The University of Maine men’s hockey team finds itself mimicking the National Hockey League’s Boston Bruins.
The Bruins have Linus Ullmark and former Black Bear All-American and Mike Richter Award winner Jeremy Swayman sharing the goaltending load.
But has UMaine freshman Albin Boija earned a spot in a two-man rotation with reigning second team All-Hockey East selection Victor Ostman, based on his play this past weekend in a 3-1 win and 4-4 tie with Colgate?
Yes, he has.
Boija made 30 saves in Friday night’s victory and bailed out Ostman and the Black Bears on Saturday evening, when he made 23 stops on 24 shots after Ostman allowed three goals on six shots over the first 11:21. Ostman was then pulled by UMaine head coach Ben Barr.
Boija was named the Hockey East Goaltender of the Week.
He has now appeared in four games and has a 1.31 goals-against average and a .949 save percentage spanning 182 minutes and 54 seconds.
In his first start, in front of a sold-out Alfond Arena against the Black Bears’ biggest rival, New Hampshire, he stopped 18 of 20 shots in the 5-2 victory.
He has shown to be an excellent positional goalie who can make difficult saves look routine thanks to his ability to square himself to the shooter. He has also shown good rebound control and he isn’t afraid to come out of his net and play the puck.
Ostman simply had an off-night on Saturday, and Barr made the right decision to pull him.
But Ostman has been a major component in this program’s resurgence and will bounce back from Saturday night’s performance.
And he just wants to win, so if sharing the goaltending is the direction Barr decides to go in, he will be good with it.
The two Swedes could provide UMaine with one of the best tandems in the country.
The goal-tending switch on Saturday happened after UMaine fell behind 3-0, but went on to tie the game 4-4.
Since the program began its downward spiral in the beginning of the 2012-13 season, Black Bear teams have fallen behind 3-0 on 58 occasions.
They lost 56 of those games, with the only exceptions being the 6-4 win over Cornell in the Florida College Classic championship game during the 2012-13 season and a 7-4 victory over Quinnipiac during the 2017-18 campaign.
After both teams had good chances to win it in the scoreless 3-on-3, five-minute overtime, UMaine won the shootout 2-0 on goals by the Nadeau brothers, Josh and Bradly, while Boija stopped both Colgate attempts.
Josh Nadeau wowed the crowd by cleverly directing the puck between the pads of Colgate’s Carter Gylander rather than shooting it.
The other interesting tidbit was that UMaine was able to earn the tie without a goal from its top line of senior center and co-captain Lynden Breen and the Nadeau brothers. A member of that line had scored at least one goal in the previous eight games.
Bradly Nadeau did have an assist but his older brother and Breen were held scoreless. Josh Nadeau had his 13-game points streak snapped. He had eight goals and 14 assists in those 13 games.
The two reasons they were shut down are because Colgate had an impressive veteran defense corps with four of those defensemen having at least 89 career games under their belts, and because Breen had an uncharacteristic off-night in the faceoff circle, winning just six of 29 face-offs.
UMaine has been receiving a lot of production from the line of junior Harrison Scott between senior Donavan Houle and sophomore Thomas Freel. That line combined for three goals and two assists on Saturday night with Freel scoring a pair in a span of 19 seconds late in the second period to tie it, including a shorthanded goal, and Houle scoring the first one.
Houle has a goal and four assists in the last four games. Scott has three goals and an assist and Freel has two and two.
Left winger Scholle has 3 & 1 over the last four games while linemates Reid Pabich and Felix Trudeau have 1 & 2 and 1 & 1, respectively.
So UMaine is getting some needed scoring balance.
The primary area of concern is the power play, which had its streak of goal-less games extended to six (0-for-19).
That needs to start producing.
The seventh-ranked Black Bears, now 13-3-2, begin the final stretch of 16 Hockey East games with a pair in Hartford against the University of Connecticut on Friday night at 7 p.m. and Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.
UMaine has an eight-game unbeaten streak (7-0-1) and hasn’t lost since dropping a 5-4 decision at Boston University on Nov. 18.
UMaine beat UConn 7-3 earlier this season in Orono but the score was misleading because UConn spent long stretches in the offensive zone and outshot UMaine 41-38.
Ostman was outstanding.
Every game will be a challenge for the Black Bears but, so far, they have proven their resiliency and have been able to win games in which they didn’t play their best.
The culture has changed under Barr. This team goes into every game believing it is going to win instead of hoping to.
Colgate first-year head coach Mike Harder, a former Hobey Baker Award finalist for the Raiders, said it is nice to see the Black Bears have a resurgence.
“It’s really fun to see Maine hitting it again and doing really well,” Harder said. “I love to see that. The crowd was great. It’s how college hockey should be played.”
