The University of Maine men’s hockey team had only one freshman who played significant minutes last season.
It’s going to be much different for the Black Bears this year.
Head coach Ben Barr said the Black Bears could have 10 freshmen in the lineup this season.
Barr, who has guided his last two Black Bear teams to the program’s first back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances since the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons, has “no idea” what to expect from his new-look team at this point ahead of the season.
He has 13 newcomers including nine players from Canada’s three Major Junior Leagues. This is the first year Major Junior players have been eligible to play U.S college hockey because they had previously been deemed professionals by the NCAA for receiving small financial stipends.
Five of the Major Junior players are NHL draft choices.
Barr had five newcomers contribute immediately last season but all five were transfers from Division I schools.
“We have to find the identity of our team. We’re going to be working on that,” Barr said on Monday. “We like our team and we have talent but there’s a big difference [experience-wise] as far as details and learning how to play at this level.”
The Black Bears were picked fourth in the Hockey East preseason coaches poll and seventh and tied for eighth, nationally, in the U.S. College Hockey Online and the USA Hockey polls, respectively.
But fifth year head coach Barr isn’t placing much emphasis on those early predictions.
“We have a lot of work to do to become a top 10 team,” Barr said. “We have a long way to go.”
UMaine will open the season with an exhibition game against arch-rival New Hampshire on Friday night at the Sidney J. Watson Arena on the Bowdoin College campus in Brunswick.
Barr called Friday’s game a first chance to get some experience. He also pointed to the departure of centers Lynden Breen, Nolan Renwick and Harrison Scott, who all went on to play professionally after last year’s Hockey East championship season.
“There are a lot of unknowns. We lost a lot of mature, heavy hockey players,” Barr said. “We lost three centers who won a lot of faceoffs and were very responsible two-way players. That’s a big deal.”
UMaine hosts defending Atlantic Hockey America regular season champ Holy Cross to open the regular season on Oct. 10-11. And finding ways to replace some of last year’s top contributors will be key to start the season.
“So who takes those spots? It doesn’t mean we have to be exactly what we were last year because we aren’t going to be that,” Barr said. “But they’re all capable of playing with good habits and details and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
He said this team has more “stick skills” that it had in the past and can play pretty fast.
“We have a lot of very capable players on our team and we can interchange a lot of parts from one day to the other, which is good,” Barr said, while wondering if the team’s habits and details are going to be as good as they need to be.
UMaine has graduated players who scored 64 of their 124 goals last season including its top two point-getters in Scott (18 goals, 17 assists) and Taylor Makar (18 goals, 12 assists) along with Renwick (9 goals, 15 assists) and Breen (7 & 6 in 22 games).
UMaine does return three forwards who scored at least 10 goals in Josh Nadeau (10 & 19), Owen Fowler (10 & 10) and co-captain Thomas Freel (11 & 7). Charlie Russell (7 & 19) and Sully Scholle (3 & 13) are also back and they were among the team’s top 10 point-producers along with returning defensemen Frank Djurasevic (7 & 21) and co-captain Brandon Holt (4 & 16).
The Black Bears will return six veteran defensemen and second team All-American and second team All-Hockey East goalie Albin Boija (23-8-6 record, 1.82 goals-against average, .918 save percentage, 4 shutouts).
The Black Bears should be rock solid, defensively, and will probably be involved in a lot of low-scoring games over the first half of the season.
The goal scoring should keep improving as the freshmen adapt to the significant leap from juniors to college hockey.
The Black Bears play 12 of their 17 home games before Christmas, so that home ice advantage at the newly-renovated Alfond Arena will be extremely beneficial — especially with so many newcomers in the lineup.
A healthy number of those newcomers have been valuable point-producers in junior hockey.
Max Scott, Harrison’s brother, is the one newcomer who has come to UMaine through the transfer portal from Brown, where he was the team’s leading goal scorer last season with 12.
The team has enough veteran leaders to bring the newcomers along and the defending Hockey East tournament champions have gained confidence and a winning swagger through the positive culture created by Barr and his assistants.
UMaine’s returning players are battle-tested and they now go into games expecting to win, not just hoping to do so.
The New Hampshire exhibition game will be extremely valuable for both teams because the rivalry will make it seem like a playoff game, which will expose each team’s strengths and weaknesses.
And that’s the tuneup they will need.
“It’s always fun playing those guys,” Barr said about the matchup with UNH.
