The University of Maine hockey team’s road woes continued Friday night.
The Black Bears failed to score despite a 17-7 shots-on-goal edge in the first period, and the University of Vermont Catamounts made them pay dearly in the second period by scoring four unanswered goals en route to a 6-2 Hockey East victory at the Gutterson Fieldhouse.
Vermont improved to 7-3-1 overall with its third-straight win. Vermont is 3-2 in Hockey East.
UMaine fell to 4-7-2 and 1-4, respectively, and the Black Bears are now winless in their last 12 road games (0-10-2) dating back to a 5-4 win at UMass on Jan. 30. UMaine is now 1-7-2 over its last 10 games and 0-4-2 on the road.
The teams will play again at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Ross Colton’s third goal in two games opened the scoring 1:26 into the second period as he converted a breakaway.
Rob Darrar scored the next two goals, and Rob Hamilton’s power play goal made it 4-0 before UMaine’s Rob Michel converted a Mitch Fossier pass to make it 4-1 with 29 seconds left in the period.
Freshman Derek Lodermeier extended the Vermont lead to 5-1 with his first career goal at the 6:13 mark of the third period, and that ended the evening for UMaine sophomore goalie Rob McGovern, who finished with 18 saves on 23 shots.
Stephen Mundinger came on to replace him and stopped all seven shots he faced.
Freshman Patrick Holway scored his first career goal for UMaine to pull the Black Bears within 5-2. However, while enjoying a five-on-three power play late in the game with Mundinger pulled in favor of an extra attacker, UMaine’s Chase Pearson made an errant pass back to the vacated point, and it rolled all the way down into the Black Bear net.
Mario Puskarich was credited with the goal.
Freshman goalie Stefanos Lekkas, who entered the game with the nation’s seventh-best goals-against-average (1.72) and eighth-best save percentage (.932) made 10 Grade-A (high-percentage) in the first period to keep it tied.
He wound up with 36 saves.
“He played very well,” said UMaine coach Red Gendron. “If we had gotten a couple goals there, it’s a different game. It would have changed the complexion of the game.”
UMaine had a five-on-three that spanned 1:32 and, on the faceoff to start the two-man advantage, a Catamount broke his stick and was without one for several seconds.
But the Black Bears failed to convert as Lekkas came up with several important stops, including some during a couple of wild scrambles.
“He made some good stops,” said UMaine senior right wing and assistant captain Blaine Byron, who had his six-game points streak snapped. “We didn’t capitalize on our chances and that was the difference.”
“We’ve got to make it more difficult for him to see pucks,” said senior center and captain Cam Brown.
Vermont freshman Colton gave the Catamounts a lead they would never relinquish when he outskated a Black Bear defenseman to a loose puck in the neutral zone and broke in alone on McGovern.
Colton moved the puck from his forehand to backhand and tucked it inside the left post before McGovern could slide back across.
Darrar expanded the lead at the 6:38 mark when he one-timed a shot from the top of the left circle past McGovern after Brendan Bradley had stickhandled neatly and passed it over to him.
Darrar scored again at the 11:02 mark on a breakaway as he chipped the puck around UMaine defenseman Sam Becker and broke in alone before beating McGovern with a short wrister to the blocker side.
Hamilton made it 4-0 with a screened shot from the left point before Michel scored for UMaine with a one-timer off Fossier’s feed.
“We did many good things, but we made some mistakes letting people get behind us, and it cost us,” said Gendron. “We have to eliminate those errors of positioning and awareness.
“The kids followed the game plan, they managed the puck pretty well, they got the puck deep, and they put rubber on the goalie. We had 38 shots. But you can’t give up breakaways, and we took some penalties we shouldn’t have,” he added.
Vermont went 1-for-6 on the power play while holding UMaine scoreless on seven chances.
The Catamounts have killed off the last 21 power plays, and UMaine is in an 0-for-23 drought with the man advantage.