The Falcons hockey team will start their conference schedule on Friday and Saturday night against the Minnesota State Mavericks, the team’s first Western Collegiate Hockey Association opponent of the season.

“We need to play the game a certain way to get those offensive chances on a consistent basis,” Falcons head coach Chris Bergeron said. “If we don’t do that, we end up chasing our opponent around.”

Minnesota State made an impression in their series last week against the Boston University Terriers, who at the time was ranked the second best team in the nation, defeating them in both games. The sweep also propelled Minnesota State into the rankings as the 14th best team coming into this weekend.

“This week’s opponent is as good as any team maybe we’ll play all year,” Bergeron said. “This isn’t about the WCHA anymore, they showed that they’ll go into Boston and beat BU twice in their own rink, whose the number two team in the country, obviously it’s early and they’re number two in the country based on paper, but Minnesota State went in there and said ‘yeah, we think we’re a good team.’ So we’re going to have to play the game a certain way to give ourselves a chance to take advantage of the opportunities that we have this weekend.”

The team is also looking to build on their defense, which they feel has played well despite a number of defensive losses from the offseason.

“We have a willingness to take away time and space,” Bergeron said. “If you take away time and space from a defensive standpoint, you’re giving yourselves an opportunity. The best players in our sport want time and space to create . If we can take that away, I think we’re good. That’s something we can practice, that’s something we can get better at and that’s where we are.”

The team is also looking to continue to play aggressively despite Minnesota State’s play coming into the series.

“In the neutral zone, we don’t want to sit back and not get beat and take that approach, we want to be up the ice to take away time and space, so it’s just a mindset of the way we want to play the game. We want to be relentless and we want to take away time and space and then ultimately what we want to do is create turnovers so we can go the other way and put them in situations where they’re defending. Obviously the more they have to defend, the less they’re playing offense and that’s a good thing against a team like this.”