The University of Maine’s hockey team will be the third seed for the Hockey East playoffs and will host a quarterfinal game at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 16.
Sophomore left wing Thomas Freel’s power play goal with 4:17 remaining gave the Black Bears a 2-1 victory over the University of Massachusetts at a sold out Alfond Arena Friday night.
UMaine is now 21-10-2 overall and 13-9-1 in Hockey East while UMass fell to 19-11-3 and 12-9-2.
The teams will play again on Seniors Night at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
Sophomore left wing Michael Cameron staked UMass to a 1-0 lead at 2:54 of the first period with his sixth goal of the season but freshman left wing Bradly Nadeau equalized later in the period at the 15:50 mark. It was his team-leading 17th goal of the campaign.
That’s the way the game stayed until Freel decided it with his sixth, which snapped a 14-game goalless drought.
Sully Scholle stickhandled across the high slot from right to left and wristed a shot that Freel tipped between the pads of freshman goalie Michael Hrabal.
“On our previous power play, we struggled to even get the puck into the offensive zone and set up so we knew we had to take advantage of that one,” said Freel. “Sully had the poise to take the puck up and roll to the middle.
“He took a shot and I saw it the whole way and was able to get my stick on it and squeeze it through the goalie. It was an awesome feeling,” said Freel.
Freshman goalie Albin Boija preserved the win with a couple of great stops after UMass coach Greg Carvel pulled Hrabal in favor of the extra attacker.
Cameron had opened the scoring by outracing a UMaine defenseman to a loose puck off the boards in the neutral zone, cutting across the net front and sliding the puck between Boija’s pads.
Nadeau tied it off of a three-on-one with his brother, Josh, and Nolan Renwick.
He set the puck in motion by winning a puck battle at the defensive blue line along the boards.
“It got my stick on the puck and beat their defenseman up the ice and, next thing you know, we had a three-on-one. Our line has three good players so we just made a play and scored a goal,” said Bradly Nadeau. “That really helped us. We tied the game and we eventually got another one to win.”
Bradly Nadeau entered the offensive zone and passed it over to his brother in the middle of the ice before his brother returned the puck to him and he one-timed it past Hrabal from the left faceoff circle.
UMaine head coach Ben Barr said the Nadeaus turned in their “best work ethic game in a while and it was nice to see them rewarded for it.”
Both goalies made a number of exceptional saves as each team had stretches in which they carried the play.
Boija finished with 26 saves and Hrabal wound up with 27.
Boija stopped a partial breakaway in the third period while the Black Bears were on the power play and the puck sat in the crease before it was eventually cleared out of danger during a mad scramble.
“Albin has been phenomenal recently,” said Freel.
UMaine head coach Ben Barr said it was a gritty win.
“We found a way to get the win. That’s a really good (UMass) hockey team. Albin made some saves. He has been a rock back there. And we got a power play goal at the end,” said Barr.
UMass coach Carvel said UMaine “outcompeted us.
“We had a lot of guys who weren’t close to their compete level. Maine played faster and they played harder,” said Carvel. “And the big difference in the game were the special teams.
“We didn’t much with our power play and they scored on one of theirs,” said Carvel.
UMaine went 1-for-3 on the power play while UMass went 0-for-3 and didn’t have a shot on net.
Barr concurred.
“Special teams were the difference. Our penalty killers did a good job and we had a good net front (power play goal)”,” said Barr. “It was an even game.
“They had spurts where they were wearing us down in our zone and we had spurts where we were wearing them down in their zone,” said Barr.
Boija felt he made a misjudgement on the UMass goal and might have been able to come out and play the puck before it became a scoring chance.
“Other than that, I was happy with the way I played,” said Boija.
