BROOKLYN, N.Y. — After Notre Dame narrowly defeated Connecticut Saturday at Hartford’s XL Center, the two teams moved to the Barclays Center Sunday, where it felt like home ice for the Fighting Irish.
Thomas DiPauli had a goal and two assists, leading the Irish to an 8-2 rout of the Huskies in the second game of the day’s college hockey debut doubleheader in Brooklyn.
Bentley defeated Army 6-2 in the first game.
DiPauli was a bit awed by the experience of playing at Barclays.
“It was pretty sweet,” said DiPauli. “We got a quick look at the rink after taking the elevator up from the bus – it was incredible. Playing in big rink like this is always nice.”
DiPauli assisted on the game’s first goal at 9:04 of the first period when Jake Evans took a feed from Dennis Gilbert and beat UConn goalie Rob Nichols from the right circle. After Dylan Malmquist scored Notre Dame’s second goal off assistants from Connor Hurley and Evans, DePauli struck again, taking a pass in the slot from Hurley and beating Nichols to his glove side.
“It was good stuff out of our defensive zone – we got a great jump, all of us with some good speed, and Connor gave me a perfect feed,” DiPauli said.
Notre Dame (3-1-2, 2-0 Hockey East) got a power-play goal from Steven Fogarty off assists from Hurley and Mario Lucia at 5:38 of the second period to make it 4-0 before Patrick Kirtland got UConn (3-4, 1-3 Hockey East) on the board at 14:38 of the second off a feed from Shawn Pauly.
Naturally, Fighting Irish coach Jeff Jackson was pleased with his team’s effort.
“We made some progress today,” he said. “We played a 60-minute hockey game for the first time this season. Our special teams have been a positive for us all season, but all four lines were strong today. And when all four lines are playing, that means we’re playing well.”
Joe Wegwerth scored a unassisted goal, beating Nichols from the high slot to give Notre Dame a 5-1 lead at 17:02 of the second period, and Bobby Nardella made it 6-1 off assists from Andy Ryan and Hurley at 1:48 of the third period.
The Fighting Irish got a gift goal to make it 7-1 at 4:34 of the third, when Nichols was out of the crease on a delayed penalty call and a UConn player inadvertently fired the puck into his own net. Tony Bretzman was the last Irish player to touch the puck, so he received credit for an unassisted goal.
“I’ve never seen that before, not in college,” Jackson said. “That just showed how things weren’t going UConn’s way today.”
Huskies’ coach Mike Cavanaugh minced no words.
“We got dismantled today,” said Cavanaugh. “I thought we got off to a good start, the first three or four shifts, but it really went downhill after they scored the first goal. We didn’t respond well. It was a matter of a young team playing against a very structured group of older kids that outplayed us today, plain and simple.”
Anders Bjork took a pass from Hurley and beat Nichols high off the crossbar at 9:13 of the third for Notre Dame’s eighth goal and UConn’s Corey Ronan beat Irish goalie Cal Petersen off a feed from Kasperi Ojantakanen at 10:18 to close out the scoring.
