If the University of Maine’s hockey team earns a third consecutive NCAA Tournament berth, last Saturday night’s 3-0 victory at Boston College will be noteworthy.
A Saturday night loss would have been their third in a row and fourth in five games. And it would have dropped them to just one game over .500.
What’s more, the Black Bears had already lost to BC 7-3 on Friday night to fall to 1-6-1 vs. the Eagles in their previous eight games at Conte Forum.
A second loss over the weekend would have put more doubts in their minds and damaged their confidence.
Instead, it put them at 8-5-1 overall and 5-3 in Hockey East heading into a weekend off. And it gives them some momentum.
They are ranked 10th in the USCHO poll and 11th in the USA Hockey poll.
Freshman goalie Mathis Rousseau’s 21-save shutout earned him Hockey East Goaltender of the Week honors.
It was the first time BC had been shut out at home since a 4-0 loss to Quinnipiac in the 2022-23 season opener (Oct. 7).
BC had gone 54 games without being shut out at Conte Forum. They posted a record of 39-13-2 during that time.
It was also UMaine’s first shutout against BC since 2004 and its shutout at BC since 1998.
The Black Bears have had an up-and-down season with two series sweeps (Holy Cross, Boston University); four series splits (Colgate, UMass, Vermont and BC) and a loss and a tie at Quinnipiac.
“We’re just plodding away,” said fifth-year UMaine head hockey coach Ben Barr. “We’ve had some really good outings and some really bad ones.
“We’re just getting by in every statistical category right now. We’re trying to find ways to win,” he added.
He is searching for more consistency and continued improvement.
“Hopefully, we’ll take more steps forward than back,” Barr said.
With 13 newcomers on the roster, including 11 freshmen, and with at least seven of them in the lineup on most nights, there was bound to be some inconsistency.
Barr said if you break the season down game by game, the two losses that he felt should have been wins were their only two home losses: 3-2 to Colgate on Oct. 24 and 2-1 to Vermont on Nov. 15.
They outshot Colgate 27-15 and Vermont 44-28 but lost the special teams battle in each game.
Colgate went 2-for-5 on the power play compared to UMaine’s 1-2. Vermont was 1-for-4 with the man advantage compared to UMaine’s 0-for-3.
Barr said his special teams have to get better and the statistics certainly validate his assessment.
UMaine is 45th among 63 Division 1 teams on the penalty kill at just a 76.3 percent success rate while the power play is tied for 38th at 17.9 percent.
UMaine is tied for eighth in goals per game (3.79) and 28th in goals-against (2.79) and is 17th in faceoff percentage (52.2 percent). The Black Bears are tied for fourth with four shorthanded goals and are the 19th-most penalized team in college hockey at 12 penalty minutes per game.
Six of UMaine’s top 12 point-getters are newcomers.
Left wing Justin Poirier continues to lead the nation’s freshmen in goals with 11. He also has six assists and is UMaine’s top point-getter with 17.
Freshman right wing Miguel Marques (6 goals, 7 assists, 13 points) is second and Brown University transfer and junior center Max Scott (3-9-12) is fourth behind senior defenseman and co-captain Brandon Holt’s 2-11-13. Freshman defenseman Jeremy Langlois (2-6-8), center Jaden Lipinski (2-5-7) and defenseman Lukas Peterson (0-6-6) are eighth, 10th and 12th, respectively.
Junior right wing Josh Nadeau (8-3-11), senior left wing Owen Fowler (5-4-9), senior left wing and co-captain Thomas Freel (3-5-8) and junior right wing Charlie Russell (3-5-8) occupy the fifth through eighth spots in scoring.
“Owen Fowler is playing really well right now and Charlie Russell has started to play really well,” Barr said.
He added that Nadeau had been up and down but is showing positive signs.
Fowler has four goals and four assists in his last eight games and Russell has three goals and four assists in that stretch. Nadeau has six goals and two assists in his last six.
Barr is expecting junior defenseman and assistant captain Frank Djurasevic (0-5-5) to start racking up points coming off a season in which he had seven goals and 21 assists.
Djurasevic is leading the team in blocked shots with 26.
Junior goalie Albin Boija (6-4-1 record, 2.55 goals-against average, .899 save percentage) hasn’t had nearly the season he had a year ago when he was a second team All-American (23-8-6, 1.82, .928) but there is still time for him to return to form and Rousseau (2-1, 3.00, .894) is proving to be a viable option.
UMaine finishes the first half of the season with five games in nine days beginning with a home pair against arch-rival New Hampshire (Dec. 5-6). There is a Wednesday game in Portland against UMass Lowell and two home games against Division I independent Lindenwood on Dec. 13-14.
