The University of Maine men’s hockey team has added another defenseman for the stretch run and the playoffs.
Jack Dalton, 20, has joined the team and began practicing with the Black Bears this week. He will be available when the Black Bears entertain UMass Lowell for a Hockey East series in Orono at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. UMaine is 14-4-1 overall, 6-3-1 in Hockey East, and ranked eighth in the country.
Dalton had been playing for the New Mexico Ice Wolves of the North American Hockey League.
He has been accepted into the school and is taking classes.
Dalton was the team captain and had five goals and 12 assists in 22 games for New Mexico. He had three game-winning goals and two power play goals.
He played 86 games spanning three seasons with the Ice Wolves and amassed 13 goals and 37 assists.
He is the first player to join the Black Bears for the second semester since defenseman Jakub Sirota left the Lone Star Brahmas of the NAHL to join the Black Bears midway through the 2018-19 season.
Czechia native Sirota appeared in18 games that season and had a goal and four assists.
He went on to have an outstanding career at UMaine with 13 goals and 42 assists in 130 games and he captained last year’s team.
Dalton will join three other former Ice Wolves on the UMaine roster. They are sophomore defenseman Brandon Holt, junior center Cole Hanson and freshman left wing Sully Scholle.
Dalton was a teammate of Holt and Scholle.
The 6-foot, 175-pound native of River Forest, Illinois will be the ninth defenseman on the UMaine roster but sophomore Grayson Arnott has missed the last eight games due to a nagging injury. Freshman defenseman Liam Lesakowski recently missed two games with an injury but he returned for last weekend’s series in Hartford against UConn.
Russian defenseman Artyom Duda, a second round draft pick of the Arizona Coyotes, practiced with the team but never got to play in a game because the NCAA eventually ruled he was ineligible to play college hockey.
UMaine head coach Ben Barr will often dress seven defenseman for a game to go with 12 forwards and two or three goalies.
He had only seven defensemen available for the Colgate series.
Under NCAA rules, teams are allowed to dress 19 skaters in addition to goalies.
“We got into a situation with all of the injuries and with Artyom not being eligible, you worry about numbers,” Barr said. “So we decided to bring a guy in for the second semester.
“We didn’t want to get to a point where we only had four or five defensemen healthy and having it cost us a season,” Barr added.
Barr said Dalton can skate and has a “really good stick.
“Those are things that are pretty valuable. The adjustment will be the physicality of things as it is for most young guys. He’s not huge. You never know if he’s going to jump right in and everything is going to be fine or it may take some time. We’ll have to wait and see,” said the UMaine coach. “He will add a lot of depth to our defense corps.”
