A new season is always a blank slate, but this weekend, Colorado College and college hockey as a whole journey into the unknown.

Entering his fifth season, CC coach Kris Mayotte is no more excited about the 2025-2026 campaign than previous years, but he is preparing for things to be different.

Last November, the NCAA Division I Council voted to make Canadian Hockey League players eligible for college hockey when they were previously considered professionals. The infusion of three leagues and 61 teams into college hockey, which has 63 teams, is expected to make the sport deeper than ever before.

“I don’t think preseason rankings have ever been more irrelevant than they are this year because, quite honestly, I just don’t think people know. I don’t know guys on other rosters, so I know I like what we have,” Mayotte said. “I know I’m really impressed with how we’ve looked so far. It feels different in a positive way. But at the end of the day, it’s about beating other teams.

“Usually, you’re watching, after the first weekend, you’re watching your next opponent. You’re obviously getting better but you’re watching your next opponent. This year, I think you’re watching everybody and you’re just trying to figure out who everybody is, how they’re playing, what they look like. There’s a little bit more unknown even with in-conference opponents.”

Something like Christmas morning, Mayotte and the CC Tigers will find out a little bit about who they are this weekend when they host No. 10 UConn at Ed Robson Arena. Friday night’s game begins at 7 p.m. and Saturday’s is at 6 p.m.

“Our speed and pace we play with, we’re up and down the ice, we move the puck quick, our feet move quick. All around the ice we’re making plays with just our skill,” Tigers junior defenseman and captain Max Burkholder said of where the team has improved. “But we compete defensively too, and I think obviously one of the most important things. So once we get the puck back, we’re ready to go.”

The Tigers will hope to start as fast as they did last season when they won the first eight games. However, CC had its fair share of ups and downs the rest of the way and finished with an 18-18-1 record.

They lost several key players in the offseason to graduation, the transfer portal and the pros, including assistant captain Noah Laba, Gleb Veremyev, Zaccharya Wisdom, captain Stanley Cooley, and assistant captain Ethan Straky, among others. CC took advantage of the new CHL eligibility to recruit a host of players from the Western Hockey League in what some outlets are calling an elite recruiting class,to include Tomas Mrsic, who scored 90 points with Prince Albert Raiders last season, and Brandon Lisowsky, who was a top-10 goal scorer in the WHL last season.

“With the CHL opening up it presented an opportunity, and I think you look around the country and different programs used it differently. Some used it a lot, we were probably toward the top, and some didn’t use it much at all,” Mayotte said. ” I think if you asked me six months ago I was probably saying we’re not going to use it much at all. But you have things that happen throughout an offseason and players become available to you.

“To really be a championship program you have to be able to recruit consistently and not just one class every three years or something like that. You have to be able to do it consistently and I think we’ve been able to do that. Which is why … when you lose Gleb and Noah and some other guys, it’s next man up and I really believe we have the players to do that.”