ORONO —- The University of Maine men’s hockey team’s seven-game winning streak came to an end on Saturday night, but it ran its unbeaten streak to eight games.
The Black Bears erased a 3-0 deficit and received a goal from freshman left wing Sully Scholle with just 2:25 remaining to earn a 4-4 tie with Colgate University from the ECAC.
The teams played a scoreless five-minute 3-on-3 overtime with a potential game-winning goal by Colgate junior right wing Brett Chorske waved off due to goaltender interference.
Maine went on to win the shootout 2–0 on goals by brothers Josh and Bradly Nadeau. Freshman goalie Albin Boija stopped both Colgate shots.
The game will go into the books as a tie, and UMaine is now 13-3-2 while Colgate is 6-9-3.
Scholle got the equalizer after a Colgate clearing attempt bounced over to him in the high slot.
He made a nifty move around a Raider and then snapped a 20-foot wrister into the far corner past the blocker of Colgate goalie Carter Gylander.
“I think [Pabich] and [Trudeau] created a turnover. The puck hopped out in the middle, I made a move and I saw the far corner. I think [Gylander] thought I was going to shoot short side, so I had an open net,” said Scholle, whose goal was his fourth of the season and third in his last three games.
Chorske’s second goal of the game broke a 3-3 tie early in the third period.
Simon Labelle slid a nice pass over to Chorske, breaking down the right wing, and he snapped a 20-foot wrist shot into the short side corner the glove of Boija, who had replaced Victor Ostman in the first period after Ostman allowed three goals on six shots.
Boija had made 30 saves in a 3-1 win over Colgate on Friday night.
UMaine sophomore left wing Thomas Freel scored goals just 19 seconds apart in the final 37 seconds of the second period to tie it up at 3-3. The second goal was shorthanded.
The Raiders had stunned the Black Bears by jumping out to a 3-0 lead.
Chorske opened the scoring just 59 seconds into the game with a short side wrister off a Ryan McGuire feed. Junior center McGuire made it 2-0 at the 9:41 by beating Ostman to the short side from a near impossible angle off a Chorske rebound, and sophomore center Daniel Panetta scored on the power play 1:40 later with a wrister past Ostman’s blocker from the low slot off a Labelle pass.
Senior right wing Donavan Houle got one back for the Black Bears just 23 seconds after Panetta’s goal with a one-timer from the right faceoff dot off a Harrison Scott pass.
But the Raiders smothered the Black Bears for the first 19 minutes of the second period, limiting them to few scoring chances and just two shots on goal for the first 12 minutes.
They had chances to extend the lead only to have Boija come up with some important saves.
Freel scored his first goal off a pass from Bradly Nadeau with 37 seconds left in the period, six seconds after a UMaine power play expired.
Nadeau had a one-timer from the left faceoff circle that was stopped nicely by Gylander. But the puck came back to Nadeau, and he passed it across to the right circle where Freel one-timed it past Gylander.
Just seconds later, Freel blocked a pass at the left point and was able to get around a Colgate defenseman and hold him off to break in alone on Gylander.
He pulled it across the crease on his forehand and then slid it to his backhand and reached around Gylander to tap it in.
“Those were two big-time plays by [Freel], and that goal by Sully was really impressive,” said UMaine head coach Ben Barr.
“We really needed a momentum shift, and I was glad I was able to bring that,” said Freel.
He said on his first goal, a UMaine power play was coming to an end, “and we had bodies in front so I threw the puck to the net and, fortunately, it went in.”
On his shorthanded goal, he said he didn’t want to pull the puck across to his forehand because “the backchecker was on my left shoulder, and I thought he might get my stick.”
So he quickly switched to his backhand.
“That goal really hurt us,” said Colgate coach Mike Harder.
Boija finished with 23 saves on 24 shots, and Gylander wound up with 41 stops on 45 shots.
UMaine concluded its non-conference play with an 8-1-1 mark.
“It wasn’t easy,” said Barr. “They’re a good team. They make it really hard. You don’t get any freebies. I give their guys a lot of credit, and I give our guys a lot of credit for coming back. Albin was very good all weekend.”
UMaine senior center and co-captain Lynden Breen said it “feels like a loss” because they should have been able to win in the third period after tying it 3-3, but he and fellow co-captain David Breazeale were proud of the comeback.
“I have mixed emotions,” said Freel. “We showed we have a lot of character in the room. We don’t give up. But we have more [in us] as a group.”
Harder said it was “another great game” and that he has “no regrets” about his team’s performance.
“We played the game we wanted to, we executed our game plan, but they’re a talented team so when you give them a little too much room like we did at the end [of regulation], they make you pay,” said Harder who added that he loved the energy of the crowd and the atmosphere at Alfond Arena.
UMaine will travel to Hartford for Hockey East games against UConn on Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m.
Colgate will visit Long Island University for games at 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.