The University of Maine men’s hockey team built a two-goal lead but third-period goals 6:06 apart by Tom Forgione and Derek Lodermeier enabled the University of Vermont Catamounts to earn a 2-2 Hockey East tie at the Gutterson Fieldhouse in Burlington, Vemont, on Saturday afternoon.
UMaine had received second-period goals just 1:05 apart from Brendan Robbins and Patrick Shea to forge a 2-0 lead.
UMaine (4-7-3 overall, 1-4-1 HE) extended its winless streak in road games to 13 (0-10-3), including 0-4-3 this season.
Vermont (7-3-2, 3-2-1 HE) had its three-game winning streak snapped.
UMaine sophomore goalie Rob McGovern finished with 43 saves, 23 of which were of the Grade-A (high-percentage) variety, while Vermont freshman Stefanos Lekkas wound up with 24, including 14 Grade-A stops.
“We played hard all game long,” said UMaine coach Red Gendron. “We wanted two points (for a win). We didn’t get it, so we move forward.
“They had more shots but we had just as many good chances,” added Gendron. “McGovern played real well and we did a lot better job defensively than we did on Friday (a 6-2 loss).”
The Black Bears surrendered a number of breakaways on Friday night and UVM scored on two of them but Gendron said his team did a better job preventing them on Saturday.
“The defense played well, they kept (the Catamounts) to the outside,” said McGovern. “We had a lot of energy throughout the game. We played hard.”
“We battled all weekend,” said UMaine junior left wing Nolan Vesey. “If it wasn’t for a couple of bounces we could have snuck out of here with a win.”
One of those bounces came on Lodermeier’s second goal of the season. He flipped it into the offensive zone and it appeared to be going wide but McGovern went to play the puck and it deflected in off him.
“I’m not sure what happened,” said McGovern. “It looked like it was going wide and then it took a weird bounce off the ice.”
Lodermeier had also picked up an assist on Forgione’s goal as Forgione swatted in a rebound for his third of the season.
Robbins opened the scoring with his first goal as he fired the puck past Lekkas from the high slot with Keith Muehlbauer and Sam Becker assisting.
Shea expanded the lead with his third when he scored from the right circle off a Vesey drop pass.
“(Shea) made a nice shot. Credit to him,” said Vesey.
UMaine lost the services of freshman right wing Mitch Fossier in the first period when he dove after a puck and slid into the boards. He appeared to suffer an upper-body injury.
UMaine went 0-for-3 on the power play and that extended its scoreless streak to 26 straight with the man advantage.
One of UMaine’s power plays was a five-minute major.
Vermont has killed off the opponents’ last 24 power plays.
The Black Bears will return to the ice on Saturday night at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland when they take on ECAC team Brown University (1-7).
It will be the second of three games the Black Bears play in Portland this season.
They lost to Boston College 6-1 on Nov. 4 and will play the University of Notre Dame on Friday, Feb. 10.