While his team will stay in Minneapolis for their two road games versus the Minnesota Gophers this weekend, out of a sense of nostalgia it would be logical for Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson to make a trip to Maple Grove or Edina and take one more look at the source of some of his great Irish talents.
Jackson, 69, announced last summer that this will be his final campaign running the Irish program. And, barring a Big Ten playoff series in March, this will be his final trip to the Twin Cities with Notre Dame. Although Jackson is originally from Michigan and has coached in Indiana for the past two decades, his success recruiting Minnesotans is renowned. He won a pair of NCAA titles at Lake Superior State in the 1990s, and coached with USA Hockey and in the NHL before coming to South Bend in 2005.
The Notre Dame program was started in 1968 when successful South St. Paul High School coach Charles “Lefty” Smith made the jump to the college level and began enticing talented Catholic kids to see the Golden Dome. More than a half-century later, little has changed. As they come to town to face the Gophers, among the top four scorers on the Irish stat sheet are two from Maple Grove (Justin Janicke and Danny Nelson) and one from Hermantown (Blake Biondi).
“We have a lot of players that come from the state. There’s a lot of history at Notre Dame with Minnesota players and coaches, including Lefty Smith, who was originally from Minnesota. He and his assistant recruited a lot of players from that area,” Jackson said. “The one thing about kids from that state is generally they’re ‘middle of the country’ type kids. Education is important, family is important and, in many cases, religion is important. Those all tie in to Notre Dame, and I’m sure that’s why we’ve had so much success recruiting there.”
Among those Minnesotans that Smith recruited was a forward from Grand Rapids named Don Lucia, who played four years at Notre Dame, was an assistant there and then later in his career – with assistant coach Bob Motzko at his side – coached the Gophers to their two most recent NCAA championships in 2002 and 2003.
One of the biggest wins of Motzko’s career at St. Cloud State came in 2013 in a regional semifinal in Toledo, Ohio, when they knocked off highly-ranked Notre Dame 5-1 on the way to the Huskies’ initial Frozen Four appearance. In the Big Ten, the two men have met in the conference playoffs twice, with the Irish and the Gophers each winning two games.
“He and I have been at it a long time. The old CCHA days, NCAA tournaments, then in the Big Ten. I think every coach has the utmost respect for Jeff. Class act,” Motzko said this week. “What he did at Lake Superior State is crazy, and then what he’s turned Notre Dame into. He’s a Hall of Famer and a great guy.”
In a storybook world, Jackson would go out on top chasing the Notre Dame program’s first NCAA title (they fell to Minnesota Duluth in the 2018 national championship game in St. Paul in their most recent Frozen Four appearance). But the Irish have struggled at times this season, bringing a 7-14-1 overall record to 3M Arena at Mariucci, which has them 38th in the national Pairwise rankings.
The Gophers are ranked fourth nationally at 18-4-2 overall, coming off a split at Ohio State last weekend.
“It’s probably one of Bobby’s better teams in my opinion,” Jackson said. “They have a really good back end. Their defense is really good, and they’ve got some guys that puck the puck in the net.”
The games this weekend face off at 7 p.m. CT on Friday and 5 p.m. CT on Saturday.
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