The University of Maine men’s hockey team’s road miseries continued Friday night in Burlington, Vermont.
With goalie Brody Hoffman on the bench in favor of the extra attacker, Mario Puskarich tied it with 58.6 seconds left in regulation and Mike Stenerson won it in with 1:47 left in overtime as the University of Vermont rallied to beat the Black Bears 4-3 Friday night at the Gutterson Fieldhouse.
Maine is now 1-14-3 in its last 18 road games dating back to the start of last season.
Vermont improved to 5-1-1 overall, 3-1-1 in Hockey East, while Maine fell to 3-5-1 and 2-1 after having its four-game unbeaten streak snapped.
The teams will play again Saturday at 7:05 p.m.
Maine coach Red Gendron was irate after seeing his team get outshot 17-5 over the final 23:13 including 16-4 in the third period.
“We got back on our heels in the third period. We aren’t mentally tough enough,” said an angry Gendron.
Maine captain Devin Shore concurred.
“We didn’t play well enough in the third period to win. We didn’t match (Vermont’s intensity). If you’re going to win in this league, you’ve got to finish games out and we didn’t do that,” said Shore.
Cam Brown’s power-play goal with one second left in the middle period gave the Black Bears a 3-2 lead after the Catamounts had erased a 2-0 deficit.
Shore’s power-play goal opened the scoring at the 12:37 mark of the first period. It was the first power-play goal allowed by the Catamounts, who had killed off the previous 19 man-advantages.
Maine’s Connor Leen expanded the lead with 30 seconds remaining in the period.
But center Colin Markison, whose goal with 41 seconds left in regulation earned the Catamounts a 2-2 tie at Notre Dame last Saturday night, scored a pair of second-period goals to tie it.
Vermont swarmed the Maine end looking for the equalizer in the third period but Matt Morris came up with a number of clutch saves among his 15 in the period until Puskarich found some open ice in the middle of the slot, took a pass from Alexx Privitera and fired a wrist shot through a maze of players over Morris’ blocker.
“There were bodies in front and I didn’t get a clean look at the shot,” said Morris. “It was a good shot but, at the same time, there’s always something I could have done better.”
The Catamounts carried the momentum into the overtime and Stenerson scored the game-winner by getting to the net front and tipping Mike Paliotta’s wrister from the right point past Morris’ glove.
“(Paliotta’s shot) was going one way and, at the last minute, it got deflected (by Stenerson) and changed directions,” said Morris. “It went short side past my glove.”
Shore extended his goal-scoring streak to three games when he took a pass from Brown with his back to the goal, spun around and maneuvered the puck past the goalie.
Leen made it 2-0 when he pounced on a loose puck, broke in alone on Hoffman and fired it past him.
Markison cut the lead in half on the power play as he jammed home the rebound of a Paliotta point shot and he drew the Catamounts level by roofing a backhander off his own rebound.
Brown gave Maine the lead by swiping the puck past Hoffman during a scramble in front.
Vermont outshot Maine 37-24.