It was a frustrating Saturday night for the University of Maine men’s hockey team, surrendering a tying goal with 20.6 seconds left in regulation in what turned out to be a 2-2 tie with Boston University.
BU had pulled goalie Mathieu Caron in favor of the extra attacker and it paid off. The team went on to win the shootout for the extra Hockey East point.
That finished off the Black Bears’ four regular season games against 2023-24 Frozen Four participants Boston College and Boston University on back-to-back weekends, the teams that were picked to finish first and second in the preseason Hockey East coaches poll, respectively.
UMaine went 1-2-1 against the Eagles and Terriers, but would have gone 3-1 if it wasn’t for third-period problems.
The seventh-ranked Black Bears were outscored 8-2 in the third period of those four games.
UMaine squandered a 2-0 lead in the final 10 minutes of the first BC game and wound up losing 3-2 on a goal with 1:33 left.
The Black Bears gave up two third-period goals, one being an empty-netter, in the 3-0 loss to BC in the second game of the series.
On Friday night, UMaine took a 4-0 lead into the third period of the 5-2 win over Boston University but gave up two goals in the first 10 minutes of the third period, one coming on a 5-on-3 power play, to make things interesting before an Owen Fowler empty-net goal sewed up the win.
On Saturday night, UMaine was doing an impressive job protecting its 2-1 lead with BU coach Jay Pandolfo remarking after the game that his team “didn’t have a ton going on in the third period.”
But the Black Bears weren’t able to score an insurance goal and then made three mistakes on the game-tying goal.
First, they lost the faceoff in the circle to the left of UMaine goalie Albin Boija. UMaine had won 36 of the game’s 50 faceoffs up to that point.
Secondly, UMaine didn’t get out into the shooting lane, allowing Cole Hutson to wrist a shot on goal from the left point.
And last but not least, the Black Bears didn’t cover Shane Lachance in the low slot, and he swept home a loose puck after Hutson’s shot through a lot of net-front traffic produced a rebound.
When you play teams that are loaded with talent like BC and BU, they make you pay for mistakes.
UMaine had outscored its opponents 8-2 in the third period of its first seven games.
Then there was the Caron factor for BU.
The Brown University transfer is now 3-0-1 against UMaine in his career with a 2.20 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage.
He made a number of important saves among his 30 on the night and wasn’t scored on in the shootout by UMaine’s four shooters. He had 16 second-period saves on 17 shots.
“He has played great the whole time he has played against us,” said UMaine senior defenseman and co-captain David Breazeale, who added that there were some positives from Saturday’s game.
“They’re a highly skilled team. They’re fast, and we were able to shut that down for the majority of the game, but we have to be able to do it for a full 60 minutes,” said Breazeale.
All in all, UMaine had a good bounceback weekend after being swept at BC with a win and a tie against a talented, nationally ranked Terrier team with six top-two round NHL draft choices.
BU has had noteworthy road wins over nationally ranked North Dakota and UMass Lowell this season.
UMaine moved up from seventh to tied for fifth with Michigan in the weekly U.S. College Online poll.
The 7-2-2 Black Bears have been consistent on the defensive side of the puck, allowing just 1.7 goals per game and giving up more than three in a game on only one occasion, the 6-5 overtime win over Quinnipiac.
They have held teams to two goals or less eight times and are fifth-best among 64 Division I schools in goals-against, surrendering just 1.73 goals per game.
Goal scoring hasn’t been as consistent.
In the last four games, they have managed to score only five even-strength goals among the nine and one was Fowler’s empty-netter. Three were power play goals, including two five-on-three goals, and one was shorthanded.
That is an area they need to improve.
They attempted 141 shots in the two BU games and missed the net 43 times and had 31 more blocked.
However, they are still tied for sixth in scoring at 3.64 goals per game thanks to the nation’s eighth-best power play (25.5 percent).
The wait continues for Josh Nadeau and Lynden Breen to have a breakout game, although they have been important contributors in other ways.
Nadeau, an 18-goal scorer a year ago, has two this season, and Breen has one after scoring 30 over the previous two seasons combined.
Nadeau, who has four assists, sustained a head/facial injury in the second period of Saturday’s game and didn’t return.
The Black Bears are fifth in the Pairwise Rankings that emulate the NCAA Tournament selection process and have an important Hockey East game with New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire, on Friday night.
Seven non-league games follow with a pair at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, two at home with Stonehill and, following a 21-day Christmas break, a game in Portland against Bentley on Dec. 29 followed up by a two-game showdown with defending NCAA champ and No. 1-ranked Denver on Jan. 3-4 in Orono.
UMaine resumes Hockey East play at UMass Lowell on Jan. 10-11.
