik Angeli as they handed the University of Notre Dame a 5-1 loss in the third-place game of the 2014 Shillelagh Tournament. The game was played in front of 4,789 at the Compton Family Ice Arena on Friday night.
Senior captain Steven Fogarty scored the lone Irish goal in the loss as Notre Dame finishes fourth for the first time in the five Shillelagh Tournaments. Western Michigan claimed the 2014 Shillelagh Tournament title with an 8-2 victory over Union College in the first game of the day.
The loss drops the Irish to 6-8-1 on the season and ends a month of November that Notre Dame would like to forget, as the Irish were 1-6-2 in nine games. Ohio State improves to 5-8-1 with the win as the Buckeyes claimed third place in their first tournament appearance.
“I’m embarrassed on behalf of our program,” said Irish head coach Jeff Jackson following the game.
“We have more ability than what we are playing to at this point. Maybe tonight we bottomed out and we can start building back up. We have a lot of work to do.”
“We’ve gone through a pretty tough stretch against some pretty good teams,” added Jackson.
“In that process, we’ve lost a lot of confidence. We’re hesitant. We aren’t playing the game all the time. This is a read and react game and you have to be able to make plays under pressure. It’s not easy to win college hockey games. We’ve taken it for granted around here for a few years.”
Ohio State jumped out to a 2-0 as the Buckeyes scored the games first two goals.
The Buckeyes would get three tries at their first goal with Doerring finally jumping on a loose puck on the right side of the crease, tucking it past Irish goaltender Cal Peterson for his first goal of the season. Left wing Nicholas Jones got the first shot in close that Petersen stopped. Center Kevin Miller put the first rebound off the post but Doerring slid the second rebound home to make it 1-0.
Fritz picked up his first goal of the night just over five minutes later when he whipped a wrist shot from inside the left circle past Petersen for his fourth of the year and the eventual game winner to give Ohio State the 2-0 edge.
Notre Dame would answer back less than a minute before the end of the first period as Fogarty notched his fourth goal of the year at 19:04 when he fired the rebound of a Thomas DiPauli shot past Buckeyes’ net minder Christian Frey. Peter Schneider also assisted on the play.
Neither team generated much offense in the second period, but Ohio State took advantage of a Notre Dame penalty to score its lone power-play goal of the night.
Fritz was the benefactor of a great feed from Schilkey who picked up his first of three helpers when he slid a pass across the goalmouth to the Buckeyes’ captain on the back door and he fired it past Petersen who had no chance on the play. The goal came at 5:56 of the middle period and was Fritz’s fifth of the season.
Ohio State put the game away in the third with two more goals. Bjorklund, a freshman defenseman, scored his first collegiate goal at 1:28 of the final period when he took a drop pass from Angeli in the slot and his wrist shot went off Petersen’s glove to make it 4-1.
Angeli then closed the scoring at 10:49 when he took a pass from center Nick Oddo behind the goal and fired a shot that Petersen stopped. Angeli grabbed his rebound and put it past the freshmen goaltender for his fourth of the season and the final score of 5-1.
“We were really disappointed with the way we played last night,” said Ohio State coach Steve Rohlik.
“We talked as a team that we had to bounce back and learn from it and there were a lot of things we had to learn from last night (Friday’s 6-2 loss to Western Michigan). I thought we came out and played a pretty solid game tonight.”
Notre Dame out shot Ohio State in the game by a 30-28 margin. Petersen finished the night with 23 saves while Frey turned aside 29 Irish shots.
The Irish power-play woes continued, as they were zero-for-three with the man-advantage, including a five-minute power play early in the third period. Notre Dame has not scored in its last 21 power-play chances with the last power-play tally coming on Nov. 9 at Minnesota.
The Irish will look to get back on track in their final weekend of action before finals and the Christmas holidays when they return to Hockey East play with a pair of games at the University of Massachusetts. Notre Dame will meet the Minutemen in a pair of 7 p.m. games on Dec. 5-6 in Amherst, Massachusetts.
In the championship game of the Shillelagh Tournament, Western Michigan scored five times on the power play on the way to the 8-2 victory over Union College. Nolan LaPorte led the way with three goals while Sheldon Dries had two goals and two assists with Matt Stewart, Colton Hargrove and J.T. Osborn rounding out the scoring. Justin Kovacs added five assists in the game and had seven in the tournament. Jeff Taylor and Roman Ammirato scored for the Dutchmen.
The 2014 Shillelagh Tournament all-tournament team was made up of Bronco goaltender Lukas Hafner, Union defenseman Jeff Taylor and Western Michigan defender Kenney Morrison. The three forwards also were from Western Michigan and included LaPorte, Kovacs and Frederik Tiffels. Kovacs was selected as the tournament’s most valuable player.
GAME SUMMARY 1 2 3 - FOhio State (5-8-1) 2 1 2 - 5Notre Dame (6-8-2) 1 0 0 - 1
Scoring
1st Period: OSU: Blake Doerring 1 (Kevin Miller, Nicholas Jones), 7:05; NOSU: Tanner Fritz 4 (Anthony Greco, Matthew Weis), 12:24; ND: Steven Fogarty 4 (Thomas DiPauli, Peter Schneider), 19:04.
Penalties: OSU: 1 for 2 minutes; ND: 0 for 0 minutes.
2nd Period: OSU: Fritz 5 (Nick Schilkey, Greco), PPG, 5:56.
Penalties: OSU: 0 for 0 minutes; ND: 1 for 2 minutes.
3rd Period: OSU: Victor Bjorkung 1 (Schilkey, Darik Angeli), 1:28; OSU: Angeli 4 (Nick Oddo, Schilkey), 10:49.
Penalties: OSU 4 for 19 minutes; ND: 2 for 4 minutes.
Shots On Goal:Ohio State 10 - 6 - 12 - 28Notre Dame 10 - 9 - 11 - 30
Goaltender Saves:OSU: Christian Frey (60:00) 9 - 9 - 11 - 29ND: Cal Petersen (60:00) 8 - 5 - 10 - 23
Power Plays:OSU: 1 for 2ND: 0 for 3
Attendance: 4,789