The University of Maine’s nationally-ranked hockey team will host UMass Lowell for Saturday’s 6 p.m. Hockey East quarterfinal at the Alfond Arena in Orono.
Seventh seed UMass Lowell is 16-15-4 after ousting No. 10 New Hampshire 3-2 in overtime in a first round game on Wednesday night in Lowell.
Junior Scout Truman scored the game-winner.
The victory snapped UMass Lowell’s five-game winless streak (0-4-1) which included back-to-back regular season losses to UNH last weekend.
UMaine is 21-7-6 and ranked fourth in the country in one major Division I poll and fifth in the other.
UMaine earned hard-fought 3-1 and 2-1 wins at Lowell on Jan. 10-11. The 3-1 victory included an empty-net goal.
The Black Bears have a 5-0-1 mark against the River Hawks over their last six meetings. Prior to that, UMass Lowell had a nine-game unbeaten streak vs. UMaine (8-0-1).
Over the last 16 meetings, 14 have been decided by two goals or less including six by one goal and two ties.
It will be the 13th time the two schools have met in the quarterfinals with UMaine holding a 9-3 edge.
UMaine is 4-0 vs. UMass Lowell in the semifinals.
They last met in 2013 in the quarterfinals and the top-seeded River Hawks eliminated No. 8 UMaine, 4-1 and 2-1 in overtime in their best-of-three series at Tsongas Arena in Lowell.
In the other quarterfinal matchups, No. 5 Providence College (21-9-5) will travel to take on No. 4 UConn (20-10-4) on Friday night at 7 p.m.
On Saturday, in addition to the UMaine-UMass Lowell game, sixth seed UMass (20-12-5) will visit No. 3 Boston University (20-12-2) at 4:30 p.m. and top seed Boston College (26-6-2) will entertain ninth seed Northeastern (13-19-3) at 7:30 p.m.
UMass ousted 11th seed Vermont 2-1 on Wednesday and Northeastern edged No. 8 Merrimack 3-2 in double overtime.
The semifinals will be Thursday, March 20 at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the TD Garden in Boston with the final to be played on Friday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m.
