The University of Maine men’s hockey team, which has lost its top four scorers off last year’s 18-14-3 team, has been picked to finish seventh among 11 teams in the Hockey East coaches’ preseason poll.
The women’s ice hockey team, under first-year head coach Alex Gettens, was chosen to finish eighth in the 10-team league.
The men’s team also lost three veteran defensemen who each played at least 107 career games. One of them was the team’s leading scorer, Brandon Holt, who was a first team Eastern All-American and All-Hockey East first team pick and was selected the league’s best defensive defenseman.
Holt, who was a co-captain a year ago with Thomas Freel, played in 126 career games, which were seven fewer than Brandon Chabrier and 19 more than Frank Djurasevic. Djurasevic was an assistant captain.
Providence was chosen to defend its regular season men’s hockey title, racking up 106 points and eight first-place votes.
UMass was second with 98 points, one point more than Boston University. UMass earned one first-place vote and BU had the other two.
Following the top three are Boston College (86 points), UConn (73), defending tournament champ Merrimack (68), UMaine (57), Northeastern (52), New Hampshire (35), UMass Lowell (31) and Vermont (22).
Merrimack beat UConn 2-1 in the Hockey East tournament title game. UConn had lost to UMaine 5-2 in the 2024-25 championship game.
In the women’s poll, Northeastern was picked to defend its regular season title, tallying 89 points and eight of 10 first-place votes.
UConn, a 2-1 winner over Northeastern in a double-overtime thriller in the conference championship game, has been selected second with 83 points and the other two first-place votes.
They are followed by Boston College (64), Boston University and Holy Cross (60 points each), Vermont (54), New Hampshire (42), UMaine (33), Providence (31) and Merrimack (24).
The men’s team will have to replace Holt (6 goals, 26 assists), Josh Nadeau (17, 13), Justin Poirier (18, 11) and Miguel Marques (10, 13). Holt graduated, and Nadeau passed up his senior year to sign with the Laval Rocket, the American Hockey League affiliate of the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadiens. Poirier transferred to Penn State, and Marques moved on to Northeastern.
Left winger and team captain Owen Fowler had 12 goals and 10 assists a year ago and is the only returnee who had double-digit goals. Center and assistant captains Sully Scholle (7, 11) and Max Scott (5, 13) are the only other Black Bear returners with at least 18 points and right wing Charlie Russell (6, 9) is the only other with more than 13.
Four of the seven new forwards are transfers and could be immediately impactful: Tanner Klimpke, who had 41 goals and 39 assists in 103 career games at Robert Morris; former UMass Lowell player Lee Parks (14 goals, 14 assists, 69 games); Arizona State’s Sam Alfano (7 goals, 11 assists in 35 games last season); and Alaska-Anchorage’s Judah Makway (3 goals, 7 assists in 33 games).
Incoming freshman forwards Masun Fleece, Rowan Calvert and Ross Campbell each had at least 25 goals for their respective junior teams a year ago.
The defense corps will have just three returnees and all three were freshmen a year ago in Lukas Peterson (3, 9), Jeremy Langlois (2, 7) and Loic Usereau (2, 5). Each played in at least 29 games.
The newcomers include transfers Chris Romaine (Ohio State), Alexander Bales (Providence) and Isa Parekh (Bemidji State).
And Dru Krebs will join the defense corps after playing 142 games of professional hockey: 140 games in the ECHL and two in the American Hockey League.
Albin Boija, a second team All-American goaltender two years ago, struggled mightily last season, and head coach Ben Barr will be looking for him to return to his 2024-25 form.
UMaine will open its season at Holy Cross on Oct 2-3.
On the women’s side, Gettens inherits a team that went 13-19-4 under Molly Engstrom a year ago and finished seventh with an 8-12-4 conference slate.
The Black Bears return their top five scorers in Isabelle Michaud (11, 8), Mackenzie Podewell (6, 10), Stephanie Jacob (10, 5), Lulu Rucinski (4, 11) and Paige Fong (1, 12) and 10 of the next 12 point-producers are also back.
So is talented goalie Kiia Lahtinen, who had a 12-16-4 record, a 2.40 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage. She had four shutouts and a 2.09 GAA in league play.
UMaine hasn’t finished higher than fifth since the 2017-18 season and has been sixth or worse in all but one campaign since ’17-18.
The UMaine women will host New Hampshire for an exhibition game at 2 p.m. Saturday before officially opening the season against sixth-ranked Quinnipiac on Sept. 25-26.