PORTLAND — The University of Maine’s top line of sophomore Tanner House between freshmen Brian Flynn and Gustav Nyquist has been one of the primary keys to the team’s surprising success so far this season.
They tuned up for Sunday’s Hockey East battle with arch-rival New Hampshire with three goals and five assists as Maine scored five unanswered goals to build a 5-1 lead en route to a 7-3 exhibition win over the United States National Team Development Program’s Under-18 squad Friday night at the Cumberland County Civic Center.
University of Michigan-bound Kevin Lynch staked Team USA to a 1-0 lead just 2:09 into the game but House answered on the power play 46 seconds later and Spencer Abbott put Maine ahead to stay with 2:45 left in the first.
Nyquist, Flynn and Nick Payson expanded the lead to 5-1 in the second period before Team USA mounted a third-period rally on a pair of goals 6:27 apart by A. J. Treais.
But Kevin Swallow scored an important insurance goal with 9:02 left and Abbott added his second with 3:49 to go.
Lynch opened the scoring when Jerry D’Amigo’s pass from behind the net squirted through a crowded goal-mouth to him and he fired the puck into a half-empty net.
But House equalized when he flipped a Nyquist rebound into the net from the top of the crease. Flynn had fired a pass across to Nyquist who directed the puck on net to generate the rebound.
Abbott broke the tie when Theo Andersson won a battle for the puck behind the net and slid it to Kyle Solomon, who passed it to the top of the right circle to Abbott. Abbott’s perfectly placed one-timer beat USA goalie Brandon Maxwell high to the blocker (far) side.
Nyquist scored 1:36 into the second period when Flynn flipped the puck toward the net and it deflected into space where he gathered it in, calmly pulled it farther away from Maxwell to create more of shooting area and snapped it home.
Flynn made it 4-1 by tapping home a rebound after Maxwell had stopped House and Nyquist. Former Bangor High star Payson, who threw three bone-rattling checks over the course of the game, beat Maxwell with a wrist shot from the outer half of the left circle. Maxwell got a piece of it but it trickled over the line.
Treais made things interesting by first converting a Chris McCarthy pass, drawing the puck around Maine goalie David Wilson and tucking a backhander into the net, and then scoring off a McCarthy pass with a rising point-blank wrister into the short side corner.
But Swallow all but iced it when he chipped a Will O’Neill rebound past Maxwell and Abbott added a 20-foot wrister through the five-hole off a two-on-one.
Wilson finished with 16 saves on 19 shots before Josh Seeley finished up. Seeley didn’t have to make a save.
Maxwell wound up with 29 saves for Team USA, which is now 18-11-1.
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