After a tough 1-5-1 stretch entering the semester break, with all seven games on the road, the University of Maine men’s hockey team enjoyed some home-state cooking by putting together a three-game unbeaten streak (2-0-1).
After sandwiching wins over American International College (5-1) and Omaha (3-2) around a 2-2 overtime tie with Omaha, the Black Bears will spend most of their ice time practicing in the coming weeks.
UMaine (10-8-4 overall, 4-6-2 HE), plays only two games between now and a Jan. 24-25 series at Boston College.
One of them is Saturday night’s exhibition contest at Alfond Arena in Orono against the United States National Team Development Program Under-18 squad. The other game in that span is a Jan. 15 Hockey East midweek game in Bridgeport against the University of Connecticut.
“[The schedule] is what it is. The league sets the schedule. I don’t have any control over it,” UMaine head coach Red Gendron said. “Quite frankly, I don’t care. You just go out and play the games.”
Each team plays 12 home games and 12 away games in Hockey East conference play.
UMaine is 6-0-2 at Alfond Arena this season and 3-8-2 on the road. The second Omaha game, played in Portland, was considered a neutral-site contest.
UMaine returns to playing two-game weekend series to end the month when it visits Boston College, which is ranked fourth in this week’s United States College Hockey Online poll. That kicks off a stretch of four, two-game sets in five weeks.
After the BC series, UMaine will have played 11 of its first 15 Hockey East games on the road. The Black Bears finish with eight of their final nine league games at Alfond Arena.
In the meantime, UMaine will have extra time to focus on itself rather than opponents.
“With all the practice time, we will have the opportunity to improve our fitness and strength and work on individual skill development,” Gendron said. “We have to use our practice time smartly. You get to this point in the season, the players just want to play games. You need to keep them sharp mentally.”
There also will be an opportunity to do some extra prep for upcoming opponents.
Gendron said the last three games have been important in reinforcing the team’s approach.
“It is pretty clear to us what works and who we are in terms of our identity,” Gendron said. “We have to maintain our focus on things that make us good.
“We have to get better defensively,” he said. “We have to remain diligent. We haven’t arrived at anything yet.”
UMaine’s identity is being a physical team that needs to get the puck deep and use its size and strength to sustain the forecheck and attack the net.
By scoring 10 goals in those three games, UMaine snapped out of a drought during which it had manufactured only four goals in its previous four games.
The top line of senior center Tim Doherty (2 goals, 2 assists), between senior left wing Mitch Fossier (1 & 4) and junior right wing Eduards Tralmaks (2 & 2) combined for five goals and eight assists in the three games.
Doherty was named the co-Hockey East Player of the Week.
Fossier (4 & 21), Doherty (9 & 13) and Tralmaks (11 & 7) are UMaine’s top three scorers this season.
The Black Bears also received two goals from senior right wing Patrick Shea, who ended a seven-game goal-scoring drought against AIC, and a goal apiece from freshman center A.J. Drobot, senior left wing Sam Rennaker and junior defenseman Veli-Matti Tiuraniemi.
“We hit a rough patch when it came to scoring. It is a little bit better now but it hasn’t been solved yet,” Gendron said. “We need to work on all the things we need to do to create offense.”
UMaine is averaging 2.5 goals per game and ranks 40th among 60 Division I programs.
The improvement of an inexperienced defense and the goaltending of junior Jeremy Swayman have been pivotal in the recent success.
Swayman, a fourth-round pick of the Boston Bruins, has a .958 save percentage in the last three games and his overall .936 save percentage ranks eighth best in the nation.
The team also is eighth in penalty-killing at 88 percent.
Gendron said he will play everybody in Saturday’s exhibition game, including back-up goalies Stephen Mundinger and Matt Thiessen.
“We want to win the game but we need to make sure we give all the players an opportunity to show what they can do,” Gendron said.