March 9, 2015
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – For the fifth week in a row, Notre Dame freshman goaltender Cal Petersen has found his name listed among Hockey East’s best players for the previous week. On Monday, Petersen repeated his league Rookie of the Week accolade after his record-smashing performance in the team’s first round playoff series win over Massachusetts.
Prior to being the league’s top rookie on both March 2 and today, Petersen was also named the league’s Defensive Player of the Week twice (Feb. 9 and Feb. 16) and the league’s overall Player of the Week once (Feb. 23). Additionally, Petersen earned Hockey East’s Stop It Goaltender of the Month for February.
Petersen set an NCAA Division I record on Friday night as he made 87 saves in Notre Dame’s 4-3 loss to UMass. The contest was not settled until the 11:42 mark of the fifth overtime, making it the longest game in college hockey history. Just 15 and a half hours after playing the equivalent of 2.5 games in Friday’s battle, Petersen was back in net Saturday night, helping the Irish to a 5-3 victory that evened the best-of-three series.
On Sunday, in a winner-takes-all scenario, Petersen stopped all 22 UMass shots he faced to pick up a shutout and help the Irish advance to the Hockey East quarterfinals with a 7-0 victory. It marked Petersen’s fourth shutout of the year, tying David Brown’s school freshman record set in 2003-04. The four shutouts tie for the Hockey East lead on the season and tie for sixth nationally.
In a weekend where he played 271:07 minutes of hockey in a 49-hour span, Petersen recorded a .950 save percentage, stopping 132 of 139 shots, while posting a 1.55 goals against average.
Since taking over as Notre Dame’s top goaltender prior to the third period of the Feb. 6 game at Maine, Petersen leads the nation in saves (411), save percentage (.958) and minutes played (761:42). He ranks seventh nationally, and first in Hockey East, with a 1.50 goals against average since Feb. 6. Petersen has posted a 6-3-1 record since Feb. 6, including wins over three top 10 teams in No. 2 Boston University, No. 9 Boston College and No. 10 Providence College.
The Irish will head to Lowell, Massachusetts this weekend for a best-of-three quarterfinal series with No. 14 UMass Lowell. After losing to the River Hawks in the 2014 Hockey East semifinals at TD Garden in Boston, the Irish will look for a measure of revenge in the series which commences on Friday at 7:15 p.m. EDT at the Tsongas Center.