The 12th-ranked University of Maine’s hockey team completed a weekend sweep of No. 5 Boston University with a wild 8-5 victory at Alfond Arena on Saturday night.
UMaine is now 5-2-1 overall and 2-0 in Hockey East while BU is 3-5-1 and 1-3.
UMaine won Friday night’s game 5-4 in overtime.
UMaine freshman goalie Mathis Rousseau made 26 saves to earn the win on Saturday night.
UMaine outshot BU 46-31.
The Black Bears spotted Boston University the game’s opening goal by freshman right wing Ben Merrill, BU’s fifth one-goal lead of the weekend, but junior right wing Charlie Russell answered just 23 seconds later and they built a 3-1 lead on goals 34 seconds apart by freshman defenseman Jeremy Langlois and senior left wing Owen Fowler later in the first period.
Merrill scored his second goal in as many games off a rebound.
Cole Hutson flipped a nifty pass to Brandon Svoboda, who had gotten behind the defense and cut right to left across the low slot. Rousseau made the point-blank save but the rebound spilled to Merrill and he lifted into the net.
Russell tied it when he was set up just outside the crease by Max Scott, whose pass came from behind the net.
Mikhail Yegorov made the initial save off Russell but Russell jammed the rebound past his pad for his first goal of the season.
Langlois scored his first career goal as he took a cross-ice pass from Jaden Lipinski and snapped a wrist shot from the middle of the slot that squeezed through Yegorov’s pads and trickled over the line.
Fowler scored his third of the season by swiping home a rebound off a scramble in front.
That ended Yegorov’s night as he was replaced by Max Lacroix.
BU opened a wild second period which featured three goals by each team.
Svoboda made it 3-2 by deflecting Hutson’s wrister past Rousseau for his first of the season.
Justin Poirier answered with his eighth as he was spun around by a pair of Terriers in the low slot but was able to chip a backhander that floated over Lacroix’s glove.
Kamil Bednarik sliced the lead to one with a shorthanded goal.
UMaine defenseman Brandon Holt fell at the offensive blue line and Bednarik and Jonathan Morello skated down the ice in a 2-on-0 and executed it to perfection with Bednarik flipping it into the open net off a Morello feed.
UMaine responded with goals 1:54 apart by Max Scott and Russell to take a 6-3 lead but a power play goal by Conrad Fondrk with 1:10 remaining in the period narrowed the gap to 6-4.
Scott scored with a one-timer from the slot before Russell expanded the lead off assists from Holt and Lukas Peterson.
Fondrk sliced into the lead with a wrist shot from the left circle past Rousseau’s glove.
UMaine restored its three-goal lead early in the third period with a shorthanded goal by Scott as he was sent in alone by Thomas Freel and tucked the puck past the right skate of Lacroix.
The Terriers’ Svoboda scored his second goal of the game while the Terriers were shorthanded off the rebound of a Hutson shot but Oskar Komarov sewed up the win with an empty net goal.
“I thought we responded every time something happened,” said UMaine head coach Ben Barr. “We’re fighting through a lot of stuff, trying to clean things up. But every time they scored, we had a bit of an answer.”
Barr noted that BU scored right away both Friday and Saturday nights, but emphasized how Scott’s line came back and got one 20 seconds later on Saturday.
“Those are big deals, especially when you give one up in the first minute,” Barr added.
He was pleased with Rousseau’s outing.
“I’m not so sure any of those goals are on him. It was good to see him get his first win,” Barr said. “He was looking at two-on-o’s, three-on-ones and three-on-twos against a team with that kind of skill. He stayed poise. In the third period, he kept us in. They had some extended shifts in our zone and he made some big stops.”
Russell, the team’s fifth-leading scorer a year ago with seven goals and 19 assists in 35 games, had just one assist coming into the game but had two goals and an assist —as did Scott.
“It was good to get the monkey off the back,’ said Russell. “I had a really good summer. I gained 10 pounds of muscle. I spent the majority of my sumner here. My wrist was finally healthy again. It was pretty frustrating to have the start that I did but it was a good sweep this weekend and, as a team, that’s the first glimpse everyone has seen of where we can get to and where we need to be at the end of the year. We took a step this weekend.”
Holt had three assists, Freel and Lukas Peterson had two apiece and Poirier had a goal and an assist.
Svoboda had two goals and two assists for BU and Hutson had three assists.
UMaine will travel to UMass for 7 p.m. games on Thursday and Friday while BU will play a home-and-home series against Merrimack on Friday and Saturday at 7 and 6 p.m., respectively.