Michigan Hockey has swept Notre Dame, momentarily taken first place in the Big Ten from the Wisconsin Badgers and should feel good about themselves after this first post-winter break series.<\/p>\n
However, the No. 1 Wolverines (18-4, 9-3 Big Ten) could not have left Yost Ice Arena too upbeat, even after beating the Fighting Irish (4-15-1, 0-10 Big Ten) by a final score of 7-4 on Saturday night, as the status of star goaltender Jack Ivankovic clouds any victory celebrations.<\/p>\n
Early in the second period, Notre Dame\u2019s Danny Nelson fired a wrist shot from the low circle, lost his edge and fell into Ivankovic, injuring his left leg. The freshman phenom left the ice gingerly and was replaced by Stephen Peck. While Peck did his job, making 18-of-21 saves and holding off the Irish\u2019s late push, the health of Ivankovic is more important than any single game result.<\/p>\n
Following the game, head coach Brandon Naurato said Ivankovic is going to be out for \u201ca long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ivankovic was having a stellar true freshman season, as the No. 58 overall selection in the 2025 NHL Draft has recorded a 17-4 record with a 1.92 goals allowed average and a .927 save percentage. If he truly will be out for a long time, as Naurato says, fans can expect to see much more of Peck moving forward.<\/p>\n
As expected, this game was a bit of a gong show. Notre Dame is a proud program, and having zero conference wins at this stage of the season is certainly wearing on them. It came out with a heavy, physical game, but Michigan did a good job avoiding a complete melee and knowing it could win by simply playing its game.<\/p>\n
Still, there were melees to be had between these bitter rivals.<\/p>\n
Freshman Aidan Park netted two first period goals \u2014 with an Irish one in between \u2014 and Michael Hage scored early in the second on the power play before the Ivankovic\/Nelson chaos erupted. Josh Eernisee, playing the protector role, was ejected for cross-checking after the scrum.<\/p>\n
This game featured 11 penalties from each side, resulting in 52 PIMs for the Irish and a Hanson Brothers-like 81 PIMs for Michigan.<\/p>\n
After building a 5-2 lead thanks to Garrett Schifsky and Nick Moldenhauer tallies, Notre Dame cut the deficit to just one with 13 minutes to play. But the Wolverines \u2014 who have been so much smarter and more structured defensively this campaign \u2014 helped out Peck by limiting high-danger opportunities, and Schifsky\u2019s transition one-timer from the slot gave Michigan the insurance goal it needed.<\/p>\n
Sure, it always feels good to beat (or whoop) your rivals, but the Wolverines need Ivankovic if they are to break the National Championship drought, and there are no guarantees on his availability moving forward.<\/p>\n
Fingers crossed and more to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michigan Hockey has swept Notre Dame, momentarily taken first place in the Big Ten from the Wisconsin Badgers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,3564],"class_list":{"0":"post-401861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-michigan-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115877122152032542","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}