A much-anticipated day has arrived for new Notre Dame hockey head coach Brock Sheahan.
After being announced as the program’s fifth head coach prior to last season, Sheahan took the reins from legendary former coach Jeff Jackson on St. Patrick’s Day. Now, he will make his home debut behind the bench at Compton Family Ice Arena when the Irish (0-2, 0-0 B1G) welcome the St. Lawrence Saints (0-3-0, 1-0-0 ECAC) to town for a set of clashes on Thursday and Friday night.
“I think I have like, for Friday night’s game, 80 tickets,” Sheahan said laughing during his first weekly press conference on Wednesday. “It’s hard to actually explain how much Notre Dame and the program have meant to me personally and to my family.”
A native of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, Sheahan also had plenty of friendly faces at the rink last weekend during the team’s opening weekend at Arizona State University. Many of Sheahan’s family made the trip. Though the results may not have been what Sheahan had hoped – losses to the No. 15 Sun Devils, 5-3 and No. 10 Quinnipiac, 7-2, the support must have been welcome.
A 2008 alumnus of Notre Dame, Sheahan played on the best and worst teams, statistically, in program history. His freshman season, the final year for former head coach Dave Poulin, the team recorded just five wins, the lowest win total in a single Irish hockey season. His junior year under Jackson, the Irish set their high water mark, emerging victorious in 32 of its 42 games.
Having played under each of his two predecessors, it’s Sheahan’s turn to make his mark on Irish hockey.
“It is a responsibility that I don’t take lightly, and I’m just excited to keep building,” he said. “We know where we are at right now, and I’m excited to see where we can get to.”
Irish adjusting to new identity
With a new head coach may come any number of changes, but it’s clear from listening to Sheahan talk that Irish fans can expect a new style of play. What will that new style of play look like? In practice, that remains to be seen, but in theory it can be described in a word: aggressive.
“We’re a puck pressure team, we want the puck out of the opponent’s hands. I think you’ll see that when you watch us play. From an offensive standpoint, we want to play fast in transition, but then we don’t want to get rid of the puck,” Sheahan said. “We’re going to make purposeful, intentional plays and try to generate the highest level chance, and be on the attack as much as possible.”
Sheahan’s emphasis on intentional play requires a commitment to good decision making, especially in high-pressure moments, that remains a work in progress through the first weekend of the season. Despite lodging 50 shots on the net during its first game against Arizona State, the Irish clearly do not want to become a shot-volume team, generating scoring off the quantity of its chances rather than the quality.
The focus on quality over quantity extends defensively as well. Sheahan says that, while not optimal, he would rather concede a high volume of shots rather than high quality ones.
“We don’t want to give up that many shots. Honestly, if you look at every team I’ve ever coached, we get outshot usually. Like, the Chicago Steel teams that were really, really good [and]even in the [American Hockey League], we would win most of those games because we were a quality not quantity type of team,” he said.
Another of Sheahan’s emphases, speed, will no doubt require a high fitness level from the Irish. For one of college hockey’s heaviest teams, the Irish average out at 192 pounds. This may pose a challenge, but Sheahan is confident that his team’s fitness is ahead of schedule.
“I do feel good about the training camp we’ve had. It’s been a harder training camp. Our fitness level needs to be higher to play this style of play. And like, we have all the data, right? We know, we’re like 35% more fit than we were at this time last year,” he said.
Penalty parade plagues first weekend
There’s no doubt that Notre Dame’s fast and intentional style of play will work best at five-on-five. A team built around puck possession needs sustained pressure to wear an opponent down, something it cannot do if it’s constantly down a man.
But in the team’s two losses against Arizona State and Quinnipiac, penalty trouble marked a consistent theme. The Irish averaged 22.5 minutes over the course of the weekend, good for the seventh highest average nationally to start the season.
Though Notre Dame killed off 10 of 11 opponent power-plays, the penalties still disrupted the Irish.
“Both those games, things didn’t go our way early, and to me that’s where we got away from our process, right? So we take some penalties, whether they were deserved or not, like that doesn’t matter,” Sheahan said. “When we got behind, I felt like, especially in the Quinnipiac game, we really got away from it. ASU, we got it back and gave ourselves a chance.”
As Sheahan points out, it certainly did not help that Notre Dame got into penalty trouble early. In each game, the Irish were whistled for at least three penalties in the first period, including five in the first 10 minutes of play across the two nights. Penalties at that point of the game, when teams are looking to roll four lines and get their feet beneath them early in the season, can disturb the entire game. It certainly seemed that way in Arizona, and the Irish will want a more disciplined start at home this week.
Sheahan to deliver pizza for students
The home opener at Compton Family Ice Arena always delivers. With a sizable crowd of visitors to campus for the USC football game Saturday night, this unusual Thursday-Friday series should be no different.
“I liked that we were on the road to start the year together, and it helps continue to bring guys closer together,” Sheahan said. “But to get Compton rocking early will be a lot of fun.”
Increasing the noise level even a bit more, the ice level suite will be open to students for the first time this season. Located directly behind the opponent’s goal, the suite will be used for student seating on a first come/first served basis beginning Thursday night.
Sheahan is set to deliver pizza at 6:15 p.m. to the first early-arriving students in the crowd.
The puck drops tonight on Sheahan’s home debut at 7 p.m.