Amid Notre Dame’s early season inconsistency, there has been at least one constant: the play of Ben Ryan.

Through six games, Ryan leads the 3-3 Irish hockey team in points, with two goals and four assists. The junior center also leads in post-game mentions by head coach Jeff Jackson, who has seen a consistent effort put forth by Ryan since the second half of last season.

"He finished last season really strong," Jackson said. "He had an average season with a great finish, and that, hopefully, gave him the confidence this year that he would be more productive and not give up defensively. He has been one of our most consistent players."

Ryan has five points in the last four games, including goals in back-to-back games. He’s also tied for the team lead with a +4 plus/minus rating, a key stat to discern which players are performing well on both ends of the ice.

Jackson said Ryan is playing his best hockey since he’s been at Notre Dame, but also noted that a strong first month is just that, one month. Jackson is looking for Ryan to put it together for an entire season and experience a break out.

"It’s a long season, so you can’t get too caught up a month or a couple weeks," Ryan said. "If you’re not doing the little things in games or every day in practice, it’s going to catch up to you, eventually. I know there are a lot of things I can work on, so I just try to do that every day.

"It’s going good in a sense that, personally, I’m getting off to a good start, but that’s overshadowed by how the team is doing. We haven’t really come together yet as a whole unit, so I’m trying to work that out with my linemates and everyone else on the team so we can figure out how to get some wins, because that’s the most important thing."

After their uneven performance against the early season non-conference slate, the Irish are looking forward to starting Central Collegiate Hockey Association league play. Ryan felt that it was like a new beginning for the team.

"I think it’s definitely nice to get a new start on things," he said. "The way the league works, you know the NCAA is going to take probably the top two or three from the CCHA, so you know you’re playing for one of those spots.

"Every night, we know that a team is going to come out and play us tough. There’s some bad blood sometimes once you play a team three or four times throughout the year."

The first test begins Friday night with Ohio State, which is 2-1-1 against ND and has outscored the Irish 12-8 over the past two seasons. The Buckeyes were picked to finish fourth in the CCHA preseason voting, but have struggled to a 2-4 start so far.

"Oh, they’re good," Ryan said. "Over the last two years since I’ve been here, they’ve dominated us. They’ve just kind of had our number the last two years, so this is going to be a huge weekend. We’re going to have to play better than we have the whole year to get four (league) points out of this."

BC breakdown

An uncharacteristically poor showing on special teams was a big difference in last Friday’s 3-2 loss to Boston College at the Joyce Center. The Irish went 0-8 on the power play against the Eagles and struggled to get shots through BC’s tightly-packed defense and on goal.

Jackson expects to see more of the same against Ohio State.

"There are several teams in our league that play a zone defense, that really box it up in front of the net," Jackson said. "It’s basically like a box-and-one and the objective is, any time the puck gets out to the point, there’s actually two, if not three guys in direct line of the shot, so it doesn’t even get to the goaltender. It’s challenging to play against and it’s frustrating to play against, and it seems that more and more teams are going to that now."

Home-ice disadvantage

The loss to Boston College dropped the Irish to 2-3 at home this season. Their only road game so far was a 3-0 win at Boston U. on Oct. 20. ND will need two wins against OSU to finish above .500 at home in the month of October, which featured seven of their eight games at the Joyce Center.

"Three home losses already is disappointing," Jackson said. "The crowds have been great, the students, the band. I want to play our best hockey at home because we’re start to build a real loyal fan base."

Extra incentive

After introducing shootouts to decide games tied after regulation and overtime last season, the CCHA announced a slight tweak to the league scoring for this year. Beginning with conference play on Oct. 23, a win in regulation or overtime will be worth three points in the league standings, compared to two last year.

As before, a shootout win will be worth two points, a shootout loss one point, and a regulation or overtime loss zero points. Notre Dame went 3-0 in shootouts last season.