The Colorado College Tigers have 10 games remaining in the 2025-26 season, and as it stands, the year could end for the Tigers without a tournament campaign in March.
The Tigers are tied for eighth place with the University of Nebraska Omaha Mavericks in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) regular season standings. However, with nine teams in the conference this year, only eight will receive a tournament bid.
The Tigers currently sit below the threshold of a winning season, boasting an overall record of 10-11-3, with 4-7-3 in the NCHC.
But the Tigers aren’t going down without a fight.
“We continue to find ways to improve,” Kris Mayotte, head coach of the CC Tigers, wrote in an email prior to their Jan. 30 and 31 games against Arizona State University. “We continue to make adjustments that fit this team and its strengths. We have a group that believes in itself and continues to attack every day. We can’t let our record or the number of games remaining affect our mindset.”
Both the Mavericks and Colorado College have collected 15 points in NCHC play this year. The No. 4 University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks, comparatively, sit comfortably at the top of the standings with 38 points, followed by Colorado rival No. 11 University of Denver with 30.
Prior to this season, the Tigers were projected to finish fifth in the NCHC in the preseason media poll. They finished fourth in the past two seasons.
CC and Omaha trail the University of Miami (Ohio) RedHawks by one point. The Mavericks sit with a .346 win percentage and 9-17 season record, 5-11 within conference. The RedHawks are 14-8-2, but 5-7-2 within the NCHC. The ASU Sun Devils have claimed sixth place in front of Miami with 17 points.
For the Tigers, RedHawks, Mavericks and ASU Sun Devils, it’s a race to the finish. The prize? Avoiding ninth place and a chance to extend their seasons past Feb. 28.
In July 2023, the NCHC publicly announced that the Arizona State University Sun Devils would join as the ninth member beginning in the fall of 2024. After becoming a varsity program in 2015, according to the NCHC, they became one of the “fastest start-up [programs] ever to qualify” for the NCAA national tournament after earning their first independent bid in 2019.
With an added ninth team, NCHC programs would rotate in “three-team pods” based on geography starting in the fall of 2024. The teams spread between Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio, leaving the Tigers, Sun Devils and DU Pioneers in a pod. The pod guaranteed that the Gold Pan, the home-and-home series between rivals CC and DU, would continue twice a season, along with both an away and home campaign against ASU.
Starting in 2025, following the regular season and crowning of the Penrose Cup, the regular season champions, eight teams would play in three rounds of playoffs. The tournament champions would earn an automatic bid to the NCAA championship, while the other eight teams would have to wait until automatic bids had been finalized.
Last year, the University of Western Michigan went on to claim both the Penrose Cup and NCHC Frozen Faceoff, concluding their season by clinching their first national championship. CC fell in the first round of the Frozen Faceoff to the Pioneers, while the University of Miami (Ohio) RedHawks were left out of the tournament completely.
The Pairwise ranking, which compares teams based on a statistical ranking system, determines seeding for the NCAA tournament following the conclusion of conference playoffs. Conference champions receive automatic bids, and the rest are filled in by the remaining highest rated teams.
The Tigers are currently 33rd in the Pairwise, and essentially would have to rely on an automatic bid through the Frozen Faceoff for a chance at the national tournament.
While they’ve been able to dominate faceoffs, winning 55% against opponents, the Tigers have struggled to find the back of the net. They’ve averaged 2.7 goals, the same as their opponents, per game, but only tallied 64 goals out of 803 shots.
The team hasn’t been without adversity this season, however. Co-captain Max Burkholder ‘27 has been out since Oct. 10, 2025 after suffering a lower-body injury. According to College Hockey News (CHN), Burkholder will be out for the rest of the season.
Assistant captain and last year’s point leader Owen Beckner ‘28 returned to the ice over Jan. 17 and 18 after suffering an injury on Nov. 29, 2025. Despite only playing in 18 of 24 games, he leads the Tigers for a second season in a row. Beckner has tallied 16 points and is up for the Hobey Baker Award.
CC is reportedly the 12th youngest team in the nation and long time CC broadcaster, Ken Landau, believes that without Beckner and Burkholder, the team lost experience they could rely on.
Goaltender and co-captain Kaiden Mbereko ‘26, who received his third consecutive Hobey Baker nomination on Jan. 21, is the only returning senior this year. He’s started all 23 games he’s played in, missing the lineup just once on Nov. 29 from an injury. Rookie Jackson Unger ‘29 stepped in for Mbereko for his first collegiate start.
“We obviously haven’t got the results we’ve wanted and nobody here is satisfied, but it’s not for a lack of trying,” Mbereko told CHN reporter Jordan McAlpine.
The Tigers are set to play Arizona State at Ed Robson Arena over Jan. 30 and 31, followed by Denver, No. 20 St. Cloud State University, No. 3 Western Michigan and finally, the No. 7 University of Minnesota Duluth. The Tigers won one game against the Sun Devils and tied the other in November, but lost both series against the Pioneers and Minnesota Duluth in the same month.
The Tigers, however, still have just under a month of play remaining. One point separates the Tigers from seventh place, and the momentum can start building this weekend.
“The Tigers have played well against the Sun Devils,” Landau said in an email to The Catalyst. “A sweep this weekend (always tough regardless of the opponent) will set the Tigers up for a strong push down the stretch.”
Mayotte is focused on how his team can prepare, not just the results.
“Our urgency is present Monday-Thursday as we prepare. When [the] puck drops on Friday [it’s] about playing and attacking the game,” he concluded.
The Tigers return to Robson to face ASU at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 30 and 6 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31.