FAIRBANKS - Andy Taranto appreciates the individual accolades, including Monday’s first-team selection to the Central Collegiate Hockey Association All-Rookie Team.

However, the right wing is more grateful for his team’s accomplishments, particularly last weekend’s first-round playoff sweep that advanced the Alaska Nanooks to this weekend’s quarterfinal round.

“It’s an honor and an individual award, so I’m proud of myself; but we’re here for the team award and that’s the CCHA championship,” Taranto said after Monday’s practice at the Patty Center.

Taranto contributed two points (a goal and an assist) last weekend at the Carlson Center to Alaska’s first-round sweep of Western Michigan. The fifth-seeded Nanooks won 4-0 Friday and 4-1 Saturday over the 12th-seeded Broncos to advance to a quarterfinal series against the fourth-seeded Northern Michigan Wildcats in Marquette, Mich., Friday and Saturday, and if necessary, Sunday.

If the Nanooks win the series, they’ll advance for the second straight year to the CCHA Championship Tournament in Detroit on March 19-20.

Taranto, the Nanooks’ leading scorer and the top-goal scoring freshman in NCAA Division I, was among six first-team selections and he was joined on the CCHA All-Rookie Team by center Nik Yaremchuk, who received an honorable-mention recognition.

“It means a lot, that’s a big honorable mention,” Yaremchuk, who is tied with sophomore defenseman Joe Sova for fifth place among Nanooks scorers, said Monday. “To be up there in that caliber of players is pretty cool.”

The 5-foot-9, 172-pounder from St. Albert, Alberta, has six goals and 16 assists for 22 points in 36 games, played on a line earlier this season with Taranto and senior center Dion Knelsen.

“He sees the ice like no one else on our team,” Yaremchuk said. “He and Dion are just elite players. He’s (Taranto) so big that he creates all kinds of room, and he’s just an unreal player. I loved playing with him.”

Taranto, with 17-24-41 totals in 36 games, is the fourth freshman in Nanooks history to earn all-rookie team honors, joining left wing Aaron Voros (2002), goaltender Wylie Rogers (2005) and defenseman Tyler Eckford (2006).

Voros is now with the National Hockey League’s New York Rangers, Rogers is in his second season of backstopping for the Central Hockey League’s Rio Grande Valley (Texas) Killer Bees and Eckford skates for the AHL’s League’s Lowell (Mass.) Devils, the top minor-league affiliate of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils.

“I just wanted to be a guy who contributed, whether it was defensively or penalty killing or offensively or on power plays,” said Taranto, who shared the goal-scoring title last season in the United States Hockey League while playing with the Fargo (N.D.) Force. “I’m just glad we’ve got a winning record and we’ve got a good chance of going to the (CCHA Championship) tournament this year.”

The first-team all-rookie selection follows four honors the 6-foot, 213-pound native of Woodridge, Ill., received in the past two weeks.

He was named the CCHA Rookie of the Week on Feb. 22 and March 1. One day after picking up his second straight weekly honor, he was named the CCM/CCHA Rookie of the Month for contributing 14 points (seven goals and seven assists) in February. On the same day the Nanooks opened the playoffs with a shutout of the Broncos, the Hockey Commissioners Association recognized Taranto as its National Division I Rookie of the Month.

Taranto also attributes his linemates, Dion Knelsen and Dustin Sather, to helping him become a better player. Knelsen is Alaska’s No. 2 scorer with 18-22-40 totals in 36 games, and junior left wing Sather is the team’s third-leading scorer with a 10-14-24 line in 34 contests.

“We’ve got so much chemistry together that it’s easy. We know where each other is going to be, we’re in the right spots for each other,” Taranto said. “We’ve been working a lot of cycling and supporting and we did that very well this weekend, and I think that’s led to a lot of success (for the Nanooks).”

The CCHA All-Rookie Team is at www.ccha.com.

Stick tape

• The Nanooks, 18-9-9 overall and on a nation-leading, 10-game unbeaten streak (8-0-2), are ranked for the second straight week in three national polls. They’re 12th in the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls and 11th in the Inside College Hockey.com Power Rankings.

• Forrest Karr, University of Alaska Fairbanks athletic director, is conducting a Pairwise 101 clinic at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Nanook Lounge of the Patty Center. The clinic deals with the Pairwise Rankings, a formula used by the NCAA Hockey Tournament Committee to select the 16 teams for the Division I national tournament.

• The Nanooks are tied for seventh with St. Cloud State of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association in the latest Pairwise Rankings, which include such criteria as records against ranked teams and common opponents.