The University of Maine men’s hockey team will have five consecutive one-game weekends beginning with Sunday afternoon’s game with Boston College.

“I should call [Maine football coach] Jack Cosgrove to get a sense for how to prepare for a one-game event,” quipped Maine hockey coach Tim Whitehead.

“It isn’t ideal for how we operate. I like to play a couple of games each weekend to get into that groove and stay sharp,” added Whitehead.

However, he is taking the schedule in stride.

“It’s fine. It isn’t a big deal for us. It’s just a bit of a glitch in the schedule,” he said.

Maine hosts Boston College on Sunday at 3; visits Vermont on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 25; entertains Providence on Friday night, Dec. 1 and travels to Northeastern for a game on Saturday night, Dec. 9.

The Bears do have an exhibition game against the visiting University of New Brunswick on Wednesday, Dec. 6 and play a non-league game against Mercyhurst (Pa.) in Portland on Saturday night, Dec. 16.

Hockey East Commissioner Joe Bertagna explained that one of the rules governing the compilation of the schedule is to avoid putting a team at a disadvantage by forcing them to play on consecutive nights while the second night’s opponent didn’t play the previous night.

However, there are Friday-Sunday formats, including this coming weekend when BC visits Northeastern on Friday night before facing Maine Sunday afternoon.

Bertagna said the late Shawn Walsh, the former Maine coach, had an interesting take on scheduling.

He said Walsh didn’t mind playing his second game of back-to-back nights against a rested team “but he didn’t want them coming up early [to Alfond Arena] and watching his team play the previous night because it gave them a scouting advantage.”

Bertagna explained the current scheduling format involves Vermont as well as Maine. Since they represent the longest road trips for the other eight schools, they have a lot of one-game weekends over the first half of the schedule.

Both Maine and Vermont play each Hockey East team once in the first half.

Then, in the second half, they have back-to-back weekend sets with everyone.

Bertagna added there is more flexibility in the scheduling with the other eight teams because they don’t have to travel nearly as far to play each other.

“We know this makes their scheduling easier to coordinate. I understand that,” said Whitehead whose Bears will try to rebound from their first loss, an 8-2 setback to New Hampshire in Orono Sunday.

The Bears, 8-1-1, were still ranked No. 1 in the country in the USCHO.com/CSTV poll.

“It was bound to happen. This gives us an opportunity to refocus. I’m not hitting the panic button,” said Whitehead. “We’ll take a hard look at different parts of our game and keep working to improve. It’s a long season. One of the things you learn is to not get too high when you win or too low when you lose.”