Regular season champs

After a roller coaster weekend that featured the UNH men's hockey team skating around the Whittemore Center ice with the Hockey East regular season trophy above their heads, the Wildcats found out their next opponent after a losing effort against Boston College on the team bus somewhere between Chesnut Hill and Durham.

Border-rival Vermont will visit the Whittemore Center in a best-of-three series that, in all likelihood, will send the losing team home for good.

The Catamounts are in a similar position as the Wildcats, but took a much different route to get there.

While Vermont struggled in Hockey East play, they dominated non-conference games, going 6-1, including huge wins over the current No. 1 team (Denver) and the current No. 6 and 14 teams (Yale and Minnesota-Duluth, respectively). 

UNH, meanwhile, went 1-5-1 in non-conference games, but dominated the Hockey East with a 15-6-6 mark.

Both schools, however, likely need a couple more wins to beef up their resumes and make themselves worthy of an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

"We'll need to get to Boston, probably," UNH head coach Dick Umile said about the team's chances of qualifying for the tournament. "We know that." 

Boston's TD Garden, home of the Boston Bruins, is the site of both the semifinals and finals of the Hockey East tournament.

Both UNH and UVM can avoid a lot of stress come selection time, however, by winning the conference tournament and earning the automatic bid that comes with it.

The Wildcats took the regular season series with two wins and a tie in the three games against the Catamounts. UNH rolled to a 4-1 win in Burlington back in December before hosting a two-game set in Durham just two weeks ago. 

Both teams played evenly in that series, with the ‘Cats needing a Peter LeBlanc goal in overtime to grind out a 5-4 win before skating to a 3-3 tie the following night.

This past weekend, UNH took a crucial point in a home-and-home series with Boston College, with a tie on Friday and a loss to the Eagles on Saturday. After the series, the Wildcats fell one spot in the national rankings to No. 11, while BC leapfrogged St. Cloud State to move up to No. 4. 

In the first game of the series, the Wildcats overcame a 3-0 third period deficit with goals from John Henrion, Kevin McCarey and Blake Kessel to preserve the tie that was needed to give the Wildcats their third HE regular season title in four years.

The next night, senior goalie Brian Foster single-handedly kept his team in the game, turning aside 39 shots, but the offense couldn't generate the equalizer, and UNH fell, 3-2, in a game they were outshot 42-18.

"We did lose [on Saturday night], but it was a close game. It could have gone either way. We had our chances. We're confident in how we're playing right now and we're just going to move forward. We're excited."