The team returned from Alaska to find campus filled with excitement. Monday marked the beginning of Winter Carnival, an annual celebration of snow that first began in 1922. There are numerous competitions and activities that take place including a beard competition, skits and a Winter Carnival Queen is selected, but the most well-known tradition are the snow sculptures that line the campus.

Silence was golden for our Breakout, Break In teams on Saturday, as two teams sat idle while two others went down in defeat.

There's no losers here, folks.

Our four Breakout, Break In teams went 2-0-2 on the night, making moves in the conference standings in the process.

It was an up and down weekend for Northeastern fans. We played a strong game against UMass Amherst on Friday night, both teams played well defensively but we came up with a 1-0 win. We were happy with our effort on the defensive end, especially our penalty killing. We killed off a 5-on-3 in the last five minutes to preserve the win. But our offense didn't create much; we have had trouble scoring goals over the past few weekends. Players at every level seem to shoot less and pass more when they are not scoring, they try and make the perfect pass instead of getting shots on net and we have been no different.

The down part of the weekend started on Super Bowl Sunday with the Patriots losing their first game of the season and the Super Bowl. New Englanders have taken this loss very hard; I still think it's too early to even talk about. It was turning in to such a great run for Boston sports, the Red Sox winning the World Series, the Patriots undefeated, and the Celtics in first place with Kevin Garnett.

Losing the opening round of the Beanpot on Monday was a tough pill to swallow. Our student support at Boston Garden was unprecedented; our student section was the largest of the four schools. They were ready to explode when the game started, but Harvard came out flying in the first period and got a three-goal lead within the first seven minutes of the game. We never seemed to get our game on track. I think this is a tough pill for the kids to swallow now but the experience will make is a stronger team in the long run.

As another weekend of college hockey gets set for the puck to drop, all four of our Breakout, Break In teams are looking to make a move. Let's see where they stand:

In order to rebuild a program, you need to have a great nucleus of younger players who can step into your program and produce instantly. Here at Bowling Green, where we are in the process of trying to get that winning tradition back in our program, we've been fortunate enough this season to have such a group of underclassmen.

Right from the opening face-off this season, we've seen our seven freshmen and nine sophomores step into the lineup and produce. Whether it be blocking a shot, finishing a big check, making a save or setting up a scoring chance, all 16 of them have stepped into their roles and as a result, we are starting to see things turn around in Falconland.

Coming into this weekend, three of our top five scorers on the team are either freshmen or sophomores as they account for more than half of our team's scoring. A big reason behind those numbers is the fact that these players are getting the opportunities they need early on in their careers to be successful. Many of them get time on the power play and penalty-kill units, while others are asked to play key defensive roles. All of them have outstanding work ethics, which also carries into their hard work in the classroom. One of my responsibilities as an assistant is to monitor our team’s day-to-day academic standings and act a liaison between them and the university. These two classes have an average GPA over 3.2, which speaks for itself.

However, as much work as our underclassmen do, a lot of the credit to getting these young players to where they need to be, has to go to our great upper-class leaders. Our juniors and seniors have been terrific this season in allowing these underclassmen to come in and play in these key roles for us. They've made sacrifices on and off the ice to make sure that our program has the chance to flourish after they've played their last game for us. Our group is a tight group and the chemistry they have with each other has been phenomenal. They all work together extremely well and are great teammates to each other.

With all this said, our future is looking very bright and the sky is the limit as to what we can do. Before the future gets here though, we have some unfinished business this season, which starts this weekend when we play another pivotal CCHA series at home against Alaska. The Nanooks are a hot team right now and they, like us, are getting contributions from many young players. Coach DelCastillo has done a great job in his first season as once again we're going to be in a tight battle this weekend where both games are undoubtedly going to have an impact on who gets home ice.

After picking up three points against the top team in the league, the confidence of the team was soaring as we geared up for the trek to Alaska Anchorage.

We had a short week of practice as we prepared for the long trip North. We hit the road on a bus at midnight on Tuesday to beat the storm that was coming across Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin. We arrived at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport early Wednesday morning for our 11:40 am flight to Anchorage. The flight time was five hours 40 minutes plus taxi/takeoff and with the time change put us on the ground at 2:20 pm Alaska time.

The best course of action on Saturday for our Breakout, Break In teams was apparently to just stay home. With Northeastern taking the night off in preparation for the Beanpot, the other three teams didn't enjoy much success.

It was a mix of key wins and surprising losses for our Breakout, Break In teams on Friday, with a key win and a surprising loss headlining the evening results.

As the calendar turns to February, there are crucial games ahead for our Breakout, Break In teams, beginning on Friday night.

Let's see where they stand and what's coming up.