St. Cloud State's men's hockey team open its 2011-12 season on Friday and Saturday with a pair of games at the Kendall Hockey Classic in Anchorage, Alaska. The Huskies will play Alaska Fairbanks at 8 p.m. (CT) Friday and host Alaska Anchorage at 10:07 p.m. (CT) Saturday at Sullivan Arena (6,251 cap./200x100) in Anchorage. Fans can listen to the games live on KNSI AM 1450 (www.1450knsi.com).

HUSKIES BY THE NUMBERS, according to a news release from SCSU

2442 The number of miles from St. Cloud to Anchorage ... making this the longest road trip of the season for the Huskies. The Seawolves will travel to St. Cloud State on Feb. 17-18 for a pair of WCHA games. The game at UAA this weekend is considered non-conference.

39 Junior forward Drew LeBlanc led the Huskies in all three offensive categories in 2010-11. LeBlanc topped SCSU's point leaderboard with 39 points. LeBlanc tied for the team lead in goals with Ben Hanowski at 13 goals apiece. For assists, LeBlanc tied Garrett Roe for the team lead at 26 assists.

SCSU returns two goalies, five defensemen and 10 forwards from last year. The Huskies lost one goalie, four forwards and three defensemen from last year.

8 SCSU will return eight of their top 10 point producers from last year. They are LeBlanc, Cam Reid, Jared Festler, Nick Jensen, Ben Hanowski, Nic Dowd, David Eddy and Travis Novak. The two top scorers who graduated are Garrett Roe and Aaron Marvin.

8 SCSU is one of eight teams that will join the new National Collegiate Hockey Conference in 2013-14. The other teams who will form The National include Colorado College, Denver, North Dakota, Miami, Western Michigan and Nebraska Omaha and Minnesota Duluth.