Big Ten Hockey Tournament Bracket: Notre Dame will try to win its third straight title

With the regular season all in the books for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the rest of the conference, it’s time for the Big Ten Tournament. The Irish have won the tournament (and the Big Ten Championship) for the past two years in a row, so the rest of the conference is gunning hard for the boys from South Bend.

It was a bit of a disappointing season for Notre Dame, and because so, the Irish are on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament. Currently, the Irish are ranked #19 in the Pairwise rankings:

With only 16 teams that are selected for the tournament, Notre Dame probably has to win the Big Ten Tourney to get a shot at another run for the Frozen Four.

Here are the brackets for the Big 10 tourney:

Here is how the tourney is set up:

The tournament will open March 6-8 with three best-of-three quarterfinal series, as No. 2 seed Ohio State will host No. 7 seed Wisconsin, No. 3 seed Michigan will entertain No. 6 seed Michigan State and No. 4 seed Minnesota will host No. 5 seed Notre Dame. The Wolverines, Gophers and Buckeyes all tied for second place in the final standings, but Ohio State claimed the No. 2 seed due to the Buckeyes and Wolverines having more conference victories than the Gophers, as well as Ohio State’s 3-1-0 record against Michigan this season.

As the top-seeded team, Penn State will have a bye to the single-elimination semifinals, which are scheduled for the weekend of March 14-15. The highest-seeded team advancing from the quarterfinals will host the second-highest advancing seed, while the lowest-seeded advancing team will play at Penn State.

The highest-seeded team remaining after the semifinals will host a championship game scheduled for the weekend of March 21-22.

Notre Dame’s schedule for the first weekend matchup against the Minnesota Golden Gophers sets up like this:

#5 NOTRE DAME AT #4 MINNESOTA

Game 1: Friday, March 6 – 8 p.m. ET – FS2
Game 2: Saturday, March 7 – 8 p.m. ET – FS North Plus
Game 3: Sunday, March 8 – 7 p.m. ET – FS2 (if necessary)

One Foot Down will be here for full coverage of the Tournament.