In May, Tanner House will head back to his home in Alberta with a new title - "captain." His roommate, Jeff Dimmen, will also head west to Colorado as a designated assistant captain for the Maine hockey team when it opens the season in the fall.

House didn't necessarily set a goal for himself to be named to a formal leadership role. But, he added, "This is an honor. It's a great honor to know the guys on your team voted for you and see you as a leader.

"Coming in as a sophomore, I knew I had to take on a better leadership role and this year, I have to keep expanding on it."

(Note - Dimmen now wears No. 6, not No. 3, which he's wearing in the above photo.)

Think about it. Nineteen months ago (in the fall of 2007), House and Dimmen arrived in Orono.

"My freshman season, I sat back and watched everything and took it in," Dimmen said. "This season, I tried to step a little more, I got into more game situations and I tried to step up a little more and show the freshman class what it took to play at the Division I level."

House and Dimmen will lead a team that struggled during the second half of the season, but will return 20 players next season. House believes that going through last season's struggles will serve him and his team.

"Obviously, we hit a rough patch there in the second half," House said. "That took a toll on us, on our attitude and our motivation. Hopefully I'll have the experience to let the guys know what to do in that situation and how to handle themselves."

Dimmen provided a bit of perspective on the past season.

"We had a tremendously young team this year, and we had a great start and we thought we were on top of the world," Dimmen said. "You just can't play for three months, and knowing that, that's going to help us."

***

It's safe to say that Matt Duffy's debut in the American Hockey League was a success.

Duffy, a defenseman from Maine, recorded two assists Wednesday night in the Rochester Americans' 4-3 shootout win over Albany. The Windham native was the game's third star.

Here's what Amerks Coach Benoit Groulx had to say about Duffy, via Kevin Oklobzija's blog from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle:

Defenseman Matt Duffy came in from the University of Maine last week. He played a pair of games over the weekend with the ECHL's Florida Everblades, then joined the Amerks for practice Tuesday.