This weekend, the No. 20 Michigan State Spartans face off against the No. 19 Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the 2023 Big Ten Men's Ice Hockey Tournament quarterfinals. MSU finished fifth in the conference with 34 points, while Notre Dame finished fourth with 35 points.
The two programs met four times during the regular season. Michigan State lost the first game 5-0 after Notre Dame goaltender Ryan Bischel posted a shutout, one of his four during the season. The following night, MSU battled Notre Dame to a 1-1 tie and took an extra point by winning the shootout. While the Irish were in East Lansing, Michigan State earned a sweep.
This season, Notre Dame has been riding the back of Bischel heavily. The goaltender has earned a save percentage of .932 on the season, second-best in the NCAA. He’s only allowed an average of 2.39 goals per game.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame’s offense has scuffled. Due to injuries and one of the toughest schedules in the NCAA, Notre Dame is scoring a measly 2.35 goals per game, lower than Bischel’s average. In Notre Dame’s last game against Michigan, the Wolverines outshot the Irish 49-22, but UND won 2-1 in overtime.
The Fighting Irish are led by head coach Jeff Jackson, an MSU alum, who is 7-1 against the Spartans in the postseason while head coach. Between 1990 and 1996, Jackson was the head coach at Lake Superior State where the Lakers defeated Michigan State in three CCHA playoff games and once in the 1992 NCAA semifinals.
Jackson was hired to be the head coach at Notre Dame in 2005, and lost to MSU in the NCAA regional round before MSU went to win the 2007 Frozen Four. The following year, MSU lost the regional round against Notre Dame 3-1. However, the teams have only met once in the postseason in the last 10 years, in 2019, a sweep by the Irish in the Big Ten quarterfinals.
Michigan State has not yet won a Big Ten playoff game since the conference’s inception in 2013. MSU earned as high as a No. 2 seed in the 2015 conference tournament, but lost to Michigan in the semifinals that year.
Bischel and MSU goalie Dylan St. Cyr were once teammates while St. Cyr was with the Fighting Irish. In fact, they both split time between the posts during St. Cyr’s final year with the team. Now in St. Cyr's final year of NCAA eligibility, he’s ready to end it by playing well against Bischel.
“It’s a fire for all the guys I know there and the staff, and going back to Notre Dame is always an exciting time,” St. Cyr said this week at MSU’s midweek press conference. “Obviously, we have a job to do this weekend and that’s been the main focus.”
St. Cyr, like Bischel, is having a career season of his own. The 5-foot-8 goaltender had a .914 save percentage during the regular season and nearly eclipsed 1,000 saves.
All season, MSU has been led by its top line, consisting of freshman forward Daniel Russell, freshman center Karsen Dorwart and senior left wing Jagger Joshua. Russell has 28 points, Dorwart has 26 and Joshua has 23.
Meanwhile, senior center Nicolas Müller has been playing extremely well since Erik Middendorf was moved up to his line to play left wing. That pairing, along with Jeremy Davidson, has played well in recent games. Müller has also been a help on the power play, which includes Russell, Dorwart, Joshua and defenseman Matt Basgall.
The Spartans narrowly missed out on home ice this weekend. As was deliberated last week, there was a lot of confusion about what would happen in a scenario in which there was a three-way tie between Notre Dame, Michigan State and Penn State.
In any scenario, MSU would have earned a tiebreaker in two-way ties with both teams. However, the Big Ten’s three-way tiebreaker is first points-percentage, assuming all tied teams have played an uneven amount of games, and is then decided by regulation wins. In that scenario, MSU would have ended up sixth.
Regardless, Michigan State needed Michigan to earn a regulation win last weekend to play at home, which did not happen.
When asked if he found himself rooting for Michigan over the weekend, Michigan State head coach Adam Nightingale simply responded by saying, “no.”
Somehow, Wisconsin defeated Penn State on the road in the final week to solve half of MSU’s puzzle. The Nittany Lions could have easily, and probably should have, beaten the Badgers on Saturday. Instead, Penn State finishes in sixth place.
As for the rest of the Big Ten Tournament, Minnesota will have a vacation this week and will play the lowest remaining seed in the tournament, which is likely to be MSU, Penn State or Notre Dame.
Here is what the rest of the tournament field looks like:
No. 7 Wisconsin at No. 2 Michigan
No. 6 Penn State at No. 3 Ohio State
No. 5 Michigan State at No. 4 Notre Dame
Notre Dame’s home record during the regular season was 10-4-3. MSU’s road record was 5-8-1, with the lone tie coming to Notre Dame.
Michigan State still has a slim chance to make the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament if it can defeat Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish are currently ranked No. 14 in the Pairwise rankings. The top-16 earn a place in the tournament, however the cutoff is actually 15 right now because no team from Atlantic Hockey will be ranked for the postseason (the conference tournament winners receive automatic bids).
Game 1
Time: 7 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: Compton Arena in South Bend, Indiana
TV: FS2
Stream: Fox Sports app
Listen: WJIM 1240 AM
Game 2
Time: 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: Compton Arena in South Bend, Indiana
TV: FS2
Stream: Fox Sports app
Listen: WJIM 1240 AM
Game 3 (if necessary):
Time: 6 p.m. Eastern Time
Location: Compton Arena in South Bend, Indiana
TV: FS2
Stream: Fox Sports app
Listen: WJIM 1240 AM
- QB
- TE
- OT
- TE
