Every week and every game is a new opportunity for first-year head coach Ben Barr to continue developing his new program at the University of Maine.
The first six weeks of the season offered the Black Bears plenty of lessons as a 1-9-2 record may indicate, but they have taken points out of back-to-back Hockey East series entering Thanksgiving.
After Barr earned his first head coaching victory in a Nov. 12 overtime thriller against Merrimack, his club finished its latest series by topping Boston College in a shootout a week later on Friday night.
“When we’re down 2-0, 3-0 before you can blink, it’s making it tough for ourselves to be in games,” Barr said after Thursday’s 6-2 loss to the Eagles. The four-goal decision in Chestnut Hill came after five of Maine’s previous eight games were ties or one-goal losses, with games against league foes UConn and Northeastern also coming during that stretch.
“We had some guys that worked hard and we had some sustained offensive zone shifts, which we haven’t had a ton of recently. We try to find moral victories in a rough start so far, and there really isn’t. We really get the job done, or we don’t.”
The Black Bears responded to their coach’s call in Friday’s series finale, taking a 2-1 lead in the third period before surrendering a tying goal and then grabbing an additional Hockey East standings point with a shootout win. Sophomore Donavan Villeneuve-Houle matched Robert Morris senior transfer Grant Hebert’s team-leading goal total of four by scoring in both games against the Eagles and doing so again in the shootout.
But, the team’s top two scorers have been the team’s top-pair defenders in senior Jakub Sirota and freshman David Breazeale, the latter of who entered the series as the reigning Hockey East Rookie of the Week after he capped off a three-point night with the overtime winner that clinched Barr’s first career victory.
Though he is young in terms of NCAA experience, Breazeale has been an early standout for the Black Bears in the midst of his growth throughout the season so far. Five of his seven points have come in the last six games.
“He’s such a bright spot for our team because he goes out and gives you everything. Culturally, he and Jakub do what we want everybody to do,” Barr said. “We have some guys that are doing the right things and being rewarded for it, and he’s one of those guys. He keeps doing the right things. He makes mistakes, he’ll try to do too much at times, but he’s not overwhelmed by what we’re trying to do. He’s taking advantage of his opportunity.”
There are players with a significant amount of experience on Maine’s roster, as Breazeale is one of just three freshmen. Hebert is one of three new transfers from other Division 1 programs.
The build under a new head coach can be a challenge, and that continues every day in Orono.
Barr earned the opportunity to take over the Black Bears after helping two other Hockey East head coaches turn their programs into national champions. His experience on the bench with Nate Leaman at both Union and Providence and, for the previous five years, Greg Carvel at UMass provides relevant perspective.
“It’s nice to have gone through it before, but it doesn’t make it easier not knowing how long it’s going to take to get buy-in from everybody or see the habits and details, attitude, effort,” Barr said. “I’ve been a part of it before, but it’s different as a head coach because you want to change it all overnight. But you can’t. … Every game is a chance to take a step in the right direction.”
Rare fours
Sacred Heart has had a “road warrior” mentality all season as just two of its 12 games have come on home ice at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Conn. The Pioneers are currently in the midst of four straight road games against Atlantic Hockey foe Air Force, which make up just part of the team’s second seven-game run away from home. The season began with Hockey East competition for seven.
SHU and Air Force will return to the ice on Monday and Tuesday after the visitors earned a 3-1 win on Saturday night to split the first pair. A night after scoring his team-co-leading fifth goal, Pioneer senior Ryan Steele played in his 100th collegiate game in classmate Josh Benson’s 24-save victory, his first of the season.
Meanwhile, Boston University and Northeastern have both played four straight overtime games after 60 minutes weren’t enough to decide their head-to-head meetings since March of 2020. The Huskies took four of a possible six standings points out of the weekend against the Terriers, whose streak in the extra session began with last week’s effort with UMass.
The series featured the first 1-0 game in the 244-game Boston rivalry series since 2009 and a 2-2 tie that ended in a shootout. Junior Aidan McDonough (Milton, Mass.) became the league’s top scorer with the latest three of his 11 goals, including Friday’s deciding tally at the 55-second mark of overtime. McDonough has scored in eight of Northeastern’s 14 games to match his career-high mark.
Streaks alive, streaks snapped
The nation’s longest unbeaten streak now belongs to Quinnipiac, which extended its run to nine consecutive games following a 1-0-1 weekend against Clarkson and St. Lawrence. UMass Lowell was unable to bring its streak to double digits after taking Sunday’s 2-1 loss at UConn, breaking its own 7-0-2 stretch and a perfect five-win start to Hockey East play.
The Bobcats have gone 7-0-2 since North Dakota handed them their first and only loss of the season back on Oct. 23. Sophomore goalie Yaniv Perets has pitched four shutouts this season, including three during the current span. He made 23 stops in the most recent effort as the offense ripped off eight goals to beat St. Lawrence.
Lowell, meanwhile, took its first loss since the Oct. 2 opener at Arizona State and is now 7-2-2 on the year. The River Hawks would have equaled its best record through 11 games to start a season in the program’s Division 1 history with another win.
Since losing to UMass in its first games of November, Providence has swept back-to-back weekends after taking two in Vermont. Junior Jaxson Stauber pitched a 22-save shutout in Saturday’s game as Patrick Moynihan (Millis, Mass.) scored his third power-play goal to improve the team’s unit to 7 for 12 in the last three games.
More close calls
As UMass head coach Greg Carvel said on Saturday, “it feels like this year in Hockey East every game is going to be a one-goal game.” After Minuteman freshman defenseman Scott Morrow’s last-second goal sent the game to overtime, host New Hampshire won it on senior Jackson Pierson’s team-leading fifth of the season and sixth career game-winner.
In total, six of the 10 Hockey East games played over the weekend were one-goal games or ties. Four went to 3-on-3 overtime. Brown also took Ivy League and ECAC rival Cornell to overtime on Friday night.
The trend extended to Atlantic Hockey as both Holy Cross setbacks to RIT were decided by a goal, Sacred Heart earned a one-goal win, and Bentley earned a series-ending win at American International thanks to junior Matt Gosiewski’s (Wilton, Conn.) tally at the 56-second mark of overtime, his second of the game.
THREE MORE STARS:
Hockey East - Owen Savory, UMass Lowell
The Rensselaer transfer goaltender pitched a shutout on his busiest night of the season on Saturday, making 34 saves on the way to Lowell’s 3-0 win over UConn. It marked the first time he was faced with 30 or more shots in his eight games this season for the 7-2-2 River Hawks.
Savory has emerged as one of Hockey East’s top goaltenders after posting only a .846 save percentage in eight games a year ago, his first season in Lowell. He leads the conference with a 1.24 GAA and ranks second to Northeastern sophomore Devon Levi in save percentage by two percentage points at .947.
ECAC - Ethan de Jong, Quinnipiac
The senior assistant captain finished Quinnipiac’s weekend with a four-game point-scoring streak after he logged his first collegiate hat trick in Saturday night’s 8-0 romp. He became the second Bobcat in as many weekends to net three goals after UMass grad transfer Oliver Chau did so against Arizona State exactly a week earlier.
de Jong had recorded an assist in the three previous games, setting up defenseman Griffin Mendel’s first Quinnipiac goal as part of a two-goal comeback in Friday’s 2-2 tie (and shootout win) over Clarkson.
Atlantic - Jake Stella, American International
The junior from Sweden entered Thursday’s series opener against Bentley with just two career goals in an AIC uniform (and one this season), but he netted his first career hat trick in a 5-0 win. He scored two of the Yellow Jackets’ three goals in the first period before adding a power-play strike in the third.
Stella became the first AIC player to log a hat trick since reigning All-Conference performer Tobias Fladeby had one on Dec. 6, 2019, against Canisius. Senior Chris Theodore had three assists in the game, including two on Stella goals.
THIS WEEK’S HAT TRICK:
1. Appetizers: What better way to prepare for Thursday’s Thanksgiving feast than with three nights of college hockey? Three of the nation’s four Tuesday games involve New England programs: the back end of Sacred Heart’s set in Colorado, an ECAC clash between longtime rivals Brown and Harvard, and a non-conference meeting of Merrimack and Holy Cross.
Another Ivy League club plays the final game before the holiday as Yale shoots for its first win of the season when Vermont visits New Haven on Wednesday. The Catamounts will be the first of two Hockey East teams to play at Ingalls Rink this season.
2. Light league slate: The only full league series of the coming weekend take place inside of Atlantic Hockey, as Bentley hosts Army West Point and American International hits the road to Buffalo for two games at Canisius in a rematch of last season’s AHA Championship. Those two New England clubs will look to break their fourth-place tie when they first take the ice on Friday night, though AIC still has two games in hand in the standings.
On Saturday, Maine will host UMass Lowell in their first of three Hockey East meetings this season at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, home of the ECHL’s Maine Mariners.
3. More rivalries renewed: Looking to break a two-game losing streak in the series, BU will play under the bright New York City lights for Saturday night’s biennial Red Hot Hockey clash as the Terriers and Cornell return to Madison Square Garden for the eighth time.
That same night, Providence and Brown will compete for the Mayor’s Cup at Meehan Auditorium. The city rivals haven’t met in two years as the Bears’ Ivy League season was canceled in 2020-21.
