Bring on the top team in the country: Notre Dame.

After extending its six-game winning streak against Michigan State with a sweep this weekend, the No. 8 Michigan hockey team is ready for perhaps its toughest test this season. The Fighting Irish haven’t lost in 20 games and knocked the Wolverines out of last year’s Frozen Four. And fortunately for the Wolverines, junior defenseman Steve Kampfer — who left Yost Ice Arena on a gurney Saturday — may even return for the critical matchup, he told the Detroit Free Press Sunday.

But there was no need for the Wolverines to put on their game faces after winning Saturday night.

Acting captain Chris Summers opened his press conference in a joking manner, offering to ask the media questions instead of the other way around, and seemed relieved that the burden of the weekend series against the last-place Spartans was over.

Michigan State came in trying to avoid losing five games in a season to the Wolverines for the first time ever and attempting to partially derail Michigan’s postseason hopes.

The Wolverines had to rebound from last weekend's home shutout loss to 11th-place Bowling Green and inch up into the top-four slots of the CCHA standings. They did that with 6-1 and 5-3 wins over the Spartans.

“To me, you can’t beat those guys enough, can’t score enough goals on them," Summers said.

The Wolverines (12-6 CCHA, 18-8 overall) are now in a three-way tie for fourth in the conference, just four points behind second-place Miami (Ohio).

“We’re looking at the standings and we’re looking at five teams ahead of us and you’ve got to win these games,” Michigan coach Red Berenson said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Michigan State or who it is.”

The Wolverines haven't been shy about watching the standings. The team noticed when two teams ahead of them, Alaska and Miami, both failed to notch two points Friday.

But that didn’t distract the Wolverines come Saturday night. They played with an intensity that the Yost crowd could only yearn for last week against the Falcons, putting together a quick three-goal lead. It was the second three-goal period Michigan compiled against the Spartans this weekend after closing them out with three lamp-lighters in Friday’s final frame at Joe Louis Arena.

“I thought we started well, really well,” Berenson said. “We knew it was important to get a good start, to set the tone for the game.”

Michigan eventually outshot Michigan State by 30 shots Saturday, 51-21, but two Spartan goals within a 25-second span in the second period made the game a one-score contest. Then, halfway through the third, Summers sealed the victory with a wrist shot from just inside the right blue line past freshman goalie Drew Palmisano’s glove.

The Wolverines’ blistering start meant very little, and the narrow lead significantly ratcheted up the game's energy.

“The intensity, the hitting, the hard work today from both teams — I definitely think that the intensity level was definitely way up there,” sophomore forward Matt Rust said.

And anything short of that high intensity might have allowed the Spartans to complete their comeback — and make Michigan's matchup with Notre Dame next weekend less significant.

“You’ve got to win these games if we’re going to make up some ground in the standings, so they were big games,” Berenson said. “The weekend overall is a good weekend for us.”