Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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ND SPORTS time around, led by a massive 12-man junior class. The sugar highs of last season were this season. "Sometimes you just need to have a plenty sweet, knocking off eventual national champion Boston College at home and then-No. 3 Minnesota on the road. The lows, though, were backbreaking, in- cluding a five-game los- ing streak in February that all but killed their hopes of finishing the season well. The good news for Notre Dame is the Irish have a habit of outplay- ing expectations a year after not living up to them. The Irish made it to the Frozen Four in 2011 after posting their worst record dur- ing Jackson's tenure the previous season. They reached the national championship game in 2008 as a No. 4 seed a year after being bounced in the quar- terfinals with the tournament's top ranking. The Irish are loaded with goal-scor- talk or a chat, but this year it's a little bit different," he said. "I'm an upper- classmen now, and I am the captain so I guess that's my job. I'm willing to take it on." Lee will slide from Head coach Jeff Jackson, who is entering his eighth season at Notre Dame, is hoping for more consistency from his team, which is led by a 12-man junior class. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME MEDIA RELATIONS wing to center for the first time in his col- legiate career, which breaks up one the Cen- tral Collegiate Hockey Association's most dy- namic duos from the past two seasons in Lee and classmate T.J. Tynan. They combined for 173 points while playing together for most of their freshman and sophomore seasons. That move gives the ing potential, but that hasn't always translated to results. The team scored only four times during that five-game skid last February. Mounting pressure made the net shrink during the second half of the season, and a lack of collec- tive locker room wisdom kept Notre Dame's young team from finding a way to snap out of its funk. Junior captain Anders Lee said he's looking forward to the chance to change that ley Sheahan, who passed up his senior year of school to sign with the Detroit Red Wings last spring. If Tynan and Lee remained on the same line, Notre Dame would likely have to rely on freshmen to log a lot of time at center to begin the season. "It gives us a lot of experience up Irish a chance to develop a little bit more scoring depth across their lines and helps to replace Ri- the middle," Jackson said. "Then I've got the two young kids that could po- tentially play center of the third and fourth lines." The two youngsters are Thomas Di- Pauli and Steven Fogarty, both mem- bers of a highly touted group of in-