Finals week has come for Colorado College hockey. Fresh off a bye week, the No. 19 Tigers end the 2025 portion of the season schedule with their first road trip in about a month as they travel to a resurgent conference opponent in Miami of Ohio. Puck drop at Goggin Ice Center in Oxford, Ohio is 5 p.m. on Friday and 4 p.m. on Saturday.  Prior to the off week, CC (8-7-1, 2-5-1) faced a gauntlet of ranked opponents in rival Denver, Minnesota Duluth and Providence. The Tigers went 2-4 in that span, and five of the six games in those three series were decided by a single goal. CC coach Kris Mayotte, who was an assistant at Providence from 2014-2019, said this year’s team reminds him of the 2015 Friars, who won an NCAA title after being the last team to make the tournament.  “In 2015 when we won a national championship at Providence that team at this point was 9-6-1 and there were some bad losses in there, which I don’t think we have,” Mayotte said. “There were obviously some good wins, but it feels somewhat eerily similar where we struggled to score at times, struggled to find the consistency at times, but you knew that if you handled that adversity the right way and if you used it the right way it was going to allow you to grow in ways that maybe other programs or other teams weren’t. It’s that fine line of, hey we want adversity, but you want the adversity to lead to something.” Earning the results alongside the consistent play the Tigers have shown has been the riddle of the 2025-2026 campaign for CC so far. The Tigers will continue their quest to solve that riddle in an unfriendly environment this weekend.  With 10 wins on the season, Miami has already more than tripled the number of victories from its dismal 3-28-3 record last season.  Imbued with a slew of new players from the transfer portal, the United States Hockey League and Canadian Hockey League, the RedHawks, have been a force this season.  Unlike CC which has played its last five games at Ed Robson Arena, the RedHawks have had a busy road schedule. Miami played in the Friendship Four tournament in Belfast, Ireland the weekend following Thanksgiving, where they beat both Rochester Institute of Technology and Union College. The team followed the trip across the Atlantic with an away series at Magness Arena in Denver last week. And the Pios earned the sweep.  “You watch them over in Ireland and it didn’t affect how they played there. You watch them against Denver and just like any game, every game, there’s this moment. … Miami gets a power play, if they score on it, it can completely flip the thing, right? And so, they played well,” Mayotte said. “They’ve been good at home. I think that’s a big thing is they’re good at home, the crowds are back, it’s an energizing place. I’m sure they’re excited to be back at home … we expect that they’re going to be fully loaded and charged up and ready go, and it’s going to be our job to go in there and play a good business road weekend.” Both the RedHawks and Tigers will look for their third and fourth conference wins after having played eight NCHC games this season. To help earn those victories, CC has worked on its offense during the bye week, according to junior center Klavs Veinbergs.  “We addressed the 1-on-1 battles. The big emphasis we put on was scoring and we need to generate more offense, get more inside the dots and just be a bigger threat out there,” Veinbergs said. “As we know, we put up a lot of shots, but a lot of those shots are not effective so gotta find those areas wherood at home, the crowds are back, it’s an energizing place. I’m sure they’re excited to be back at home…we expect that they’re going to be fully loaded and charged up and ready go, and it’s going to be our job to go in there and play a good business road weekend.” For all the positives surrounding each side, both CC and Miami have struggled in National Collegiate Hockey Conference play. Points toward league standings will be at a premium this weekend as the Tigers and RedHawks sit second-to-last and last in the NCHC, respectively. Meanwhile, the top four teams in the conference in Denver, North Dakota, Minnesota Duluth, and Western Michigan, are pulling away from the rest. CC sits 10 points behind fourth-seeded Western Michigan and a home conference series in the league quarterfinals at the end of the season.  Both the RedHawks and Tigers will look for their third and fourth conference wins after having played eight NCHC games each. To help earn those victories, CC has worked on its offense during the bye week, according to junior center Klavs Veinbergs.  “We addressed the 1-on-1 battles. The big emphasis we put on was scoring and we need to generate more offense, get more inside the dots and just be a bigger threat out there,” Veinbergs said. “As we know, we put up a lot of shots but, a lot of those shots are not effective so gotta find those areas where we can be effective.” ...read more read less