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For the second year in a row, the University of Maine men’s ice hockey team will play an important two-game series with the Boston University Terriers to close out the regular season. Last year, the Black Bears needed a sweep at BU to gain second place in the Hockey East standings. UMaine got three points that weekend.
The Black Bears need a sweep of the Terriers at Alfond Arena this weekend to remain in the hunt for the Hockey East regular season championship.
The Black Bears (23-6-5, 13-5-4 Hockey East) need to sweep and need the University of New Hampshire to take three out of four points from Boston College on the weekend to force a three-way tie atop the league standings, in which UMaine would win the tiebreaker.
The Terriers (20-11-3, 12-9-1) need points as well. They are currently one point ahead of Providence for the fourth and final home-ice spot in the Hockey East Quarterfinals. The Terriers would lose a tiebreaker with the Friars for fourth place, and with Providence playing its final regular season game at home against last-place UMass-Lowell, the Terriers most likely need three points out of the weekend to secure home ice.
“We know it’s going to be a very challenging weekend for both teams,” UMaine coach Tim Whitehead said. “We need to stick to the game plan and play with the same passion on faceoffs and on special teams that we had on Saturday night [at UMass].”
Whitehead said the team played with a lot more passion on Saturday in a 4-0 win at the Mullins Center than it did on Friday in a 4-2 loss to the Minutemen.
“[The win] was a good step in the right direction for us,” Whitehead said. “It was good to get a monkey off our back by scoring four goals. I thought special teams and faceoffs were the biggest plus the second night, because they’ve been our Achilles heel recently.”
UMaine went 1-for-4 on the power play and scored a shorthanded goal, while holding UMass to 0-for-2 Saturday.
One other important change was moving senior center Tom Reimann to defense for the series finale. It is a move Whitehead believes worked.
“We moved him back there to get some more experience on the blue line,” Whitehead said. “Since we’ve been turning the puck over from time to time, we felt it was important to get another veteran back there.”
“He’s not really a defenseman, but he’s a smart hockey player,” Whitehead said of Reimann. “I was impressed with how he played. He only had one scoring chance against [UMass] and he was involved in several chances for us. He brought a good presence for us there, and we’ll play him there again this weekend.”
One other major question is whether junior Frank Doyle’s 18-save shutout was enough to win him the Friday night start over freshman Jimmy Howard, who has lost his last three starts.
“We’ll wait and see,” Whitehead said.
The Terriers’ chances will probably be pinned on their goalie and defense this weekend. Between the pipes, junior Sean Fields has been in net for almost every BU game this year. He is 19-10-3 with a 2.45 goals against average and a .910 save percentage. He has struggled in his last five outings against UMaine, going 0-4-1 in that span while being pulled from two of the games. However, his last appearance at Alfond Arena was a good one, making 24 saves in a 3-2 overtime win on Nov. 9, 2001.
With senior captain Freddy Meyer out with an injury, BU youngsters will have to lead the defense, but BU has a capable group. Ryan Whitney (3-6-9) is the most well-known, as he was one of the stars for Team USA at the World Junior Championships in Nova Scotia this year. Fellow sophomore Bryan Miller (3-16-19) has had a history against the Black Bears. Last year, he only netted four goals, but three came against UMaine, including the overtime game-winner at Alfond. Also expect solid contributions from freshman Jekabs Redlihs (4-9-13) and senior Mike Bussoli (3-5-8).
Up front, BU doesn’t have a star, but they have plenty of steady players that can put the puck in the net. Junior Frantisek Skladany is the team’s leading scorer with nine goals and 19 assists for 28 points. The team has solid performances out of junior Mark Mullen (11-13-24), senior John Sabo (10-12-22) and senior Brian Collins (8-12-20).
Coach Whitehead is pleased that the games this weekend are at home.
“It doesn’t guarantee a win, as we’ve seen this year,” Whitehead said, “but it certainly is an advantage. We’re going to try to play as hard as we possibly can so the crowd is in the game. We can always count on our team playing hard, we don’t play smart sometimes, but we always play hard. We want the fans to be a factor this weekend.”
