University of Maine hockey fans are wondering what happened.
Last Friday night, they wanted to know: What happened to the team that played so well in winning the school’s first Hockey East championship since 2004?
They watched their Black Bears get dismantled 5-1 in the opening round of the NCAA tournament by a Penn State team that went 0-8-1 in its first nine Big Ten games.
The score could have been worse if it wasn’t for sophomore goalie Albin Boija, who stopped two breakaways and a point-blank one-timer in the second period.
That UMaine lost to Penn State wasn’t a big surprise. It was the lopsided nature of the loss that was perplexing.
Penn State was faster, more skilled, more structured and more disciplined.
University of Maine fourth-year head coach Ben Barr shouldered blame for the loss.
Barr explained that they were coming off an “emotional high” after winning the Hockey East tournament and there was a lot of hoopla surrounding it, including welcoming receptions in Orono the day after the 5-2 win over UConn in the conference title game.
“It’s hard not to be emotionally affected by it. I was. It was like we had won the national title,” Barr said on Monday. “I wish I had handled it better. I should have talked about it more with them.”
Barr likened it to what happened when he was the associate head coach at UMass.
The Minutemen beat Denver 4-3 in overtime in their first-ever appearance in the Frozen Four during the 2018-19 season but were emotionally drained for the final and lost to Minnesota-Duluth 3-0.
However, Barr was also quick to praise Penn State.
“We didn’t play very well and Penn State played great,” he said.
“It is what it is. It’s tough to swallow but you move on,” added Barr.
UMaine scored a flukey opening goal before Penn State responded with the next five — including three in the first period, another in the second and an empty-net goal.
Regional tournament fourth seed Penn State did have a large, vociferous crowd cheering them on in Allentown, Pennsylvania, against the top-seeded Black Bears. And that certainly played a role in the victory, as did UMaine’s rabid fans in the three Hockey East playoff wins that included semifinal and championship game victories at the TD Garden in Boston.
Thousands of UMaine fans overtook the TD Garden which got nicknamed “Alfond South” after UMaine’s Alfond Arena.
Was it fair to have a top seed playing a fourth seed that also happened to be the host school in the first round of the NCAA playoffs?
Probably not.
The four teams seeded first in each regional should be rewarded for their body of work, not penalized.
The NCAA tournament selection committee could have made Penn State a third seed, and it is something the committee could discuss for the future.
But, by the same token, is it right to punish a third seed that finished higher in the Pairwise Rankings by dropping them to a four seed so the top seed wouldn’t have to play a host school?
Besides, UMaine may have had to play Penn State in the second round, anyway.
The bottom line is that UMaine needed to play better. It’s as simple as that.
They won the Hockey East Conference tournament and nobody put more teams in the 16-team NCAA playoffs than Hockey East with six.
It was the best league, top-to-bottom, among the six Division I conferences although that didn’t translate into the playoffs where Hockey East teams are 5-5 and Boston University is the only team in the Frozen Four with Penn State next on its radar.
Penn State entered the game 12-3-3 in its previous 18 games, including a do-or-die road sweep of Michigan in their Big Ten quarterfinal best-of-three series.
The loser of that series was done.
Penn State had a ton of momentum in addition to what was basically home ice advantage.
It was the perfect storm.
The Nittany Lions went on to win the regional and earn their first ever berth in the Frozen Four with a 3-2 overtime win over UConn, despite being outshot by the Huskies 28-13 in the third period and overtime.
Interestingly, Penn State junior goalie Arsenii Sergeev was the star of the game and he had transferred to Penn State from UConn, where he played in 35 games his first two seasons.
UMaine had a handful of subpar performances over the second half of the season and there was usually a combination of reasons behind them: lack of discipline/taking penalties, poor puck management, leaving players unattended in high-percentage scoring areas, inability to establish a sustained forecheck and losing the special teams battle.
Unfortunately, UMaine checked all those boxes last Friday night.
This team shouldn’t be remembered by the Penn State game.
It should be remembered as a team that overachieved, being picked fourth in the Hockey East coaches’ preseason poll and winding up second in the regular season, winning the tournament and earning the third overall seed in the NCAA tournament.
And it should be remembered for the buzz it created across the state.
Fourth-year head coach Barr has brought his program from a seven-win team in his first year to a Hockey East title and to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time since the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons.
The Black Bears finished at 24-8-6 with 21 games against teams that played in the NCAA Tournament and/or were nationally ranked.
This was only the sixth UMaine team to win a Hockey East tournament title dating back to 1984-85, the first year of the conference.