The University of Maine men’s hockey team continued to prosper on the road on Saturday.
Five different players scored as the Black Bears erased a 2-0 deficit to beat Merrimack 5-3 and complete a weekend sweep at the Lawler Rink in North Andover, Massachusetts.
Maine is now 4-0-1 in its last five road games and is 7-9-2 in Hockey East and 12-17-3 overall.
Merrimack fell to 5-11-2 and 14-13-3 and has lost five straight.
The win enabled Maine to pull into a tie with UConn for eighth place and the final home ice berth for the first round of the Hockey East best-of-three playoffs.
UConn owns the tiebreaker courtesy of its win and tie vs. Maine but Maine has played one fewer game.
Merrimack had been 9-2-2 at home entering the Maine series and was 5-0-1 in Maine’s previous six visits to the Lawler Rink.
But Maine won Friday night’s game 4-3.
Maine received unanswered second-period goals from Steven Swavely, Cedric Lacroix, Brian Morgan and Nolan Vesey to offset goals by Merrimack’s Hampus Gustafsson and Jace Hennig and take a lead it would never relinquish.
It was the first time this season that Maine has scored four goals in a period.
Gustafsson’s power-play goal 2:18 into the third period closed the gap but Maine’s Blaine Byron added an empty-net goal with eight seconds left.
“We got behind 2-0 but we battled back,” said Maine coach Red Gendron. “We didn’t play as well as we did Friday night but we played more than well enough to win and the most important thing is that we won.”
“We didn’t get out to the start that we wanted, going down 2-0, but we showed how resilient we are,” said freshman left wing Vesey.
“With the exception of the back-to-back shifts where they scored their first two goals, we played a solid road game,” said junior center-right wing Swavely. “We did what we had to do to keep them from getting many Grade-A (high-percentage) scoring opportunities. We did a good job defensively and we turned that (defensive pressure) into offense in the second period.”
Gustafsson beat Maine goalie Matt Morris from the faceoff circle to open the scoring 16 seconds into the second period and Hennig scored from the low slot just 46 seconds later.
But Swavely answered 28 seconds after Hennig’s goal.
“That was a huge goal. It got us going,” said Vesey.
“Brian Morgan carried the puck into their zone, shut down and got it to Dan Renouf at the point,” said Swavely. “It was my job to get to the net and Dan did a great job getting his shot through. It hit me in the shoulder area and went in. It was lucky but we needed that goal.”
Lacroix tied it on the power play 8:20 later.
“Eric Schurhamer didn’t have a (shooting) lane so I made myself an option for him, he gave it to me and I shot it along the ice between the goalie’s (Rasmus Tirronen) toe and the post,” said Lacroix.
Conor Riley set up Morgan’s go-ahead goal at the 13:07 mark.
“Conor forced a turnover in the neutral zone and got the puck up to me,” said Morgan. “I made a move to the outside and threw a backhander on net that hit the goalie’s shoulder and bounced in.”
Vesey, whose father Jim is Merrimack’s all-time leading scorer, expanded the lead with 2:25 left in the period by finishing off a pretty play involving Devin Shore and Ben Hutton.
“It was like a four-on-three,” said Vesey. “Devin dropped a pass for Hutton and he passed it to me. I was coming down the middle and I shot it blocker side.”
Matt Morris finished with 28 saves while Tirronen, who is 0-5 lifetime against Maine, wound up with 21 stops.
Morgan had an assist to go with his goal and Renouf finished with two assists.
Brian Christie and Ben Bahe had two assists each for Merrimack.
Maine hosts Northeastern University on Friday (7:30) and Saturday (7) nights while Merrimack will travel to Vermont for a pair.