With eight games remaining in the regular season Penn State men’s hockey sits tied with Michigan State for first place in the Big Ten standings.
As one might imagine, this is noteworthy.
Enter a Friday/Saturday series with Notre Dame, the Irish just five points behind Penn State in a log-jammed race that has five teams within two wins of the top spot. Where past runaway seasons by Notre Dame and Ohio State have rendered the months of January and February something of a formality, the 2019-20 campaign looks set to go down to the wire with the Nittany Lions truly in the thick of things.
Over the next four weeks Penn State stands to gain as many as 24 points in the final few series of the season, albeit an eight-game winning streak seems unlikely. All the same even wins in half those games would get Penn State to 40 points, six shy of Ohio State’s conference-winning total last year, 13 short of Notre Dame’s rampage through the conference in 2017-18, but just three behind Minnesota’s 2016-17 regular season crown.
Whatever the winning figure ends up being, Friday and Saturday mark the continuation of a different kind of late January focus. While in previous seasons the conversation has been a question of whether or not the Nittany Lions would make the NCAA Tournament and not so much their place in the Big Ten race, this year has been a bit of both as the Nittany Lions sit within reach of a new ‘first’ in program history. A postseason trip appears likely, but regular season hardware is not on the back burner this time around.
With Michigan State idle in Big Ten play, Penn State will only need any kind of point-getting result to at least briefly hold on to a solo lead in the standings, Ohio State and Michigan facing off a bit later in the evening then the Nittany Lions’ 6:00 p.m. puck drop. Minnesota and Wisconsin not far behind as well.
The key to the weekend? For Penn State it’s finding the offensive attack that the Nittany Lions have on paper but have struggled at times to showcase on the ice. The good news for those in attendance at Pegula Ice Arena, Notre Dame has not quite looked the world-beaters of years prior, and while Irish goalie Cale Morris has long been a thorn in Penn State’s side, he too has looked a bit more mortal than usual.
Broadly it is nearly impossible to rate the importance of games over the course of a program’s history. NCAA Tournament games, conference championships and the ongoing ups and downs of a season lend themselves to massive importance in the moment only to be dwarfed by whatever big opportunity comes next.
But in the thick of a Big Ten title race, the preseason favorites to win it all, and home ice underneath them, one would be hard pressed to find a bigger home series than this one.
Then again, that honor might only last 14 days if the Nittany Lions can keep up the pace in a race to the finish line.
