A page is turning in the Notre Dame hockey history books.
After 20 years with legendary head coach Jeff Jackson at the helm, a new era arrived last month when the team introduced alumnus and former associate head coach Brock Sheahan as its next head coach. Jackson’s tenure brought unprecedented success for the Fighting Irish, but a disappointing 2024-25 season leaves Sheahan’s group entering the summer with urgent questions to answer.
A legend retires
Jeff Jackson never wanted his final season to be about him. By all accounts, he got his wish until the end of the year, when the Irish rightfully celebrated him at his last home game, where he reached a milestone 600 wins.
“Jeff, you really, more than anybody, have put Notre Dame hockey on the national map as one of the true powerhouses of hockey,” athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Jackson at a press conference on April 9. “We’ll never be able to thank you appropriately or enough for everything you’ve done for Notre Dame hockey.”
There wasn’t too much else to celebrate during the 2024-25 season, though. The Irish finished with a 12-25-1 record, their worst in Jackson’s 20 years behind the bench. They also failed to make the NCAA tournament for the third straight season. They were out of the running early on after losing seven straight games in November, going on to split a home conference series with No. 54-ranked Lindenwood at home in January and win just four of 24 Big Ten conference games.
That’s not to say there weren’t any bright spots, though. The team competed at some special venues, including SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland, over Thanksgiving and outdoors at Wrigley Field in Chicago just after New Year’s.
A handful of players also had standout seasons. Sophomore forward Cole Knuble became the first Irish player to average over a point per game since Alex Steeves in 2020-21, tallying 39 points in 34 games, nearly doubling his point total from last year. Senior forward Justin Janicke enjoyed the best season of his career, scoring a career-high 15 goals, including eight on the power-play. Junior netminder Owen Say, a transfer from Mercyhurst, kept the Irish in several games, posting a .929 save percentage. He parlayed his play into an NHL contract with the Calgary Flames at the year’s end.
Janicke and Say join 11 senior and graduate students departing Notre Dame after this year. Among the departures are graduate students Grant Silianoff and Zach Plucinski, who spent the last five seasons at Notre Dame. Silianoff was a key depth forward, while Plucinski served as a defensive anchor. Five more four-year seniors will graduate as well, including three single-season graduate transfers. In all, Notre Dame will lose 1,295 games of college hockey experience this offseason.
The Sheahan era begins
Just a week after the end of the 2024-25 season, Sheahan officially took the reins of the Irish hockey program.
The story of his tenure doesn’t begin there, though. To find that, you’d have to go back to 2012-13, when Sheahan was wrapping up his East Coast Hockey League career with the Ontario Reign. A 2008 Notre Dame graduate, Sheahan discussed with his wife, Ashley, a Saint Mary’s College graduate, what would come next.
“I said, I think I could be the next head coach at the University of Notre Dame, 10 or 12 years from now,” Sheahan recounted in his introductory press conference on April 9.
A decade later – after stops at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., the United States Hockey League’s (USHL) Chicago Steel and the American Hockey League’s Chicago Wolves – that day finally arrived.
“The opportunity to lead Notre Dame hockey is a dream come true for me and our entire family,” he said.
Sheahan very clearly holds Notre Dame close to his heart. As a player with the Irish from 2004 to 2008, he helped Notre Dame to its first Frozen Four in 2008. He also met his future wife while at Notre Dame and returned to start his coaching career as a volunteer assistant coach in the 2013-14 season. Sheahan came back to Notre Dame as an associate head coach prior to the 2023-24 season.
“I believe Notre Dame is the best of everything,” Sheahan said. “There’s one place, one place I want to coach in college,” he said.
Teams that Sheahan previously coached found success when he held the head coaching job. Promoted midseason to head coach of the Chicago Steel in the 2019-20 season, his team won the regular season title the next two seasons and the league championship in 2021. Sheahan reached 100 wins in just over two seasons with the Steel and compiled a 35-29-5 record in his lone season with the Wolves.
Irish face offseason questions
Sheahan assumes the top job at an Irish hockey program that has not finished above .500 since the 2021-22 season, their longest stretch without a winning season since between 1999 and 2003. The new bench boss did not shy away from recognizing that the Irish program has faced some recent adversity and is likely face some more.
“I actually believe this is one of our biggest strengths going into the future, is we have, and I’ve been here for this, is we’ve faced some real adversity the past two years,” Sheahan said. “And if we lean into that next season, this spring, this summer, I believe that’s going to lead to success for the program, in short order.”
Still, given the relative lack of results in recent years, it is understandable to ask whether the Irish may be in need of a rebuild. The players that are leaving this summer scored 45% of the team’s goals in the last season, and the Irish are ranked a middling No. 37 nationally with 2.7 goals-per-game. The Irish also lost their best netminder in Say, who made 35 or more saves in six games this year. Those losses, coupled with the overall downward trend in the standings, seem to indicate that it’s time to rethink some things. Yet, Sheahan remains optimistic.
“This is not a rebuild,” Sheahan asserted. “I believe we have the right people. [The returning players] give me a ton of confidence moving into the future.”
Perhaps rightfully so. Notre Dame’s top two centers for the last two seasons, Danny Nelson and Knuble, will be juniors next year with a deeper breadth of experience. The cupboard is not empty in goal either, where Washington Capitals draft pick Nick Kempf will return after playing 13 games in his freshman season. Succeeding as a freshman goaltender in college hockey is difficult, but Kempf will benefit from the added experience from his rookie season. Four experienced defensemen – junior Michael Mastrodomenico, junior Axel Kumlin, sophomore Paul Fischer and sophomore Henry Nelson – will lead Notre Dame’s defense.
“We have way more talent than people think in our locker room,” Sheahan said.
Still, with just 17 players on their roster, an influx of talent will be necessary. According to reports from the team’s social media accounts, the Irish have inked at least seven signees for next season, not including one confirmed transfer portal addition and another that has been reliably reported but not confirmed.
Of the signees, all seven come from two top-tier junior leagues in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) and USHL. By getting three players from the OHL, Notre Dame took advantage of new rules allowing players from the three Canadian major junior leagues to join NCAA teams. How players from those leagues impact college hockey for the first time will be one of the major storylines of next season.
“A year ago, that wasn’t even a possibility,” Sheahan said. “There’s guys that can run numbers that it’ll be interesting to see how that translates to a much tighter, harder, older college hockey, right?”
Notre Dame, for one, has to hope that their three OHL signees can contribute right away. Forwards Cole Brown and Pano Fimis both totaled over 30 goals last season and will need to bring some added scoring juice to South Bend. Brown, a New Jersey Devils prospect, spent the last four years with the Brantford Bulldogs franchise. He enjoyed the best season of his career this past season, totaling 33 goals and 70 points while playing on a line with league scoring leader Nick Lardis. The undrafted Fimis also posted the best numbers of his career this season with the Erie Otters, lighting the lamp 33 times. He also broke the OHL single-season record for faceoffs won.
Defenseman Caeden Carlisle is another four-year OHL veteran, arriving from the Soo Greyhounds, where he served as captain last season. How all three stack up against college hockey talent remains to be seen.
“We’re hoping they’ll be translatable as far as their compete level, their skating and their skill set,” Sheahan said.
Notre Dame will also add three players from the USHL – defensemen Cameron Aucoin and Danny Klaers along with forward Owen Tylec. Goaltender Patrick Quinlan from the National Team Development Program will also join.
In addition, the Irish announced on May 1 that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute forward Sutter Muzzatti had joined the team out of the transfer portal. The former Nashville Predators prospect has one year of eligibility remaining, but was limited to just 10 games last year.
Between new recruiting rules, the transfer portal and the impending NCAA vs. House settlement that may limit the number of athletes allowed on team rosters, college hockey is an ever-changing world. Notre Dame’s roster outlook in May reflects that, and there may be more to come.
“We’re still working through the roster,” Sheahan said. “We don’t know where that’s going anyways, with roster limits or not.”
For now, though, it’s enough to say that next year will be full of new things for Notre Dame hockey. It’s appropriate, too, because a new chapter in the program’s history books is waiting to be written.
