NORTH ANDOVER — The Merrimack men’s hockey team opens a weekend home-and-home series against No. 9 UMass Lowell tonight at Lawler Arena.

Keeping with their recent rotation, the Warriors will start Hugo Ollas in goal tonight. Ollas and Zachary Borgiel split last weekend’s sweep over Providence.

“It’s a hell of a matchup,” UMass Lowell head coach Norm Bazin told The Lowell Sun this week. “They’ve got a very deep team and a lot of experience. They’ve had a hard schedule. I think they’re a good team, but I think we’re good, too.”

Bazin was very complimentary of the Warriors, saying that their recent run of going 7-3-1 in the last 11 games does not surprise him. Bazin told the Sun that he believes this is the best Merrimack team he’s faced since he joined the Lowell program in 2011-12.

Merrimack’s Lines

Forwards (13)

Steven Jandric — Max Newton — Alex Jefferies
Filip Forsmark — Liam Walsh — Filip Karlsson-Tagtstrom
Ben Brar — Mac Welsher — Matt Copponi
Logan Drevich — Mark Hillier — Ryan Nolan
Jake Durflinger

Defensemen (6)

Declan Carlile — Adam Arvedsson
Zach Vinnell — Zach Uens
Liam Dennison — Christian Felton

Goaltenders (3)

Hugo Ollas
Zachary Borgiel
Troy Kobryn

Scratches (8): Mike Brown, Kevin Sadovski, Mick Messner, Jordan Seyfert, Hugo Esselin, Regan Kimens, Devlin O’Brien, Ivan Zivlak

Pairwise Watch

Merrimack enters this weekend ranked No. 21 in the Pairwise. For those unfamiliar (it’s been a while since Merrimack was ranked this high, this late into the season) the top-16 teams qualify for the NCAA Tournament. There are automatic bids for conference tournament winners, so in reality, the top 13-15 teams in the Pairwise will qualify, predicated on those conference tournament results.

Without taking into consideration any other result nationally (which will affect these numbers), we can at least estimate a possible fluctuation range for the Warriors this weekend. It appears that the Warriors can end this weekend anywhere from 17th-26th in the Pairwise. But again, this is not an exact calculation because it does not take into consideration the rest of the nation’s results.

Current PWR Ranking: #21

Merrimack Sweeps UML (in regulation): #17
UMass Lowell Sweeps (in regulation): #26

Regulation Split (home team wins): #21
Regulation Split (road team wins): #21