ORONO, Maine — The University of Maine finally solved Union College All-American senior goalie Colin Stevens and scored its first power-play goal of the season when sophomore center Cam Brown tied Saturday night’s game at the 3:57 mark of the second period at Alfond Arena.
But the defending national champion Dutchmen responded with three straight goals in a span of 6 minutes, 59 seconds to collect their 16th straight victory dating back to last season, 5-2.
The win completed the weekend sweep for the nation’s No. 2 ranked team, which is now 4-0. Union extended its unbeaten streak to 21 games (20-0-1).
Stevens had made 29 saves on Friday night in posting his 10th career shutout, 3-0.
Maine fell to 0-4 and is off to its worst start since the 1982-83 team lost its first 14 games.
The Black Bears were held to two goals or less for the ninth straight game and they have scored only 14 goals in those nine games.
Maine is 1-9 in its last 10 games.
“We competed hard. We had good work habits. At times, we stifled them with our forecheck and our neutral zone forecheck and we had way more scoring chances than we’ve had in any previous game. But we made some mistakes [that proved costly],” said Maine coach Red Gendron.
“The effort was there but sometimes you have games like that,” Maine captain Devin Shore said. “We had some breakdowns [that led to goals]. We didn’t react the way we should have.”
Michael Pontarelli’s power-play goal 1:51 after Brown’s tally gave Union the lead for good and Ryan Scarfo converted a two-on-one 1:41 later. Freshman Scarfo’s first collegiate goal came seconds after Maine had failed to convert its own 2-on-1 when Stevens kicked out the shot.
Daniel Ciampini, whose first-period goal staked Union to a 1-0 lead, expanded the margin at the 12:47 mark of the period.
Freshman defenseman J.C. Brassard scored his first goal in a Union uniform on the power play 8:44 into the third period before Brown scored his second of the game at the expense of backup goalie Alex Sakellaropoulos with 2:22 remaining.
Union coach Rick Bennett said the environment at the Alfond Arena, with the large and vociferous crowd of 4,657, and the physical play gave the game a playoff feel to it and “our guys responded well.”
Maine carried the play for the first 16 minutes of the first period but Stevens was sharp and the Dutchmen took a 1-0 lead into the intermission when Ciampini, who had a team-high 23 goals last season, scored with a one-timer from the right circle off a pretty give-and-go with Jeff Taylor.
Brown’s tying goal, which snapped Maine’s 0-for-12 power-play drought, came on a wrister from the right circle that deflected in off Steven’s blocker.
But the Dutchmen went on the power play 49 seconds later and Pontarelli stuffed the puck past Maine freshman goalie Sean Romeo from the doorstep during a multiple-shot flurry.
“Coach Bennett and [assistant] coach [Joe] Dumais stressed that they leave the bottom part of the zone open on the power play, so drive the net hard. I put my head down and went to work. I probably hit the puck four times. I kept jamming away at it,” said Pontarelli.
“I would say that was the number one goal of the game because it was a hard goal,” said Bennett. “I told the boys they had to take the puck hard to the net because that was what Maine was doing to us.”
Scarfo made it 3-1 when he took a pass from Noah Henry, carried the puck down the right wing on the two-on-one and beat Romeo to the far corner with a shot along the ice from the right faceoff circle. Stevens also picked up an assist.
Gendron replaced Romeo with junior Matt Morris to try to “change the momentum of the game” and Morris made some good stops before Ciampini was left unattended at the near post and redirected Mike Vecchione’s pass into the far corner.
Brassard made it 5-1 with a screened slap shot from the midpoint before Brown snapped home a Brian Morgan rebound.
Stevens finished with 27 saves on 28 shots and Sakellaropoulos made four on five. Ciampini had an assist to go with his two goals and linemate Vecchione had three assists. Defenseman Jeff Taylor had two assists.
Romeo made 21 saves on 24 shots and Morris had 13 on 15.