#20 Union College vs. Sacred Heart University

Friday, Nov. 28, 2025 • Belfast, Northern Ireland • SEE Arena • 9:00 AM ET (2:00 PM GMT)

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#20 Union College vs. Rochester Institute of Technology or Miami University

Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025 • Belfast, Northern Ireland • SEE Arena • 10:00 AM or 2:00 PM ET (3:00 PM or 7:00 PM GMT)

Tournament Info

Preview

Union Game Notes • Sacred Heart Game Notes • RIT Game Notes • Miami (Ohio) Game Notes

UNION ACROSS THE POND: The Union College men's hockey team will play Sacred Heart at SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Friday, Nov. 28 at 9 a.m. ET (2 p.m. GMT) in the first game of the Friendship Four. Union held onto its #20 ranking in the USCHO poll after a 0-1-1 weekend on the road against Cornell (L, 2-1) and Colgate (T, 4-4, 2-1 SoW). The Garnet Chargers have a top-10 power play and penalty kill, and Cameron Korpi has posted three shutouts on the year in the net. Union is one of three teams in NCAA Division I men's hockey to be top-10 in penalty-kill (91.7%) and power-play percentage (25.9%). 

PIONEERING PARTY: The Pioneers boast the 10th-best penalty kill in NCAA Division I men's hockey at 85.4% (7-48). Sacred Heart has won three straight games and is coming off a win over Long Island University on Saturday after scoring a season-high seven goals. Felix Trudeau notched his second hat trick in a three-game span during the victory for the Pioneers.

WHAT DO TIGERS DREAM OF...? RIT is looking to get back on track after dropping its last two games. Prior to the mini skid, the Tigers had won their nine consecutive games prior. It was RIT's third-longest winning streak in its Division-I era. 

NOT THAT MIAMI: The Miami (Ohio) Red Hawks started the season 6-0 but are 2-4 since. Miami is coming off a 4-2 loss to St. Cloud State. Kocha Delic picked up his team-leading 14th point of the season in the loss and has at least one point in 11 of Miami's 12 games.

THE FRIENDSHIP FOUR
The Friendship Four is an annual in-season college hockey tournament where four teams are invited to compete in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the Belpot Trophy. The tournament has been held since 2015 at SSE Arena Belfast, the home of the EIHL's Belfast Giants. The tournament began as a cultural and economic exchange between the sister cities of Boston and Belfast, which is evident in the similarities between the Friendship Four and the Beanpot tournaments. UMass Lowell won the inaugural Friendship Four tournament in 2015, defeating Brown to take home the Belpot Trophy.

AMONG GIANTS
Union is playing at the Friendship Four, hosted by the Belfast Giants at SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Belfast Giants made history in 2000, becoming the first professional ice hockey team on the island of Ireland. After three months on the road, the team took to their home ice in Belfast for the first time in December 2000. Their momentous sell-out opening night captured the hearts of an entire nation and started an ice hockey phenomenon that remains today.

EIHL
The Belfast Giants play in the Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL). The EIHL is a professional league in the United Kingdom. Formed in 2003, it is the highest level of ice hockey competition in the UK. Ten teams from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland currently compete in the Elite League. Professional ice hockey has been played in the UK since the 1930s and the Great Britain team won the Olympic gold medal in 1936. Ice hockey is now the #1 attended indoor professional sport in the UK and overall it is the third largest winter spectator sport in the UK after football and rugby union.

WELCOME TO BELFAST
Union flew out of Boston on Sunday and arrived in Dublin, Ireland on Monday morning, 8:30 a.m. local time. Since arriving, Union has toured Croke Park, enjoyed a bus tour of Belfast, visited the Giant's Causeway, and spent time visiting local schoolchildren in Belfast. 

WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
Union won the Friendship Four in 2018 and can become the first team in the tournament's history to lift the Belpot Trophy twice. Union's head coach Josh Hauge appeared in the tournament as an assistant coach for Clarkson in 2017 and won it, beating RPI and Providence. That Clarkson team lost to Princeton 2-1 in overtime of the ECAC Hockey Championship and earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

SATURDAY = WINDAY
Union is 5-0-2 on Saturdays. The Garnet Chargers are outscoring opponents 30-10 on Saturdays with their last loss on that day of the week coming on March 15, 2025 against Dartmouth in the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals. 

A GOAL EACH
Colgate and Union played to a 4-4 tie on Saturday, and neither team saw one of its players score multiple goals. It's the second time Union has played in a game where 8+ goals were scored with no multi-goal scorers this season (UMass Lowell, Nov. 14). Union played in one such game throughout the course of the 2024-25 campaign.

WHAT MAKES THIS TEAM SPECIAL
Union owns the #3 penalty-kill percentage (91.7%) and the #8 power-play percentage (25.9%) in NCAA Division I men's hockey. The Garnet Chargers are one of three teams to be in the top-10 of both categories. Minnesota Duluth and Dartmouth also fit the bill. Dartmouth is 5-18 on the power play and 2-18 on the kill through six games. Duluth is 6-57 on the kill and 15-58 on the power play in 16 contests. 

BUHRRRR, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE
Brandon Buhr has 11 goals and six assists through 13 games in his senior season. He's in a tie for the fourth-most goals in NCAA Division I men's hockey and one of 11 players in the country with double-digit goals. He is tied for the 17th-most points per game in Division I and is tied with teammate Parker Lindauer for 1.31 points per game. 

THE LINDY CITY
Parker Lindauer is tied for the team lead in points with Brandon Buhr at 17 and leads the team with 13 assists. His 1.00 assists-per-game average is tied for the fifth-best in NCAA Division I men's hockey, and his 13 assists are tied for the ninth-most in the country. He has recorded multiple points in four of his last four games and notched a season-high four points on Oct. 18 against Niagara. 

IT'S CALLED THE "MAN ADVANTAGE" FOR A REASON
Union has scored at least one goal on the power play in five consecutive games. It's the team's second five-game power-play streak of the season, and the last time the Garnet Chargers had multiple five-game power-play streaks was the 2021-22 campaign. Union had a power-play goal in six straight games from Jan. 14, 2022 - Feb. 1, 2022, and the Garnet Chargers haven't had a six-game goal streak on the man advantage since then.

KEEP BOUNCING BACK
Union is 2-0-1 coming off a loss this season. Union has avoided back-to-back losses throughout the first 13 games of the season for the second year in a row. The Garnet Chargers bounced back from a 2-1 loss at Cornell on Friday with a 4-4 tie at Colgate, followed up by a 2-1 win in the subsequent shootout. 

SHOOTOUT SUCCESS
Union has won two consecutive shootouts over Colgate and six of its last seven official shootouts since head coach Josh Hauge took over ahead of the 2022-23 season.

FREE WILLY
Will Felicio potted first goal as a Garnet Charger on Friday in the 2-1 loss to Colgate. He is one of four Union defensemen to find the back of the net this season. Tyler Dunbar leads the Garnet Charger blue line with four goals and is second overall on the team with eight assists. 

AHA PARTY
Union is undefeated against AHA opponents this season (4-0-1) and has not lost a game in its last 10 matchups against AHA foes (9-0-1). The Garnet Chargers are 69-43-13 (.604) all-time against current AHA members and 20-5-4 (.759) over the last 10 years. Sacred Heart and RIT represent AHA in the Friendship Four. 

TEAM OF THE WEEK
Union was featured as College Hockey News' "Team of the Week" after a 2-0 weekend on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8 where it outscored UMass Lowell and New Hampshire 13-1 overall and improved to 8-2-1 on the season. During an interview with College Hockey News' editor, head coach Josh Hauge said, "I love our hockey team ... We believe we're good ... We're excited about trying to continue to grow the program and get it back to where it can be."

POINT SURGE
Entering the weekend series with UMass Lowell and New Hampshire, Brandon Buhr and Parker Lindauer were both averaging 1.11 points per game. After both forwards posted back-to-back multi-point games, Buhr increased his points-per-game average to 1.45, and Lindauer's jumped to 1.36. 

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END
Despite beating UMass Lowell by six on Nov. 7, Union's season-long streak of never being outshot in a period came to an end in the second period. Union was outshot 11-10 during the middle stanza. The two sides finished the game with 33 shots each, marking the first time Union did not outshoot its opponent through 60 minutes all season. 

THERE'S A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING
Etienne Lessard became the first Union rookie to score this season when he netted a power-play goal against RPI on Friday, Oct. 31. The next night, Alex Laurenza also scored his first collegiate goal, also on the power play. Brandon Buhr and Drew Sutton are the only other current Garnet Chargers to record career-goal No. 1 on the man advantage. DJ Hart scored his first collegiate goal while Union was short-handed.

M&T BANK CENTER
This season, the men's and women's Union hockey teams will call the state-of-the-art M&T Bank Center its home, becoming the primary tenant of the 100,000-square-foot multi-purpose venue. The arena holds a capacity of 2,200 for hockey games and expands to 3,600 for other sporting events, trade shows, special events, and conventions. Highlights include seven luxury suites, a spacious hospitality suite, two full-service concession stands, and an elegant bar overlooking the Mohawk River. M&T Bank Center is the 16th hockey venue in the NCAA to open in the last 10 years. 

DON'T COUNT THESE GUYS OUT
Union stormed back from a 3-0 deficit and scored five unanswered goals in a 5-3 win over Mercyhurst on Oct. 11. It marked the Garnet Chargers' first victory after trailing by three goals since Dec. 1, 2013, when they erased a 4-1 deficit to beat Penn State. Daniel Ciampini scored the game-winner in that comeback with three seconds left in regulation, breaking the hearts of 5,177 Penn State fans in University Park, Pa.

BUHR WATCHING
College Hockey News released its "Players to Watch" in ECAC Hockey and recognized Brandon Buhr with some high praise. "Buhr is shifty and has a good shot, which makes him successful. He is also good at getting to the important areas of the ice, which is the way his coach, Josh Hauge, would like his team to play. Union as a whole is returning a deep group, and [Buhr] could be in the mix for Player of the Year."

NEED A RECHARGE?
The Garnet Chargers lost 12 players from its 2024-25 roster to graduation, the transfer portal, and the pros. Those departures accounted for 101 points last season, but Union still kept its top goal scorer in Brandon Buhr (19) and point scorer in Colby MacArthur (29). Not to mention, four of Union's 20-point scorers from last season are still on the squad, and Union's 78 "returning" goals are the seventh-most in Division I.

FRESH FACES
Hauge and his staff brought in two of each positional group to round out their recruiting class. Alex Laurenza (F), Troy Pelton (F), Etienne Lessard (D), Ollie Chessler (D) Brayden Gillespie (G), and Brendan Holahan (G) will all get their first taste of college hockey this season. Will Felicio (D, Michigan), Carter Rose (D, Clarkson), Tyler Dunbar (D, Colorado College), Cameron Korpi (G, Michigan), and Luke Buss (F, Wisconsin) end up in Schenectady as transfers after earlier stops around the Division I hockey landscape.  

WHAT'S UP BROTHER
They say your teammates are like your brothers. For Carter and Cameron Korpi, one of their teammates actually is their brother. Carter is three years older than Cameron, and this will be the first time they've played hockey on the same team together (other than knee hockey games in the basement of their childhood home).

PROFESSIONAL PROKOP
It's no secret John Prokop was a massive part of the Union defense last year. In three seasons, Prokop notched 65 assists and registered 85 points. Now, the AHCA East Second Team All-American is skating professionally for the Toronto Marlies in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. He's looking to join the likes of Nick DeSimone and Shayne Gostisbehere as former Union hockey players in the NHL. 

YOU LOVE TO "C" IT
Nick Young earned captain honors in his senior season. He's been along for the ride for all of head coach Josh Hauge's tenure so far. The alternate captains on the team are Parker Lindauer and Brandon Buhr. 

HIGH HOPES IN SCHENECTADY
Head coach Josh Hauge told the media on Tuesday, Sept. 30 that if his team equals its No. 5 preseason ranking, then the season will be a disappointment. Union did finish fourth in the standings last year before an early exit at home to Dartmouth in the ECAC playoffs. That fourth-place finish was Union's best since placing second in 2017-18. The Garnet Chargers' most recent regular-season title came in 2013-14, the same season Union won its first national championship.

ACROSS THE POND
Union will be joined by RIT, Miami (Ohio), and Sacred Heart in Northern Ireland at the end of November for the Friendship Four.

SENIORITY PRIORITY
Union hits the ice with eight seniors, tied with Niagara and St. Thomas for the seventh-largest senior class across Division I. The Garnet Chargers' average age as a team is 22.5, making them tied for the seventh-oldest team in the country.

GO BIG BLUE?
Three Garnet Chargers previously played college hockey at the University of Michigan. Cameron Korpi and Will Felicio both played for Michigan last season, and Brendan Miles transferred to Union after the 2023-24 campaign. Tyler Dunbar, Miles, and Cameron and Carter Korpi all hail from Michigan as well. Across Division I men's hockey, there are 91 players from The Wolverine State.