Notre Dame-WH enters title game road tested

CROMWELL — By the time the puck drops on the Division I boys hockey championship on Tuesday night at M&T Bank Arena, Notre DameWest Haven will have gone a full month without playing a team from outside Connecticut. An absolute eternity.

Notre Dame played nine of its 20 regular-season games against seven different CIAC teams. The other 11 were against teams from Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

“I thank the coaches we play,” Notre Dame coach Larry Vieira said last week at the CIAC’s championship media luncheon. “Without playing those teams, we don’t have the foot speed, we don’t have the compete level that we have.

“They’re a big reason for our success. I hope everybody doesn’t try to follow our path. But you can’t replicate that.”

The Green Knights, ranked No. 1in the GameTimeCT Top 10 Poll (opponent New Canaan is No. 2), are perfect against state teams. They were 54-2 out-of-state.

“Look at (Massachusetts’) tournament. There’s 32 teams in the Division 1 tournament, and the 32nd team is really good,” Vieira said. “Massachusetts is still Mass. The top teams in Rhode Island — you cannot replicate that. Without those teams, the last three years, we wouldn’t be as good.”

Notre Dame has to play its SCC/SWC Division I opponents at least once apiece. But that conference is down to three other teams. The Green Knights play rival Fairfield Prep twice.

Division I overall is down to 12 teams, and there are at least a couple of different tiers of quality within those 12 teams. It’s simply harder for the top teams to fill a schedule with Connecticut opponents.

And since there are only 12 teams, a school could go 0-20 and still make the Division I tournament.

Notre Dame has reached the finals three years in a row and, minus the years disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the past four finals overall. It won in 2022.

“To be honest, I took it right from Matt Sather,” Vieira said; Fairfield Prep, which Sather coached to 11 championships in 21 seasons, routinely played around seven games out of state and was up to nine this year. “Prep does it, and they have success. Why shouldn’t we?”

The tournament rules in the CIAC’s annual information packet say that a team must play a minimum of 12 games against CIAC teams or out-ofstate teams that are “members of their respective state associations and this state association must govern the sport.” Only two games against any given opponent count toward the 12. But that’s all they say.

Notre Dame is only really unusual because it played more games outside than in.

“Nobody has said anything. Hopefully they don’t change the rules,” Vieira said. “That’s a big part of our program. We want to attract student athletes that want to play for Notre Dame and maybe play juniors or prep school. To me it’s a bridge to the next level.”