The University of Maine’s hockey team has dug itself a hole in its quest to earn a third straight NCAA Tournament berth.
The Black Bears are 11-7-1 overall and will play six straight games on the road in January before playing their first home game of 2026 against Providence on Jan. 31.
They have a current three-game winning streak after losing four of their previous five games.
The Black Bears are 6-5 in Hockey East play and, with their 16 points, are one of seven teams with at least 14 points in the conference.
Teams get three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout win, and one for an overtime or shootout loss.
Everyone in Hockey East has at least three league losses and every team except UMass has at least three conference wins. UMass has two conference wins and nine overall.
There isn’t a Hockey East team ranked in the top 10 nationally in the two major polls.
UMaine’s four home losses, which equal the number it suffered in the previous two years combined when it went 28-4-5 at Alfond Arena, has left the Black Bears needing a strong finish or perhaps a second straight Hockey East Tournament championship to earn the program’s 21st NCAA appearance.
But despite those headwinds, fifth-year head coach Ben Barr said a strong second half run is doable.
UMaine will play eight road games, five home contests and two neutral site games in Lowell and Portland against Northeastern, whose 115-year-old Matthews Arena is being demolished.
Barr said his team has proven it is capable of playing at a high level and beating good teams — as evidenced by its 6-2 and 3-0 road wins at UMass and Boston College, respectively, and its home sweep of Boston University.
“We have played some really good hockey. It is going to take all of us doing it every single night and finding consistency,” said Barr. “Great teams find ways to be consistent and we really haven’t done that yet.
“That doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of it. That’s the challenge ahead of us,” he said.
UMaine has 13 newcomers this season and eight of them have played in at least 13 games.
“We’ve been up and down. I like the team. We have a lot of potential,” Barr said. “This has been a different scenario. We can be really good but we’ve also proven that we can do the other [negative] stuff which is kind of what we expected with all the new guys.”
If the Black Bears are to get into the NCAA picture, it all starts in goal with junior Albin Boija and freshman Mathis Rousseau.
Boija has struggled much of this year after being a second team All-American a year ago and a finalist for the Mike Richter Award which goes to nation’s top goaltender.
But he has three shutouts including a 28-save gem in Saturday’s 5-0 win over Lindenwood and he has shown over his career that he is capable of stealing wins.
Nobody has been more influential in UMaine’s last two NCAA Tournament runs than Boija.
Maybe his Lindenwood shutout can jumpstart a great second half.
Rousseau has won three of his last four starts and the former Canadian World Junior Championship starter has also shown he is capable of being a difference-maker.
“We need to find some traction on a night-in, night-out basis,” Barr said about the UMaine goalkeeping.
Entering the Lindenwood series, which UMaine swept 5-0 and 7-2, Boija and Rousseau had a combined save percentage of .888.
“That’s below where we need to be if we want to be a contender,” Barr said.
After the Lindenwood series, the save percentage was elevated to .897.
The Black Bears have to support their goaltenders by becoming tougher to play against. They have to maintain good defensive positioning and reduce their turnovers which have cost them games. But when mistakes are made, it is up to Boija and Rousseau to bail the team out by making key saves.
With Boija and a veteran defense corps returning, and players who scored 64 of their 124 goals departing, the outlook at the start of the season was that this team would be rock solid defensively but struggle to score goals until the newcomers began producing.
But just the opposite has occurred.
UMaine is tied for fifth in the country in goals scored per game at 3.79 but is 22nd in goals allowed at 2.58 per game. A year ago, UMaine averaged 3.3 goals per game and gave up 2.0.
One of the reasons for that is freshman left winger Justin Poirier’s 17 goals, second most in the country behind Michigan’s Will Horcoff, who has 19.
But in UMaine’s four home losses, all by a goal, the Black Bears scored only five goals despite outshooting their opponents by an average of 35-18.5.
The Black Bears have exhibited some scoring depth. Poirier’s 17 goals and 26 points leads the team in scoring and he is one of 10 Black Bears with at least 10 points.
He will take a string of three straight two-goal games into the new year.
Senior defenseman and co-captain Brandon Holt has 3 goals and 14 assists for 17 points and right wings Josh Nadeau (10-6-16) and Miguel Marques (6-10-16) are tied for third. Nadeau is a junior and Marques is a freshman. Junior Brown University transfer center Max Scott (3-9-12) and veteran wingers and linemates Owen Fowler (7-4-11) and Charlie Russell (4-7-11) round out the top seven.
The Black Bears with 10 points are senior co-captain Thomas Freel (4-6-10), junior center Sully Scholle (3-7) and senior defenseman Brandon Chabrier (0-10-10) who had four assists in Sunday’s 7-2 win over Lindenwood.
They will have to continue to be tenacious and relentless in the offensive zone, get pucks to the net and establish a net-front presence to screen goalies and make life hard on them.
A resurgent power play which produced three goals apiece in wins over UMass Lowell and Lindenwood is a positive to take into 2026.
The penalty kill has also come around after being among the worst in Division I with just one power play goal allowed in 17 chances over the past six games.
The Black Bears, ranked 14th in one major poll and 15th in the other, will return to the ice when they visit No. 6 Denver on Jan. 2-3.