The University of Maine hockey team’s 3-2 win at Vermont on Saturday could be overshadowed by its recent tailspin.
But it was a very important win.
That victory, coupled with Boston College’s 1-0 win over New Hampshire on Sunday, assured the Black Bears of a top-five finish and a first-round bye for the Hockey East playoffs.
It also means that UMaine leapfrogged Providence into third place and has a two-point lead on the Friars and UMass entering the final weekend of the regular season.
Teams receive three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout victory and one for an overtime or shootout loss.
UMaine, ranked ninth in the latest US College Hockey Online poll and chosen to finish ninth in the Hockey East preseason coaches poll, will host No. 12 UMass on Friday night at 8 and Saturday at 7.
UMaine needs to win one of the two games in any fashion (regulation, overtime, shootout) or be tied after regulation in both games to finish ahead of UMass as the third or fourth place team and host a quarterfinal game. The team that finishes fifth will travel to play the fourth place team in the quarterfinals.
UMaine has already beaten the Minutemen 1-0 in Amherst, Mass., so it would win the tiebreaker.
Even if UMass wins both in overtime or in the shootout, that would give them four points in the three-game series and UMaine would wind up with five.
No. 11 Providence has a Thursday night game against No. 2 Boston University, which was off last weekend, and a 4 p.m. Saturday game against Northeastern. It will be Northeastern’s only game of the week. Both games are at Providence’s Schneider Arena.
UMaine also owns the tiebreaker against Providence since it beat the Friars in regulation before losing in overtime, giving the Black Bears four points and the Friars two.
But there is more at stake this weekend for the Black Bears.
UMaine remains ninth in the Pairwise Rankings which mimic the NCAA Tournament selection process.
Two wins over UMass would give UMaine a high probability of making the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2011-12 season regardless of what it did in the playoffs.
But the Minutemen are 11th in the Pairwise, one spot behind Providence, and would certainly move up with two wins over UMaine and could also possibly climb up with one victory.
And UMass came to Orono for a season-ending series last year and left with 5-2 and 4-3 victories.
The Minutemen are used to these situations. It is an elite program.
The Minutemen had a string of three NCAA Tournament appearances snapped last season and they won back-to-back Hockey East titles in 2021-22 and ‘20-21. UMass won its first NCAA title in 2020-21. It was in line to earn another NCAA berth in 2019-20 when the COVID-19 pandemic closed down the season at the start of the league playoffs.
It lost in the NCAA championship game in 2018-19.
UMaine third-year head coach Ben Barr, who was an assistant and associate head coach at UMass, said he isn’t looking at the standings or the Pairwise Rankings.
His only concern is getting his team to play like it was during its 10-1-1 stretch rather than the one that is 2-5 in its last seven games.
Barr told Black Bear Sports Properties/Van Wagner radio play-by-play man Jon Shields before Saturday’s game at Vermont his team was playing “not to lose” instead of playing to win.
That’s not uncommon in sports.
When that happens, players become tentative. They’re afraid to make mistakes. They get frustrated.
Next thing you know, they are back on their heels instead of on the front foot.
His team had been playing with a fearless, underdog mentality and had been outworking teams.
That mentality needs to return.
The Black Bears aren’t going to outwork teams if they are playing tentatively but they also have to make smart decisions with and without the puck to put themselves in position to outwork teams.
They can’t force things or try to make plays that aren’t there. That’s when they turn the puck over or get caught in the offensive zone, allowing the opponent to generate odd-man rushes.
They also have to take into consideration that Hockey East is probably the best conference in the country this season. There are five teams in the top 12 in the Pairwise Rankings including the top two in Boston College and Boston University.
So every night is a battle.
The Big 10 has three (Michigan State, Wisconsin, Minnesota) and the National Collegiate Hockey Conference has two (North Dakota, Denver).
Two of UMaine’s leading scorers are in slumps with senior co-captain Lynden Breen having just one goal in his last 16 games and freshman left wing and team goal-scoring leader Bradly Nadeau with just two in his last 13 games.
But Breen made the pinpoint pass to Ben Poisson for the game-winning power play goal against Vermont and he and Nadeau have both been important on the special teams.
So they can still positively impact a game even when they aren’t scoring. They just don’t want to be consumed with scoring because that’s when they make mistakes that can wind up in the back of their own net.
The goals will come.
So the message to the UMaine players is simple: Just go play.
String together 60 or, if need be, 65 minutes of sound hockey both nights instead of waiting until the third period where UMaine outshot Vermont by a combined 29-7 last weekend.
And feed off the Alfond Arena faithful like UNH fed off its sold-out crowds against UMaine last month in the UNH sweep.
