ORONO, Maine — Sophomore defenseman Cale Ashcroft’s goal with just 20 seconds remaining gave the defending national champion Denver Pioneers a 2-1 victory over the University of Maine at a soldout Alfond Arena on Friday night.
The Pioneers won a faceoff in the UMaine zone and a Pioneer shot was blocked and came back to Ashcroft at the point.
Ashcroft wristed the puck toward the net and it deflected in off a UMaine shinguard.
It was Ashcroft’s third goal of the season.
“We were trying to run a different play with our forwards and the puck wound up going to my defense partner Eric Pohlkamp,” Ashcroft said. “He shot it, it got blocked and the puck ended up on my stick and I just tried to get it to the net. That was kind of our goal all night, to get pucks to the net, and it took a fortunate bounce off their shinpad, off the post and in.”
UMaine pulled goalie Albin Boija and generated a wild flurry in front of the net in the waning seconds but Denver goalie Matt Davis eventually covered the puck up among a mass of humanity.
Senior center Carter King’s power play goal in the second period staked Denver to a 1-0 lead but UMaine sophomore defenseman Frank Djurasevic’s power play goal tied it late in the middle period.
Sixth-ranked Denver improved to 15-4 while seventh-ranked UMaine fell to 12-4-2.
UMaine had its 12-game Alfond Arena unbeaten streak (11-0-1) snapped.
The teams will play again Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
Davis finished with 29 saves while Boija made 22 stops.
King gave the Pioneers a 1-0 lead on a five-on-three power play at the 2:53 mark of the second period.
Pohlkamp slid the puck to Aidan Thompson whose one-timer from the right circle missed the short side.
But the puck ricocheted off the boards behind the net and came out the other side, where King snapped it into the short side corner for his 12th goal of the season.
Djurasevic scored his fifth goal by firing home a Nolan Renwick rebound from the left faceoff circle with 1:23 left in the period.
Both goalies were sharp in the first period and the primary reason it was scoreless.
UMaine had a 10-8 edge in shots on goal but the Pioneers had the better chances.
Davis made a good short side stop on a Ross Mitton one-timer from the left circle that was set up by a Harrison Scott pass from behind the net.
Denver’s Rieger Lorenz had a Grade-A opportunity when he intercepted an errant pass by UMaine’s Luke Antonacci but Boija gloved his quick wrist shot from the right circle.
Later in the period, Boija held the short side to stop a Kieran Cebrian backhander from the bottom of the right circle and stopped a breakaway by Thompson late in the period.
“Everything matters when you play a team like that and that’s the way it’s going to be the rest of the way for us,” UMaine coach Ben Barr said. “Our margin of error is very, very small. That one faceoff matters. It’s disappointing.”
“There are some good things to take away but, overall, when you don’t get the result you want it definitely stings,” said UMaine senior defenseman and co-captain David Breazeale, who was one of the UMaine players in the path of the shot and may have had it hit off him.
“That’s on all of us. We all have to go in and help out on that draw. We made one block and the puck was bouncing around. There is no excuse for it,” Breazeale said.
Ashcroft said the game had the intensity of a playoff game and they were motivated by their shootout loss to club team the University of Nevada Las Vegas last weekend.
“That put fire in our stomachs and we knew coming in here it was going to be a hard game,” Ashcroft said. “It was a battle and we were ready for it. We just stuck with what gives us success, which is getting pucks to the net, pucks down low and working for it.”
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Rieger Lorenz scored Denver’s game-winning goal. Credit for the goal was changed to Cale Ashcroft after further review.