College hockey officially begins this weekend and the Falcons will be the first hockey team this season to take the ice as they head to the inaugural Lefty McFadden Invitational in Dayton.

Bowling Green will take on Niagara tonight at 5 p.m., which is the earliest starting time of any college hockey game.

The Falcons will then face Air Force and Miami tomorrow at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.

“I’m looking forward to playing this weekend,” said junior Roger Leonard. “I’m confident in our game.”

Leonard should be confident in his game after scoring two power play goals on Tuesday night when the Falcons played their first competition of the season in an exhibition game against Windsor. They defeated the Lancers 5-2.

This game was head coach Scott Paluch’s first game. It was also his first opportunity to see the team compete out on the ice. “It was a good close hockey game,” Paluch said.

However, there are still some things Paluch wanted to work on before heading into this weekends invitational.

“We need more consistency,” Paluch said. “We also need to work on being able to finish. We can put a little more pressure on our forecheck.”

The Falcons made some great plays against the Lancers and had some good scoring attempts, but now according to Paluch these chances need to be turned into goals this weekend.

Another area the Falcons worked on was penalty killing.

“We need to get down the ice,” Paluch said. “We want to be aggressive on the ice and create chances. We want to continue to put pressure in the PK.”

The Falcons did a good job of killing of penalties against Windsor as the Lancers were not able to get a goal while on the power play.

This weekend, however, will be a test for the Falcons. BG has only played Niagara one other time and that was in 2000 where they lost, 7-2.

Niagara finished the 2001-2002 season in fourth place and are predicted to end in the same spot again this year.

The Falcons have played Air Force a few more times than Niagara and hold a 3-2-0 record against them. However, the last time the Falcons faced off against the Falcons (yes, Air Force has the same mascot as us) was in 1975 when BG won 7-2.

BG has a 55-21-5 record against Miami. Last year the series was split with the RedHawks winning the first game, 9-4, and the Falcons winning the next, 5-2.