The University of Maine men’s hockey team made several positive strides a year ago under first-year coach Red Gendron.
One of the exceptions was its road record.
The Black Bears won just one of the team’s 16 road games, going a dismal 1-12-3, including a pair of season-opening losses at St. Lawrence 3-1 and 5-2.
The Black Bears have traveled through four time zones to Anchorage, Alaska, for its season opener and would like to get off to a fast start and not wait until February to register a first road win like it did last year.
A 2-1 triumph at Notre Dame represented Maine’s only road victory in 2013-14.
The Black Bears will take on Alaska-Anchorage on an Olympic-sized ice sheet (100-by-200 feet) midnight Friday at the Sullivan Arena before facing off against Alaska-Fairbanks at 8 p.m. Saturday.
“We want to get those first road wins out of the way right away so it doesn’t become something we’re thinking about,” said senior center Stu Higgins. “We’ve got a whole new team, so I don’t expect it to be a problem this year.”
Junior center Devin Shore also is eager to begin.
“If we want to do well this year, we’ve got to learn how to win on the road,” he said. “It’s going to be a great battle.”
There will be two faces with Maine ties in the arena on Friday night who will be on the opposing bench.
Alaska-Anchorage second-year head coach Matt Thomas was a volunteer assistant at Maine for the 2000-01 and 2001-02 seasons.
And his volunteer assistant coach is former Black Bear hard-nosed winger Barrett Heisten, a native of Anchorage. Heisten’s brother, Chris, also played for the Black Bears.
Thomas cherished his two seasons in Orono and said it was instrumental in his evolution as a coach.
“It was everything to me,” said the 39-year-old Thomas. “It gave me all the things you need to be a coach. It gave me the framework.”
He said he learned a tremendous amount from the late Shawn Walsh, Tim Whitehead, who succeeded Walsh as head coach after he died in September, 2001, and former assistant coach-recruiting coordinator Grant Standbrook.
And he said he is really looking forward to returning to Orono later this month.
Thomas still keeps tabs on the program and has watched DVDs of the Gendron-coached Black Bears several times over the last year.
“They have speed and guys who make plays, and they come at you in waves,” said Thomas. “They’re a team that’s in your face. They work hard.”
He noted that the teams have a lot of similarities, particularly in goal where both teams are inexperienced.
“We have a goalie, [Mike Matyas], who played in just seven games as a freshman last year, and our other two goalies are freshmen,” said Thomas.
Maine’s Matt Morris played in six games as a freshman two years ago before sitting out last season because of hip surgery, and he is backed up by freshmen Sean Romeo and Nik Nugnes.
Each team had two senior goalies last season.