Penn State Sports Network<\/a><\/p>\nMatt DiMarsico-Charlie Cerrato-JJ Wiebusch
Gavin McKenna-Reese Laubach-Aiden Fink
Lev Katzin-Luke Misa-Ben Schoen
Dane Dowiak-Nic Chin-DeGraves-Alex Servagno<\/p>\n
Jackson Smith-Jarod Crespo
Cade Christenson-Mac Gadowsky
Carter Schade-Nolan Collins<\/p>\n
Josh Fleming
Kevin Reidler<\/p>\n
Notre Dame is the lowest-scoring team in the Big Ten, with just 2.55 goals per game. Evan Werner (8 goals), Sutter Muzzatti (7), and Danny Nelson (7) have been solid goal scorers for the Fighting Irish this season, but the team is averaging just 1.9 goals per game in Big Ten play. Notre Dame does get 30.5 shots on goal per game (25th in the NCAA), so the Irish can put pressure on the opposing defense, but scoring ability has not been there consistently.<\/p>\n
This team\u2019s biggest issue is keeping pucks out of their own net. The defense gives up 34.2 shots on goal per game, the worst mark in the Big Ten. Likely starting goaltender Nicholas Kempf has just a .887 save percentage and 3.80 GAA in 18 starts this season. Owen Say, Cale Morris, and Ryan Bischel are not walking through that door. For the first time in a while against this team, Penn State has an advantage at goalie.<\/p>\n
Notre Dame\u2019s best strength is its No. 7 ranked power play (28.3%), so the Nittany Lions will need to stay out of the penalty box this weekend. The penalty kill is 21st in the NCAA at 82.8%. The longer this series is play at 5-on-5, the better for Penn State.<\/p>\n
Penn State has dropped some games it should not have, including one just two weeks ago against RIT. However, the team has finally started to look more cohesive, particularly with the defensemen contributing more offensively. Notre Dame is certainly capable of scoring goals, as they showed last weekend against Michigan, but both Penn State goaltenders are playing well. Penn State should take care of business on home ice with its toughest stretch of the season looming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 7 Penn State finishes off its five-game home stand with a two-game series against Notre Dame. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,2149],"class_list":{"0":"post-411026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-penn-state-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115905681620121262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411026","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=411026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}