Oct. 14, 2011
Sophomore left wing Anders Lee scored two goals and added an assist for a three-point night while Notre Dame teammates Austin Wuthrich, T.J. Tynan and Patrick Gaul scored single goals to lead the Irish to a 5-2 win over Ohio State at the Joyce Center. The game was the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) opener for both teams.
Tynan added a pair of assists for his second consecutive three-point game. Riley Sheahan and Bryan Rust each had a pair of two-point nights with two assists each in the victory. The Buckeyes scored twice in the opening period with both goals coming off the stick of Danny Dries.
The win is the second in a row for Notre Dame that saw the Irish fall behind by two goals and then roar back to get five unanswered markers. Last Saturday night in Duluth, Minn., Notre Dame trailed Minnesota-Duluth, 2-0, before getting five straight goals on the way to a 5-3 victory.
The win improves the second-ranked Irish to 2-1-0 overall and 1-0-0-0 in CCHA play. The Buckeyes fall to 1-2-0 on the year and 0-1-0-0 in conference action.
“We got off to a slow start tonight,” said Notre Dame head coach Jeff Jackson. “It’s similiar to last year when we started slow on Friday nights. I’m concerned that they are a little spent on Fridays academically, some don’t get out of class until 3:45 and they have a little trouble getting geared up to start. It’s also break week, so lots of midterms this week.”
Ohio State took the early advantage, scoring the first goal of the game at 1:31 with Dries getting his first of the night and first of the season as he jammed the puck inside the right post for the 1-0 lead. Defenseman Sean Duddy kept a puck in at the left point and fired it around the boards behind the goal where Dries picked it up. He walked in front and tried to tuck it inside the post but Irish goaltender Mike Johnson got his toe on it. Dries jammed at it a second time and got it past Johnson for the goal.
Dries was at it again at the 10:10 mark of the first when he took a feed from defenseman Curtis Gedig and snapped a shot past Johnson for his second of the period and a 2-0 Ohio State lead.
The Irish finally broke through at the 17:35 mark when Wuthrich, a freshman playing in his second career game, beat Buckeyes’ goaltender Brady Hjelle from a bad angle below the left circle for his first career goal to make it 2-1. Rust started the play in his own zone as he fed Rich Ryan with a breakout pass on the right boards. Ryan carried it into the OSU zone and slid a pass to Wuthrich near the bottom of the left circle. He beat Hjelle with a shot low to the ice to cut the lead in half.
While the Irish began to take over the play in the middle stanza the Buckeyes looked like they had extended the lead to 3-1 on a breakaway goal by Ryan Dzingel at 8:44 of the second. He picked off an errant pass at the OSU blue line and raced down the ice on Johnson. His initial shot from the slot was stopped by the Notre Dame goaltender but Dzingel crashed into Johnson knocking the puck into the goal. He was called for goaltender interference and the goal was waved off.
Notre Dame took advantage of the break getting the tying goal at 16:00 on a five-on-three power play of its own.
With Duddy and Gedig getting penalized on the same play the Irish went to work with Tynan capping a pretty passing play from Lee and Sheehan to beat Hjelle from the left side of the slot for his second goal of the season to make it 2-2 and that’s the way the second period ended.
The third period belonged to the Irish as they scored three times to break open a tie game.
Lee, who set a Notre Dame single-season record a year ago with seven game winners, picked up where he left off, getting his third goal of the year and first game winner at 3:19 just as an Irish power play ended when he deflected a Sheahan shot from in front past Hjelle for his third goal of the season to make it 3-2.
“We were just trying to get shots on the power play, something we weren’t doing early in the game,” explained Lee. “I just put my body in front and tried to get a stick on the shot. Riley (Sheahan) had a great shot for me to tip and it went up over the goalie’s shoulder.”
The score would stay that way until the 14:35 mark when Gaul got an insurance goal to make it 4-2 with his first goal of the season and second of his career. Playing on a line with Tynan, Gaul got behind the Buckeyes’ defense and beat Hjelle as he was going to the ice.
“I doubled my career goal total,” said Gaul with a smile following the game. “I’m a finance major so I doubled my investment tonight,” he added with a laugh.
“Sean Lorenz came away with the puck and moved it to T.J. I saw their D moving up so I tried to get behind them to pull them out. Tynan banked it off the boards and I had a breakaway. I was going down when I shot and thought I saw it going in but wasn’t sure until I heard the band playing and the horn going off. I am very happy.”
The Irish closed out the scoring when Lee scored his second of the game at 16:52 for his fourth of the season and the 5-2 final verdict. Just eight seconds earlier, OSU pulled Hjelle for a sixth attacker and down by two goals. Tynan won a face off in the defensive zone back to Stephen Johns behind the goal. Johns moved up the right side and got the pass to Lee behind the Ohio State defense. He gathered the puck in and shot from the blue line into the open cage to seal the victory.
“I was really happy with the way we came back tonight,” said Jackson. “From our goalie on out, everyone played better as the game progressed. That’s a positive.”
For the night, Notre Dame out shot Ohio State by a 35-22 margin. Johnson finished with 20 saves in the game while Hjelle had 30 stops on the night.
The two teams will close out the 43-plus years of hockey at the Joyce Center on Saturday night in a 7:05 p.m. game. Notre Dame’s next home game will be played in the new Compton Family Ice Arena. That game will be played on Friday, Oct. 21 when the Irish play host to the Rensselaer Engineers.
** IRISH NOTES **
– For the second consecutive game, Notre Dame sophomore T.J. Tynan had three points on the night with a goal and two assists. He now has a pair of goals and five assists for seven points in three games this season.
– Senior Patrick Gaul now has a goal and an assist for two points in the first three games this season. For his career, he has two goals and three assists for five points in 51 games. He played in just two games as a junior. His last goal came on Jan. 22, 2010, against Lake Superior State.
– Anders Lee’s game-winning goal was the eighth of his Irish career in just 47 games.
GAME SUMMARY 1 2 3 - FOhio State (1-2-0/0-1-0-0) 2 0 0 - 2#2/#2 Notre Dame (2-1-0/1-0-0-0) 1 1 3 - 5
Scoring
First Period: OSU: Danny Dries 1 (Sean Duddy), 1:31; OSU: Dries 2 (Curtis Gedig), 10:10; ND: Austin Wuthrich 1 (Rich Ryan, Bryan Rust), 17:35.
Penalties: OSU: 2 for 4 minutes; ND: 2 for 4 minutes.
Second Period: ND: T.J. Tynan 2 (Anders Lee, Riley Sheahan), PPG, 16:00.
Penalties: OSU: 3 for 6 minutes; ND: 0 for 0 minutes.
Third Period: ND: Lee 3 (Sheahan, Rust), 3:19; ND: Patrick Gaul 1 (Tynan, Sean Lorenz), 14:35; ND: Lee 4 (Stephen Johns, Tynan), ENG, 16:52.
Penalties: OSU: 2 for 4 minutes; ND: 1 for 2 minutes.
Shots On Goal:Ohio State 7 - 9 - 6 - 22Notre Dame 7 - 16 - 12 -35
Goaltender Saves:OSU: Brady Hjelle (59:52) 6 - 15 - 9 - 30ND: Mike Johnson (59:51) 5 - 9 - 6 - 20
Power Plays:OSU: 0 for 2ND: 1 for 6
Attendance: 2,506