On home ice for the first time ever Friday night, the newly formed Northern Maine Pioneers gave up two early goals and never recovered.
Presque Isle’s first junior hockey team dropped their home opener 4-1 to the previously winless Woodstock Slammers.
“I don’t think we came with the mental mindset to play 60 minutes,” Pioneers head coach Jack Lowry said. “We showed in spurts what we can do when we’re all firing on the same page. Tonight, we got a little bit too much individual play.”
The new franchise is now 1-4 with the loss. Three of those losses come from the Presque Isle Frontiers, the National Collegiate Development Conference team that was supposed to play in the city this season but was revoked from its ownership group after just three games amid severe roster trouble.
In came the Pioneers, who replaced the Frontiers and put together a team in roughly three weeks and first hit the ice as a team last week, long after the NCDC season first began in early September.
That chaotic beginning accounts for some of the team’s faults, Lowry said postgame on Friday, all of which he believes can be solved.
“The good thing is, it’s all preventable, it’s all curable,” Lowry said. “And I don’t want to make an excuse or let them off the hook, but it has been a whirlwind 10 days.”
Northern Maine controlled long stretches of the game Friday night and dominated in the shot column, putting 47 shots on Slammers’ goaltender Zachary Bridgeo, but only beat him once. The 20-year-old stood square to every shot he faced and Woodstock’s defense closed effectively in the slot area, limiting second chance opportunities.
“He was the reason they were up at the end of the first,” Lowry said. “When it was time for him to make a big save, he made it.”
A packed and excited crowd greeted the Pioneers as they took the ice at The Forum in Presque Isle, but the Slammers quickly dampened that spirit. Left winger Joshua Forbes scored amid a net front scramble less than two minutes into the game, then buried a shot off a rebound three minutes later to build a 2-0 lead.
Northern Maine generated chances through the next 30 minutes — centerman Grant Levins beat all of Bridgeo but his left skate blade and another shot rang the crossbar — but didn’t get on the board until halfway through the second period.
By that time, Woodstock had extended its lead to 3-0. A goal by Pioneers left winger EJ Goveia stopped the bleeding and gave the home team a burst of energy, but Northern Maine couldn’t generate any further.
The Slammers shut down any hope of a comeback in the third period, suffocating the Pioneers with neutral zone pressure that stunted their ability to break into the offensive zone and held them to just eight shots in the frame.
“In that third period we just collapsed,” Lowry said. “You can’t do that … they were trying to get everything to the middle and we just bought right into it. We weren’t chipping by them, we weren’t winning the races to the pucks in the corners.”
Woodstock forward Ryley Callan added a late empty-net goal to seal the game and the first win of the season for the Slammers, who entered the night 0-8-2.
Northern Maine faces the Slammers again on Saturday, this time in Woodstock, before heading to Gatineau, Quebec, to battle College Universal on Sunday.
The Pioneers are back at home on Oct. 17 to face Woodstock once more.
