After a season-opening tie against Colgate, the men’s hockey team headed west for a showdown with tenth-ranked Denver University and a chance to prove themselves to a largely skeptical college hockey world.

Following Friday’s 5-2 defeat and Saturday’s 6-3 loss, the Huskies will have to wait until Friday night to make that statement, when they host Merrimack College in NU’s Hockey East opener.

On Friday, NU outshot the Pioneers 37-28. On Saturday, however, Denver (who is ranked seventh in the newest polls) buried three second-period goals en route to an ugly NU loss. Of the 19 penalties whistled on Saturday, 11 were against Northeastern.

“I think we learned two valuable lessons,” said junior defenseman Tim Judy. “One being that we can play with them. We showed that Friday night — I think we out-worked them and had greater scoring chances.

“Saturday, I think they took it to us pretty good, but one thing coming from that is that we never gave up,” he added. “In the third period they scored a couple goals but we were right back at them and scored two goals. We ended on a pretty good note, and just didn’t give up.”

Coach Crowder echoed those sentiments.

“I think we played well enough to win it on Friday night, even though the score might not have indicated it,” he said. “We might not have gotten the game we needed from Keni [goaltender Keni Gibson], and he knows it, but it was a tough test for him coming out of the gate. Denver is a very good team, very fast and they transition extremely well. I thought we held our own pretty well on Friday night.

“Saturday was a different story,” he added. “I thought we were a little bit passive. I thought we just didn’t compete as well as we did Friday night.”

Crowder said playing a team of Denver’s caliber will help his group in the long run.

“I think playing a team like Denver right out of the shoot will be good for us,” he said. “They’re a very good hockey team. It might’ve been the fastest team I’ve coached against in a long, long time. They have tremendous speed.”

After allowing six power play goals in 15 chances against Denver, the biggest problem facing Northeastern hockey at the moment looks to be the penalty kill.

“Our special teams have got to get better. We got eaten up in that area,” Crowder said. “We’re young and we might just not be strong enough right now.”

Judy said the team’s inability to kill penalties is a result of the defensive youth of the team.

“We’ve got a lot of new guys coming in and that just takes time,” he said. “As the weeks go on, we’ll get better. We just have to go on tape and fix things — maybe work a little harder in practice.”

On Friday, senior assistant captain Eric Ortlip scored the first goal of the game when he buried a power play score from Donny Grover and Steve Birnstill.

Inside the next five minutes, Denver answered back with a pair of power play goals. Lukas Dora nailed the first, while Jeff Drummond potted the second score.

Before the end of the period, sophomore Brian Swiniarski scored the first of his two weekend goals. He was assisted on the play by freshman Yale Lewis.

Sophomore Mike Morris and senior Trevor Reschny scored in Saturday’s 6-3 loss before Swiniarski notched his second goal of the weekend.

Gibson stopped 23 of 28 shots in Friday’s game, while sophomore Tim Henerotty made 31 saves on 37 shots on Saturday.

Northeastern hosts Merrimack on Friday during Parents’ Weekend. The puck will drop at 7 p.m.