ORONO, Maine — The University of Maine’s suddenly-resurgent power play had a night to remember on Friday evening.
The Black Bears scored five power-play goals on seven chances, all over the first two periods including three off the stick of freshman center Chase Pearson, and they went on to post a 5-3 victory over American International College of Springfield, Massachusetts, at Alfond Arena.
UMaine improved to 6-9-3 and AIC fell to 3-7-6.
AIC had just 16 skaters after three players were suspended for missing the team bus. All three will be available when the two teams play again at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.
UMaine has now scored nine power play goals in its 19 opportunities spanning the last four games.
It was the first time UMaine has scored five power play goals since it had five in a 10-1 win over St. Lawrence in Portland on Nov. 28, 2009.
“We’ve been working on the power play a lot,” said UMaine senior center Cam Brown, who had three assists and now has three goals and 14 assists over his last nine games.
Senior right wing Blaine Byron also had three assists for UMaine.
“Our power play has been good for a while but it hasn’t always gotten the results,” said UMaine coach Red Gendron. “Tonight we executed that much better and we got the results.”
Gendron was also happy about his penalty-prone team’s discipline as AIC had just three power plays, converting on one of them.
Pearson said picking up his first collegiate hat trick and notching a win is a “great feeling.
“I’m pretty excited about it.”
UMaine’s Matt Morris, making his first start since Nov. 4, finished with 26 saves, and Alex Murray had 34 for the Atlantic Hockey League visitors.
Freshmen Mitch Fossier and Patrick Holway also scored as UMaine used four consecutive goals to erase a 2-1 deficit and build a 5-2 lead.
The Yellow Jackets had a pair of one-goal leads in the first period courtesy of goals from Johnny Mueller and Blake Christensen. Shawn McBride added a power play goal with 2:27 left in the game to pull AIC within two.
Pearson answered the Mueller goal before Fossier tied it 2-2 with 9.8 seconds left in the period.
Pearson gave UMaine its first lead at the 11:31 mark of the middle period when he finished off a pretty passing sequence involving Byron and Brown.
Byron fed the puck from the top of the left circle to Brown behind the net, and he quickly slipped the puck to Pearson for a 12-foot one-timer from the left circle.
“I just tried to pop out to the hash mark,” said Pearson.
Holway expanded the lead 3:30 later when he took a Patrick Shea pass at the midpoint and wristed the puck past the glove side of a screened Murray.
“I walked the blue line and took the shot. Coach is always telling us to get shots on net, good things will happen,” said Holway.
Pearson capped his hat trick with 3:09 left in the period when he deflected Byron’s waist-high wrister past Murray.
Mueller opened the scoring for AIC 5:55 into the game courtesy of some nifty work by Austin Orszulak.
Orszulak used his quick feet to free himself behind the net and fed a perfect feed to the oncoming Mueller, who one-timed the puck past Morris.
Pearson scored the equalizer with a 15-foot one-timer off a Brown pass out from behind the net but Christensen restored the lead when he came off the bench on a line change and one-timed a 45-footer past Morris from a Hugo Reinhardt feed.
But Fossier scored with 9.8 seconds left in the period when he jammed home a Holway rebound that popped out of Murray’s glove.
AIC first-year coach Eric Lang credited UMaine for its “great execution” on the power play.
“I didn’t mind the way we played five-on-five. I think it was fairly even and we may have even had more chances five-on-five. But we didn’t do a very good job on the penalty kill,” said Lang who mentioned that the Black Bears gave them an unexpected look on the power play with Brown positioned behind the extended goal line.
“We’ve been trying some different things,” said Brown.
“We’ve got to make adjustments,” said Lang who added that he was pleased with his team’s play in the third period.
AIC outshot UMaine 12-6 in the final period.