The University of Maine men’s hockey team had a roller coaster first half of its season and aims to make serious inroads with a favorable schedule when the second half gets underway Sunday.
The Black Bears are set for a 4 p.m. home contest against an experienced American International College team from Springfield, Massachusetts, that pulled off one of the greatest upsets in NCAA Tournament history a year ago.
UMaine is 8-8-3 while the Yellow Jackets are 8-8-1.
AIC won the Atlantic Hockey Tournament last winter to earn the program’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament and promptly knocked off top-seeded St. Cloud State 2-1 in the West Regional semifinals in Fargo, North Dakota, before being eliminated by Denver 3-0.
The Black Bears got off to a promising 7-3-2 start this season before a semester-ending seven-game stretch of road games yielded a 1-5-1 nosedive. That includes the team’s current three-game losing streak, in which they have been outscored 12-3.
The Black Bears, who are 4-6-2 in Hockey East, will play eight of their final nine games home at Alfond Arena, including seven in a row from Jan. 31 to Feb. 23.
UMaine is 5-0-1 at Alfond Arena this season and 3-8-2 on the road.
The UMaine players were disappointed by their recent road stretch but feel they learned a lot and are anxious to resume play.
“We know when we play our game and execute our systems we’re one of the best teams in the country. But when we don’t, we don’t have much success,” senior captain and right wing Mitch Fossier said.
“We’ve had time off to think and reflect. It’s easy to get caught up in the big picture. When you do that, you lose sight of the little things [you need to do to win]. You take shortcuts and develop bad habits.”
Senior center Patrick Shea said the break enabled the players to clear their minds.
“We can’t get down and have doubts,” he said. “We have to be positive. It was hard to be on the road that long, especially when you have 10-hour bus trips. But that’s not an excuse. We have to have that warrior mentality. We can’t take any days off. We have to bring it every day.”.
A lack of goal production has been UMaine’s most prominent flaw.
UMaine has scored just one goal in each of its last four games and has scored two goals or fewer in 13 of its 19 games. The Black Bears rank 41st among 60 Division I teams in goals per game (2.37).
“In the beginning, we did a real good job [scoring]. But we got away from what made us good, scoring those dirty goals [around the crease] and stuff like that,” senior center and assistant captain Tim Doherty said.
Fossier said the team’s identity is that of a strong, physical forechecking squad that must make good dump-ins and crisp passes to create opportunities.
“It’s clear we need to do a better job getting more pucks and bodies to the net more consistently,” UMaine coach Red Gendron said. “We have had quite a few games when we’ve had some great opportunities but missed the net.”
The players are excited to have so many home games left and Gendron said his team will be fresher because of it.
“We will have an opportunity to train more in the gym and get stronger and we will be able to refine our individual skills as well as what we do as a team,” he said.
Eight of UMaine’s final 12 Hockey East games are at Alfond Arena, including six against teams that are either tied with them or below them in the standings (UConn, Merrimack and Vermont).
“Being at home is going to be huge for us. We have to do our best to use that to our advantage,” Doherty said.