Black Bears picked to win again in Hockey East

DURHAM, N.H. – Despite losing players who produced 103 of last year’s 203 goals, the Hockey East coaches chose Maine to repeat as league regular season champions.

Maine received five first-place votes and 60 points from the coaches at the Hockey East media day held at the University of New Hampshire here Wednesday.

Boston University was second with two first-place votes and 58 points and Boston College, picked to finish third, had the other first-place vote and 42 points.

Providence College was fourth (40), followed by New Hampshire (31), Northeastern (29), UMass-Lowell (18), and Merrimack College (10).

Maine put two players on the preseason All-Hockey East team in junior goalie Mike Dunham and senior center Jim Montgomery. They were joined by Providence College junior defenseman Chris Therien, Boston College sophomore defenseman Ian Moran, Boston University senior center David Sacco, and UMass-Lowell junior right wing-center Mike Murray.

Maine Coach Shawn Walsh said he didn’t expect his team to be picked to finish first.

“It surprises me especially when you consider the talent BU has coming back. They returned their top 12 scorers. I fully expected them to be first,” said Walsh. “There’s no substitute for experience. We proved that last year. We have some talented freshmen but they’re still freshmen.”

The Maine players were also surprised.

“BU has the whole team back plus they always have a couple of good recruits,” said Maine captain Montgomery. “We’re young and inexperienced. It gives us confidence to know the coaches think we’re going to be good. If we work hard, we’ll be good.”

“To me, BU is the best team in the league,” said Maine senior goalie Garth Snow.

BU captain Sacco thinks Maine is the team to beat.

“You win games from the goal out,” said Sacco. “Maine has two great goalies (Dunham and Garth Snow), their defensemen are back, and they’ve got some good forwards and good recruits.”

He added, “I think we’ll be up there with them. It’ll be a good battle.”

“We lost three defensemen and they lost three forwards,” said BU Coach Jack Parker. “I’d rather lose three forwards than three defensemen. They’ve got the best goaltending in the league and all of their defensemen return. They lost some firepower, but they’ve got a great freshman class.”

“I think Maine is going to be better this year than they were last year,” said first-year Boston College Coach Steve Cedorchuk.

“Maine had better players in the stands last year than some of us had on the ice,” said Merrimack Coach Ron Anderson, noting that some of those players will be on the ice this year.

Providence College Coach Mike McShane said he feels strongly that freshmen can have a dramatic impact in hockey, pointing out that his own departed Rob Gaudreau had 28 goals as a freshman and Mike Boback had 21 more.

And he expects Maine’s freshmen to pick up the slack left by the departure of such players as Scott Pellerin, Jean-Yves Roy, and Brian Downey.

Walsh praised assistant coaches Grant Standbrook and Red Gendron for bringing in the recruiting class that has earned so much respect around the league.

“Based on the players we lost, to be rated as highly as we have been is a credit to Grant and Red. I’ve relinquished most of the recruiting responsibilities to them and they’ve put together an excellent class,” said Walsh.