Orono – The University of Maine released the 2014-15 Men’s Ice Hockey schedule this morning. The full schedule can be found here. The schedule begins with the annual exhibition game against New Brunswick at Alfond Arena on Sunday, October 5. Maine begins the NCAA season with a trip to Alaska for the Kendall Hockey Classic. Maine will play host Alaska-Anchorage on Friday and Alaska on Saturday. These games are exempt from the 34-game schedule as they take place in Alaska. Maine begins the home slate the next weekend with defending national champion Union on homecoming weekend. The next week Maine welcomes the Seawolves of UAA to Alfond for the first time since 1990.
The Hockey East schedule kicks off the next week with the Massachusetts Minutemen coming to town. Later in the month of November, a home game against rival Boston University is sandwiched around trips to play the Vermont Catamounts and Boston for the Terriers and Eagles. A non-conference series against Vermont at the Alfond closes the month. December has only three games – and none at the Alfond – but does feature a game at defending Hockey East champion Lowell and a pair of games against New Hampshire. The first at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester and the next night at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.
The new year starts early as Maine plays host to old friend Tyler Walsh (Director of Hockey Operations) and the Canisius Golden Griffs on January 2-3. Maine wraps up the non-conference schedule the following weekend at Massachusetts. The final 14 games will feature Hockey East opposition, including Boston College, Lowell and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish making their first trip to Alfond since 1991. The season will conclude with a rematch of last season’s Hockey East tournament at Schneider Arena in Providence.
I predict a record of 22-9-5 overall, and 12-6-2 in Hockey East which should qualify the Black Bears for a first-round bye in the new Hockey East playoff format. The team’s chances at an NCAA berth are a little more precarious. Last season both New Hampshire and Vermont won 20 games and failed to qualify. The new calculation for pairwise hurts teams who schedule a lot of home games as Maine has done this season by devaluing those wins. A home win is multiplied by .8 as opposed to a neutral win which is 1.0 and road which is 1.2. When all is said and done, I believe Maine will do enough to garner a 3-seed in Providence. A little extra motivation for the team this season is that next April’s Frozen Four is being held in Boston.
Looking ahead at next season, Maine will again play the 22 games in Hockey East. We know there will again be two against New Hampshire and the Icebreaker in Portland. They will also have the return visit to Union. Hopefully this will mark the end of the non-conference games against Vermont and Massachusetts. Assuming it does, that leaves 10 games to be filled (the Icebreaker games are exempt). Of those, I would expect six or eight of those to be at home with one or two road series included. Opponents that have been rumored include Yale, Denver, North Dakota, Michigan State and Penn State. A potential series with Duluth will likely be delayed until 2016-17 at least.
Is it October yet?
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