Game Preview: UNO vs. Manitoba 10/7/18

"There is no offseason, only preseason."

Well, Maverick Hockey fans, the preseason ends Sunday when UNO takes on the University of Manitoba in an exhibition at 5:07 p.m. at Baxter Arena.

New this year at Baxter Arena is the clear bag policy, so ladies, don't forget to take stuff out of your purse and transfer it over to your clear bag. (That's going to be fun to do twice each weekend. This is obviously a policy created by men, for men.) Anyway, I digress.

This is Coach Gabinet's second season as head coach and as Jon's blog post about recruiting talks about, he's starting to get some of his guys in place. But there are still a metric ton of Blais-recruited players, including 10 seniors, so this will be an interesting year. The Mavs were picked to finish seventh in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference Preseason Poll.

I didn't realize that Manitoba had been out of the exhibition rotation since the 2008-09 season. As a result, this is the Bison's first trip to Baxter Arena. We're 11-2-0 all time against Manitoba.

But Manitoba has played two regular season games already (going 1-1-0), plus four exhibition games in the United Kingdom and three exhibition games against the University of Regina. Manitoba was 3-4-0 in the seven exhibition games. The Bison will play the University of North Dakota on Saturday.

Omavs.com article about the exhibition:

https://omavs.com/news/2018/10/4/hockey-mavericks-welcome-manitoba-for-exhibition.aspx

Omavs.com weekly news release:

https://omavs.com/documents/2018/10/4//Omaha_Hockey_Weekly_Release_10_2_18.pdf

The MavPuckCast podcast with Jason & Jon (preseason preview):

https://mavpuck.wildapricot.org/mavpuckcast

When:

Sunday, 5:07 p.m. Central

Radio/TV Coverage:

The exhibition game will be broadcast live on 1180 The Zone 2. Dave Ahlers will provide play-by-play and Terry Leahy is back with color commentary. Lester St. James is the rinkside reporter. Coverage beghins at 4:37 p.m. with the First National Bank Pre-Game Show.

The game will also be available on NCHC.tv. ($)

Live audio and stats:

Live audio link here.

Live stats link here.

Next Weekend:

UNO begins NCAA play with a non-conference series at Union College on Friday, Oct. 12 and Saturday, Oct. 13. Both games start at 6 p.m. Central.