ORONO, Maine — There were a couple of brief power outages at the Alfond Arena on Friday night during the University of Maine-Northeastern hockey game, but there was no shortage of power on the ice.
Junior left wing Nolan Stevens’ goal just 12 seconds into overtime gave the visiting Huskies a thrilling 5-4 Hockey East victory over the Black Bears at Alfond.
UMaine’s Nolan Vesey forced the overtime by scoring with 9:07 left in the third period.
Right off the faceoff to start the overtime, Zach Aston-Reese burst down the right wing and flipped the puck to the net front.
It hit a UMaine stick and sat at the edge of the crease where Stevens roofed a backhander over the shoulder of UMaine goalie Rob McGovern.
“I was trying to get it to the net,” said Aston-Reese, who leads the nation in goals and notched his 28th and 29th of the season earlier in the game. “Everyone says in overtime, get the puck to the net and good things will happen. I threw it to the net, and it took a fortunate bounce right to Nolan.”
Ryan Ruck overcame a rocky start to make 19 saves for Northeastern including a game-saving gem off Ryan Smith with 1:35 left in regulation.
The puck pinballed to Smith in the middle of the slot but Ruck cut down the angle and absorbed Smith’s 18-footer in his chest.
Rob McGovern had 30 saves for UMaine.
Vesey had tied it off a breakaway as he gathered in a loose puck at center ice, raced past an NU defenseman and roofed a backhander before Ruck could slide across.
Northeastern’s win was its fifth in a row and the Huskies improved to 16-12-5 overall, 9-9-3 in Hockey East. They also sewed up a home ice berth for the first round of the Hockey East playoffs.
It was the third straight overtime win for NU over UMaine as the Huskies eliminated the Black Bears in the first round of the Hockey East playoffs 3-2 and 4-3.
UMaine, playing in its third straight overtime goal after losing and tying at Merrimack last weekend, fell to 10-19-4 and 4-15-2. The 11th-place Black Bears are now winless in their last seven games (0-6-1) entering the season finale with Northeastern on Seniors Night Saturday.
The Black Bears will travel to either Providence or Vermont for the best-of-three first round series next weekend.
UMaine took a 2-0 lead for the fourth straight game as Mark Hamilton and Brendan Robbins scored 54 seconds apart early in the first period, but Aston-Reese got one back at the 14:22 mark of the first period.
Late second-period, power-play goals 52 seconds apart by Adam Gaudette and Aston-Reese supplied the Huskies with a 3-2 lead.
Blaine Byron tied it just 47 seconds into the third period, but Gaudette restored the lead just 31 seconds later before Vesey forced the overtime.
“We’ve said it all year long. … It’s about playing 60 minutes,” said UMaine senior left wing and assistant captain Byron, who had his 17th goal of the season for UMaine and extended his goal-scoring streak to four games. “We’ve had some ups and downs, but we’ve got to be able to stay even keel throughout the game and build on the lead. We can’t let teams slip back into the game.”
“It’s been the same story all year,” junior left wing Vesey said. “If we played a full 60 minutes, we would have won the game and we can beat anybody.”
The Black Bears were the consummate opportunists in the first period as they scored with their first two shots on goal to take a 2-0 lead before Aston-Reese scored with 5:38 left in the period.
Byron set up Hamilton’s goal with some nifty stickhandling behind the net and a perfect pass which enabled Hamilton to one-time the puck past Ruck from the top of the left faceoff circle.
Robbins expanded the lead as he darted down the right wing and took a shot that hit the post and came right back to him. Robbins fired the puck from just beyond the extended goal line and it sailed behind Ruck and inside the far post.
Aston-Reese began the NU comeback when he put a move on Hamilton and got around the defenseman before cutting in on a tight angle and flipping the puck off McGovern’s stick into the net.
Gaudette tied it with his Division I-leading 15th power-play goal as he nudged the puck across the goal line after Dylan Sikura’s wrister from the left-wing circle trickled between the pads of McGovern.
Aston-Reese made it 3-2 when he received a pass from John Stevens in the slot, moved laterally from right to left and snapped a 20-foot wrist shot over McGovern’s glove.
Byron tied it 47 seconds into the third period when Robbins’ shot deflected off an NU stick to the far post and Byron swung around the net and backhanded it home.
An unattended Gaudette answered by one-timing a cross-ice pass from Sikura into the short side corner.
“They came out and got the two-goal lead but we responded well,” senior right wing and assistant captain Aston-Reese said. “Good teams find ways to win. It wasn’t our best effort for sure but it was nice to get two points.”
“We didn’t play to our identity,” Northeastern coach Jim Madigan said. “We played (well) in spurts. But we found a way to get two points, and that’s important this time of year. It was an average game at best for us. Our skilled players made some plays for us at key times.”
Sikura and Gaudette picked up their 50th points of the season to join Aston-Reese and supply NU with three 50-point scorers for the first time since 1975-76.
Aston-Reese had an assist to go with his two goals. Gaudette scored his 24th and 25th of the season. Sikura had three assists and John Stevens had two. Nolan Stevens had a goal and an assist.
Robbins had two assists to accompany his goal. Byron had an assist to go with his goal.
UMaine was without injured top-scoring defenseman Rob Michel, who has eight goals and 10 assists.