ORONO, Maine — After a forgettable regular season in which they won just eight games, started the campaign 0-8-3 and then ended the regular season with seven losses in their last eight games, the University of Maine’s 11th-place Black Bears will have a shot at redemption this weekend when they return to Matthews Arena to take on sixth seed Northeastern in the Hockey East playoffs.
Games are 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and, if necessary, Sunday in the best-of-three first-round series.
The Huskies swept the Black Bears 5-3 and 7-1 this past weekend to run their winning streak to seven games and are 14-1-2 over their last 17 games.
The Black Bears were without senior left winger and alternate captain Will Merchant on Saturday because of an undisclosed injury. UMaine head coach Red Gendron said he is hopeful his team’s leading goal scorer will be available on Friday night. Merchant has 13 goals including three in his last three games.
Northeastern is 16-13-5 overall and wound up 10-8-4 in Hockey East, and UMaine is 8-22-6 and 5-15-2, respectively.
“Our record stinks, but you just have to forget about it and move on,” said junior center Cam Brown. “It’s a whole new season. If you get hot at the right time, anything is possible. You can make a run.”
Junior left wing Blaine Byron said his team has shown it can play with Northeastern.
“We carried the play for most of the game on Friday, but we didn’t get the outcome we wanted,” he said. “We ran into penalty trouble on Saturday, and that let them take over the momentum. We have to be a little more disciplined.”
Northeastern went 4-for-7 on the power play.
On Friday night, UMaine outshot Northeastern 37-26 and gave Northeastern just two power-play chances.
The players said they have proven to themselves that they can compete against the top teams in the country as evidenced by their 3-3 tie with No. 1 Quinnipiac, 1-1 tie with No. 2 North Dakota and 1-0 overtime loss to No. 4 Providence, and that will serve as a confidence booster entering the series.
“Nothing truly matters now except what happens on Friday night,” third-year coach Gendron said. “What’s past is past, we can’t change it. But we have an opportunity, and we will be prepared to do what we have to do to succeed. Then it becomes a question of doing it.
“We might have deserved better results at times, but we didn’t get them, and that is reality. The effort, the intensity and the commitment to getting better has been there all year long. Everybody has to do what they need to do for us to be successful,” he added. “Northeastern is obviously very good on the power play, so we have to make sure our discipline is pure.”