For the third consecutive winter, the University of Oregon club hockey team will travel from Eugene to Central Oregon for the Bend Winter Classic at The Pavilion.

The Ducks will play Friday and Saturday nights against the University of Washington. Both games are scheduled to start at 7 p.m.

The Bend Winter Classic has become an annual event that the Oregon team looks forward to each season.

“The players love it, it is something that they look forward to every year,” said Oregon hockey coach Jack Hyman. “It is just fun to take that experience and put it outdoors. There is something about playing hockey outdoors that just goes hand in hand.”

“I think it has been a great opportunity for those who play hockey here to see high-level hockey that we don’t usually see here,” said Clare Gordon, the center supervisor at The Pavilion in Bend.

When the Ducks first made their trip to Bend in 2022, they were a Division-2 team in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Last year they moved up to a Division-1 team in the ACHA.

According to achahockey.org, the ACHA was founded in 1991 and is the national association for non-NCAA collegiate hockey throughout the United States. The ACHA includes nearly 500 colleges and university-affiliated teams representing 48 states and two Canadian provinces.

The past two winters at The Pavilion the Ducks played in front of capacity crowds against Boise State and Utah State. This year the Ducks will take on their rivals from Seattle.

The success of the last two Bend Winter Classics, highlighted by sold-out crowds of 1,000 spectators, made it easy for organizers to continue to host the Oregon team each winter.

“It was a joint decision,” Gordon said. “For us as a public rink we balance public use with other opportunities like this. We have seen a lot of positive experiences from this.”

The capacity at the Pavilion will be slightly smaller than in years past, dropping from 1,000 to 900.

“We are still expecting a full house,” Gordon said.

With Oregon athletics transitioning from the Pac-12 Conference to the Big Ten — where hockey is a much more popular sport — there is hope that maybe one day the club team could join the other Big Ten hockey programs in NCAA Division I hockey.

“It is fun to think about,” Hyman said. “That’s the big goal and dream over here.”

And there will be a fourth year of Oregon hockey making the trip to Central Oregon, according to Hyman, as the UO team and The Pavilion have already agreed to continue the series in Bend next winter.

“I think it is a great community-building event,” Gordon said. “We are seeing the growth of all ice sports, especially hockey. It’s a great opportunity for everyone to come together and enjoy it.

Tickets are listed at $23.50 and were still available online at ticket.uoregon.edu/uohockey as of Thursday evening.

For more information on UO hockey, visit uoduckshockey.com.