ORONO, Maine —- The Colgate University Raiders ran out of gas in the third period of Friday night’s 3-1 loss to the University of Maine but they certainly had plenty in the tank Saturday night at Alfond Arena.
Despite being without three injured regulars, skating just three lines most of the weekend and with seldom-used back-up goalie Zac Hamilton between the pipes, the Raiders received four assists from Tyson Spink and a goal and two assists from his twin brother and linemate Tylor en route to a convincing 5-1 victory over the lackluster Black Bears.
Hamilton made 28 saves including eight Grade-A stops, while Matt Morris had 23 for Maine of which 13 were Grade-A’s.
Colgate is now 6-14-1 after snapping its four-game losing streak, while Maine is 5-12-4, including a 1-4-1 mark in its last six.
Third-period goals 4:46 apart by Mike Borkowski, Evan Peterson and Tylor Spink broke open a close game and helped Colgate deal Maine its first home loss since a 6-0 setback to University of Massachusetts Lowell Nov. 15, 2015.
Maine had been 5-0-1 in its previous six home games.
A second-period goal by Colgate’s Jake Kulevich snapped a 1-1 tie and gave the Raiders the lead for good.
Darcy Murphy had supplied Colgate with a 1-0 lead on the power play in the first period but Dan Renouf tied it in the second period.
“I was really pleased with our effort tonight. We found the back of the net and that’s something we haven’t done in a long time,” Colgate coach Don Vaughan said at the post-game press conference. “Obviously, the guy sitting next to me [Tyson Spink] had a lot to do with that.”
“We wanted to come back strong tonight,” Spink said. “We knew they would come out hard but we wanted to try to outcompete them and that’s what made us successful. This was a good team win.”
He also said he and his brother “didn’t have great games on Friday so we knew we needed to be better tonight.”
The Raiders set the tone early by holding UMaine to one shot on goal over the first 14 minutes and carrying a 12-3 edge in shots on goal after the first period.
A wide open Murphy scored with 2:43 left in the first period by one-timing a perfect cross-ice pass by Tyson Spink behind the helpless Morris.
It was the sixth straight time UMaine has surrendered the game’s first goal.
“The slow starts have killed us all year,” Maine junior defenseman Renouf said. “Kudos to them for coming out hard. We didn’t match it. We have to get these slow starts out of our game completely.”
Renouf tied it by working a nifty give-and-go with Dane Gibson and one-timing a 25-foot wrister over the glove of Hamilton but Kulevich responded just 1:46 later.
UMaine generated a three-on-two rush but it broke down and Colgate came back up the ice on a three-on-three wth Tyson Spink carrying the puck down the left wing.
Kulevich joined the rush as the trailer and there was nobody anywhere near him when he accepted the pass from Spink, took three strides and wristed a 25-footer over the blocker of Morris.
“They did a great job covering our two men but I heard [Kulevich] calling for it. He had beaten his man up the ice. I laid it over to him and he did the rest of the work. It was a great shot by him,” Tyson Spink said.
UMaine coach Red Gendron explained that one of his players came to the bench for a line change instead of remaining on the ice to cover Kulevich like he should have.
“You can’t change until it’s the right time,” an irritated Gendron said.
“That was a tough goal to give up, especially since we had a three-on-two the other way, but kudos to them again for responding to our goal,” Renouf said. “You’ve got to be strong defensively a few minutes after goals each way.”
Borkowski extended the lead on the power play 5:26 into the third period when he finished off a well-executed passing sequence by one-timing a Tylor Spink pass past Morris.
“My brother faked a shot before getting it over to Borkowski and he did the rest by putting it in the open net,” said Tyson Spink, the older of the twins by 18 minutes.
A hooking penalty on Daniel Perez had created the power play and Gendron considered it a needless stick foul.
“The way our team is currently constructed, we can’t afford to do anything that makes it any harder on ourselves,” Gendron said.
Peterson made it 4-1 off a two-on-one as he jammed home the rebound of a shot by Adam Dauda, who had maneuvered neatly around a Maine defenseman before shooting.
Tylor Spink capped the scoring with a rising wrister past Morris’ glove from the left circle off a pass from his twin at the 10:12 mark.
Maine attempted 70 shots in the game to Colgate’s 52 but, as has been the case for much of the season, the Black Bears hurt themselves by getting shots blocked and missing the net. Colgate blocked 20 shots and Maine missed the net 20 times.
It was the 11th time this season UMaine has scored one goal or fewer.
Gendron said his team didn’t do a good job of getting pucks and bodies to the net and they also passed up shots in order to try to make another play.
“We’re making a lot of goalies look good because we aren’t getting bodies in front and we aren’t bearing down and getting pucks to the net. We’ve got to make sure we shoot [to create] rebounds,” Renouf said.
“We’ve got to make smart plays, make them quickly and not second-guess ourselves,” UMaine senior left wing Will Merchant said.
Special teams were also important because Colgate went 2-for-3 with the man advantage while Maine went 0-for-5 and has been held without a power play goal in five of its last six games.
“Their power play goals were pivotal,” said Gendron whose Black Bears will host the University of Connecticut for a pair of Hockey East games next weekend.