NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — Northeastern captain and senior forward Kevin Roy returned to the lineup for the first time since Nov. 13 on Friday night, missing 12 games with an upper-body injury. Roy finished with an assist, helping on Dylan Sikura’s goal in the third period as the Huskies extended their unbeaten streak to seven games (5-0-2) in a 5-2 win over Merrimack.

Roy was listed on the line chart on Northeastern’s third line, alongside Brendan Collier and Sam Kurker

“I thought he looked really well,” Northeastern head coach Jim Madigan said. “He played 200 feet, he went on the offense, he snapped a couple off, he was really good away from the puck coming back, and that’s how we’re playing as a team. He’s been watching a lot and he has seen it. He jumped right in there and I thought that this was one of his best games all year. I thought he skated really effortless and a lot of fluid to his game. It was nice to see him back. He snapped off a couple of passes there, one to Sikura there for the goal.

“You mention third line, but we have three lines we think can score goals. If Kevin Roy is our third-line winger we might be in the NHL next week.”

It’s been a season where there have been a lot of very good players, and no definitive obvious Hobey picks. It’s going to be interesting to see who wins that award, and we still have our own Player of the Year pick coming up.

Our 2008-09 All-CHN Teams reflect the difficulty in coming up with a decisive group. Our staff placed their votes, and we came up with a consensus. Here are my personal thoughts — feel free to chime in, argue away, and call me a dope. Y’all have never actually needed that invitation to do so in the past, however.

Ryan Stoa — He was not named a Hobey finalist, but should’ve been. I felt he was the forward who most impacted the game every time he was out there. Minnesota had its problems this year, but no moreso than Wisconsin, and Jamie McBain was a Hobey finalist despite having one of the worst plus-minus ratings on the team, minus-8.

Ian Cole was the other non-Hobey finalist to make our First Team. You almost have to pick a Notre Dame player somewhere. Goalie Jordan Pearce has great numbers, but isn’t necessarily spectacular. This is not a knock on him — he doesn’t need to be. The forwards are all-around solid everywhere, but they spread it around. Teammate, Nathan Lawson, was named CCHA Defensive Defenseman of the Year. But Cole seems to be the most complete package of any defenseman I’ve seen.

David McIntyre stood out to me because he was one of the nation’s leaders in plus-minus despite playing on a sub-.500 team. That’s hard to do. Matt Gilroy is, of course, a Hobey finalist, and needs no defense — but his numbers aren’t great. I think his play goes beyond the numbers. He’s had the numbers in the past. He came to BU as a walk-on forward and took years to learn the defensive side. BU has plenty of scorers, but they are now also one of the best defensive teams in the country. That’s why the Terriers are scary.

Our staff ultimately put BU’s Colin Wilson on the Second Team. I must say, I struggled whether to include him. He led BU in scoring, but on the strength of 35 assists. I tend to value goals much more than points. He’s nowhere near the goal-scoring leaders. Tough to leave a Hobey winner entirely off the list, but as dominant goal scorers, BC’s Brock Bradford, Michigan’s Louie Caporusso, and Minnesota-Duluth’s MacGregor Sharp are tough to top. Of course, Wilson doesn’t have to carry the load, so that hurts him in a sense, with BU’s scoring so spread out. So it’s no knock on him, really. But these are individual awards.

Absent from the list, Hobey finalist Jacques Lamoureux of Air Force, the nation’s leading goal scorer with 32. Tough one, but this the age old debate on what it means to score that many goals in a lower-level league.

Forwards that were hard to pass up included: Corey Elkins (Ohio State) , Jason Lawrence (BU) and Brock McBride (St. Lawrence).

Defensively, it was hard to pass up Michigan’s Chad Langlais and his plus-27.

The goaltending spot was really tough. We mentioned Pearce. Hobey finalist Zane Kalemba of Princeton also was not on the list. But the toughest was what to do with Alex Stalock. Like Stoa, he may be the most physically talented of any goaltender in the country, and I realize his numbers are hurt by playing in a more open system and with a defense that isn’t as strong. And, obviously, his last five games have been ridiculously good, and it led UMD to a historical Final Five win. But Chad Johnson was CCHA Player of the Year, and led the nation in save percentage. That’s very impressive in its own right. Stalock may yet deserve it, with a few more wins here this season. But it has to be picked on a whole season.

Don’t forget to check out John Whelan’s You are the Committee. This system allows you to predict where the Pairwise will fall after this weekend’s games. You can spend hours getting wrapped in this thing…

Ever wish you could get the latest scores when you were out on the road somewhere? Maybe you were sitting in traffic on the way home from a game, or maybe you just weren’t someplace where you could get to any of the online scoreboards out there. Maybe you were at a game and wished the PA announcer would update the out-of-town scores more often.

That’s all about to change. You can now get live, in-progress score updates on your cell phone — or other handheld wireless device — using College Hockey News‘ new Wireless Scoreboard.

It’s simple — just put “scores.collegehockeynews.com” into your phone, and you’re all set. Bookmark the page for easy access in the future.

There’s more information here. Just remember that while there isn’t a charge to use our new service, wireless charges through your provider may apply, mileage may vary, please drink responsibly, blah blah blah.

If you’ve seen Hockey East’s wireless scoreboard feature (we had something to do with that too), this one will be familiar to you.

This was what we had in mind last week when we told you about CHN’s new partnership with the RinkAtlas.com rink mapping system and team schedule calendars, and said more was coming soon.

As always, let us know what you think, and feel free to pass the word or tell us how you use the wireless scoreboard. Maybe we can convince management to come up with a special prize for the best story…

There aren’t any NCAA Division I hockey teams in California, but through a new partnership with RinkAtlas.com, College Hockey News now provides easy access to directions and maps for all games.

We’ve been looking to do something like this for some time, and when we learned about RinkAtlas, it seemed like a no brainer. RinkAtlas has the most accurate door-to-door directions for indoor ice rinks in the United States and plans to add rinks in Canada soon as well.

If you’ve seen Google Maps (and by now, who hasn’t), RinkAtlas will be very familiar to you. In addition, what we like most about the site is that its accuracy comes through verification of satellite coordinates, so you don’t have to worry about having the correct street address for an arena.

Besides a new RinkAtlas link on each team home page to its home arena — for example, Ohio State — you will find a new “Map” link for all games on both the weekly schedule page and all team schedule pages. Whether the game is at a regular Division I home arena or not.

So for instance, if you’re planning a trip to Florida for the Lightning College Hockey Classic on Oct. 27-28, the games involving Air Force, Alabama-Huntsville, Army, and Notre Dame have Map links to the St. Pete Times Forum in St. Petersburg.

And don’t forget to click the “Satellite” button on any of the maps for a satellite view of the arena. Keep an eye out for the boss — you can waste a lot of time with this feature.

Even though we’re using RinkAtlas only for maps of arenas hosting Division I games, you’ll find it a great resource for any rink in the United States. There’s no excuse now for missing that late night pickup game — or at least, you can’t say you didn’t know how to get there.

By the way, another new feature we’ve added this season is downloadable team schedule calendars. Visit any team schedule page — Providence, for instance — and click the “Download as Calendar” link to grab an .ics file that you can import into calendar programs like Outlook, Mozilla Calendar, and Apple iCal.

There’s more to come soon, so stay tuned. And please feel free to leave us feedback on these or any other new features you’d like to see.