University of Maine men’s head hockey coach Ben Barr knows what it takes to win a national championship.
He was the associate head coach for the UMass team that won the NCAA title for the first time in program history in 2021 and he had also previously recruited players for two other NCAA first-time championship teams: Providence College (2015) and Union College (2014).
So even though his Black Bears are 12-2-2 going into the Christmas break, which is the program’s best 16-game record since the 2002-03 team went 13-1-2, and they are third in the Pairwise Rankings and fifth in both major national polls, he said his team is “nowhere good enough yet” to win a national title.
The Pairwise Rankings emulate the NCAA Tournament selection process.
“Our guys are capable of handling that and being honest about it. A lot of our guys have been around two, three, four years and know where our weaknesses are.
“It’s not that we’re not capable of doing it. We know what we’re capable of doing but we have to get better,” Barr said. “We’re still not there yet.”
The statistics wouldn’t necessarily validate his claim.
His team is ranked in the top 12 in every major category among the 64 Division I teams.
UMaine’s scoring margin vs. its opponents of 2.38 per game is best in the country; it is number two in goals-against at 1.62 per game and third in scoring at 4.0 goals per game. It has the sixth-best power play percentage (28.2); 10th-best in faceoff percentage (53.8) and 12th on the penalty kill (87 percent).
But Barr knows statistics are only numbers and how good his team can be when it is playing at the top of its game.
Barr said the defense corps as a whole needs to be more consistent with fewer mental errors.
“It’s one thing when a team earns a goal by beating you and making a really nice play. It’s another thing when we pass the puck right to them or have the puck on our tape in the offensive zone and fall down or fumble it. Those are things championship-level teams don’t do,” said Barr. “It’s not that mistakes are never going to be made, they just can’t keep happening over and over again.”
UMaine senior defenseman and co-captain David Breazeale acknowledged that the team has been up and down at times.
“We want to limit those down times,’’ Breazeale said. “Our bread-and-butter is our forecheck, playing fast and getting the puck out of our zone (quickly). We have to play our game for the full 60 minutes. We have to be more consistent.”
Junior left wing and alternate captain Thomas Freel agreed.
“Being 12-2-2 is not a bad spot to be in although we would rather be 16-0,’’ Freel said. “But we know we have a lot of areas we want to clean up. We’ve been off our game these past few weekends. We haven’t been engaged for the full 60 minutes and minor mental errors have led to Grade-A chances the other way.”
Fortunately for the Black Bears, when mistakes were made, sophomore goaltender Albin Boija was able to bail them out with timely saves. And freshman Patriks Berzins came up with some big stops in the 4-2 win over Stonehill on Sunday in his first start.
Boija has the nation’s fourth-lowest goals-against average at 1.53.
In addition, the Black Bears have been able to put the puck in the net with all 14 forwards having scored at least once this season.
“Our depth up front has been a real strength of ours in the first half,” said Barr.
Seven forwards have at least 12 points as do junior defenseman Brandon Holt and sophomore defenseman Frank Djurasevic.
And seven forwards have scored at least five goals led by senior center Harrison Scott’s 10, Freel’s eight and senior left wing Taylor Makar’s six.
Scott leads the team with 20 points on 10 goals and 10 assists and his 1.25 points per game and .62 goals per game are tied for 12th and tied for eighth in the country, respectively. Sophomore center Charlie Russell (4 & 12), Makar (6 & 9), sophomore right wing Josh Nadeau (5 & 8) and Holt (2 & 11) round out the top five. Freel leads a group of four with 12 points with his 8 & 4. Junior left wing Owen Fowler and senior center Nolan Renwick each have 5 & 7 and Djurasevic has 4 & 8.
Nadeau has a four-game points streak (3 goals, 4 assists) and a three-game goals streak; Renwick has a three-game points streak (0 & 4), Scott has four goals in his last four games; Makar has 2 & 3 in his last four contests and sophomore right wing Sully Scholle has six assists in his last four.
But the Black Bears are going to be without graduate student center and co-captain Lynden Breen, who has undergone leg surgery and will be sidelined indefinitely. The hope is that he will be back late in the season.
Breen got injured in the third period of the 6-0 win at RPI. He had three goals and an assist in that game to give him four goals and three assists in his last three games and 111 career points at UMaine.
Breen’s presence was missed in the 5-2, 4-2 wins over Stonehill because the Black Bears had a couple of bad periods against the third-year Division I program and the tenacious Breen is a heart-and-soul type of player who would have done something to snap the Black Bears out of their funk.
“We’re going to have to grow up around him and have other guys fill that void,” said Barr.
Two of the players who received playing time due to Breen’s absence, junior right wing Nick Niemo and freshman center Thomas Pichette, each had a goal and Niemo also had an assist.
“We’re a team that is going to be successful because of our depth,” said Freel, who leads the nation in power play goals with seven. “We score by committee. We don’t have one guy who has 15 or 20 goals at this point. But you’ve seen the past few weekends that we had guys who hadn’t played much step in and make a difference.”
Holt, whose .92 assists per game is ninth best in the country, is expected to return for UMaine’s next game, a 4 p.m. matchup against Bentley (Massachusetts) at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland on Sunday, Dec. 29. The following Friday and Saturday, Jan. 3-4, UMaine will host defending national champion Denver at 6 and 6:30.
Holt has missed four games with a leg injury.
“He is a difference-maker for us,” said Barr.
Barr really likes his team and said, going forward, it will be a matter of eliminating the mental mistakes.
“We’re capable of doing more. We have really good kids who work really hard. It’s between the ears is where our biggest step will have to be made in the second half,” said Barr.
