Re: Notre Dame Hockey 2014-15: The year of the Freshman
I'm also left wondering, if the PP was this good earlier in the season what would our record be?
Hypothetically, we'd be a lot better off. If the PP was going as well in the first half of the season as it has gone in the last 11 games or so we'd be looking at a lot of more palatable options.
We played 5 games in the first half that were either ties or one goal losses in which the PP went 0-13. A PP goal in each
could have meant a 2-0-3 record in those games instead of the 0-3-2 record that were the actual results. That record would have us at 29th in the PWR rather than the 36th we currently sit. Not a huge improvement, but enough to keep slim but doable hopes alive for an at-large spot in the NCAAs. We'd also be tied for 3rd in HE with a game in hand on UML and BC and with control of our destiny all the way to first place. Now we have zero chance at an at-large bid and we don't even control our destiny for a first round bye. We could win out and still finish behind BU, UML, PC and NE. UML and NE hold tiebreakers against us and so will PC if we fail to take at least 3 points from BU.
Perhaps too the confidence gained from more early success and a better start would have meant a different result in some of the games we didn't win because we failed to compete. Who knows what kinds of results we would have seen from a team with a lot more gumption in ties against UConn or close losses against NE, one game where the compete level was lacking? Or the Friday game against a lousy UNH team that we have no business ever trailing 4-0 against, or Saturday against PC? An effective PP changes how a team plays against you. They have to dial their own aggressiveness down. Maybe they don't hook a guy to prevent a 3-2 because they figure the goalie has a better chance to make one save than to play 2 minutes down a man. And even when you don't score on the PP, you can wear a teams best defenders down with effective possession and then those guys are tired in the third period. Notre Dame's best teams have historically wiped out the opposition in the third period and this year we've outscored them by one goal.
The PP was successful just 5.9% of the time after 21 games, a lack of success that seems truly unfathomable under any circumstances. In the Jeff Jackson era at Notre Dame no team in the
entirety of the NCAA finished a season with a PP that bad. When one considers all that he has to work with here it becomes an even bigger issue, hard as that is to believe. Hell, 5 more PP goals would have meant the PP would have been a success still barely 12% of the time, but even that meager improvement could have meant quite a difference as I have noted.
These are all cherry-picked numbers obviously. We could have netted 4 PP goals in the 5-0 loss to Minnesota and still lost the game. Or we could have scored 1 or none against Niagara in the 7-0 win and still won. But the numbers do serve to help illustrate how important an effective PP is in a game where no team averages 4 goals a game and often games are won by teams scoring just 2 or 3 times. But Notre Dame's historically bad PP for much of the season is going to mean a premature end to what should have been a much better campaign.
