Earlier Friday Starts For Mavericks Next Season
Apr 15, 2015 | Hockey
OMAHA, Neb. – The Omaha hockey team will face-off one-half hour earlier on Friday nights at home when it begins play next season. The schedule for the 2015-16 season was released today in conjunction with the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.
All UNO home games at the new UNO/Community Arena will begin at 7:07 p.m., giving the Mavericks a uniform start time for all games. Friday home games previously began at 7:37 p.m., and Saturday games started at 7:07 p.m.
“With the move to our new on-campus home, it made sense to move up the Friday start times by 30 minutes,” said Mike Kemp, associate athletic director. “The need for a later start time arose because many of our fans had longer drives to the arena when we played downtown.
“We now will be more centrally located at 67th and Center Streets, and we think our fans will appreciate the earlier face-offs.”
The only exceptions to the 7:07 p.m. start times will come on Dec. 19 and 20 when the Mavericks host first-year program Arizona State. The start times for the Saturday-Sunday series will be 7:07 and 2:07 p.m.
The Mavericks' first-ever home series in the new UNO/Community Arena will be on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 23-24, when they host Air Force of Atlantic Hockey. The Falcons were the first NCAA Division I opponent for the Mavericks during their inaugural season in 1997-98.
UNO begins its third season of NCHC play when it visits Western Michigan on Oct. 30-31. The following week, it hosts Minnesota Duluth on Nov. 6-7 for its first NCHC home games. Later that month, the Mavericks also welcome Ohio State of the Big Ten.
Additional home series include Denver on Jan. 8-9, Miami on Jan. 22-23, Western Michigan on Feb. 12-13, St. Cloud State on Feb. 19-20 and the Senior Weekend finale against North Dakota on Feb. 26-27. As part of the NCHC scheduling metric, the Mavericks will not travel to Minnesota Duluth and will not host Colorado College this season.
The Mavericks open the season on the road with non-conference series at Minnesota State on Oct. 9-10 and at Vermont on Oct. 16-17 before their home opener. They also will play an exhibition game with Trinity Western from Canada on Saturday, Jan. 2.
The Mavericks were 20-13-6 during the 2014-15 season and finished third in the NCHC with a record of 12-8-4-3. They won their first two NCAA playoff games and advanced to the Frozen Four for the first time in school history.
