UConn men’s hockey to play No. 1 Boston College this weekend

UConn men’s hockey will play a home-and-home series against the No. 1 Boston College Eagles this weekend, Hockey East announced on Tuesday. The Huskies will travel to Chestnut Hill on Friday before returning home on Saturday. Both games are set for 4 p.m. on SportsLive.

Hockey East also announced it will overhaul its schedule. It scrapped its original slate of games and will now schedule on a week-to-week basis moving forward “to create as much variety and parity in the schedule as possible while adhering to all required health and safety protocols with a maximum of seven weeks remaining in the regular season,” according to the release.

These will be UConn’s third and fourth games against BC. The Huskies fell to the Eagles in overtime 4-3 on Dec. 11 but rebounded the next day to earn a 3-1 win the next day. However, UConn didn’t have Vladislav Firstov or Yan Kuznetsov in that series due to World Juniors while Ryan Tverberg had yet to join the team. Boston College, meanwhile, were without Matt Boldy, Drew Helleson, Spencer Knight and Alex Newhook because of World Juniors as well.

This will be the first time the Huskies ever play a team ranked No. 1 in the polls. They have beaten a second-ranked team twice — earlier this season against BC and a 4-3 victory over UMass in 2018-19.

The Eagles sit in first place in Hockey East at .767 percentage of points earned with a 8-2-0 record. UConn is fifth at .545, holding a 5-5-1 mark.