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ORONO – Can the University of Maine’s Black Bears score enough goals to win the Hockey East Tournament and the national championship?
Maine, 28-4-6 and the Hockey East regular season champion, begins its playoff season at 8 p.m. Saturday against first-year league member UMass-Amherst, 6-27-2 and the No. 8 seed courtesy of its 5-4 preliminary win over Boston College on Tuesday evening.
The Bears have given up a league-low 2.53 goals per game but they have scored more than five goals only 12 times. They are averaging 4.6 goals per game.
“We don’t have the snipers you need to break a game open, but our hard work gets us goals,” said sophomore center and 20-goal scorer Tim Lovell. “We storm the net, get in front of the goalie and get mostly garbage goals.
“The key in the playoffs is to get in front of the goalie and whack away,” he added.
The Bears know the underdog Minutemen will try to slow them down.
In fact, Minutemen coach Joe Mallen said, “We’re going to pull in the horses and play as much defense as we can. If we get good goaltending, maybe we’ll have a chance.”
Goalie Brian Regan made 51 saves in UMass-Amherst’s 4-2 win over Maine on Jan. 28.
“He saw every shot that night and that makes it easy on the goalie,” said junior right wing Brad Purdie, Maine’s goal-scoring leader with 26. “The last time we played them (a 7-0 Maine win on Feb. 11) we had guys in front of him. We’ve been working on that.”
Maine’s forwards will try to penetrate a Minuteman defense that averages 6-foot-1, 208 pounds per man.
“There’s no secret that we have to get the puck to the net and get guys going to the net,” said junior defenseman and team scoring leader Jeff Tory.
The Bear players also said it is important for them to place their emphasis on defense first and to jump out to a lead.
“Whenever we’ve had problems, it has been because the other team has scored the first goal. So we have to come out and play hard the first 10 to 15 minutes,” said senior defenseman and captain Chris Imes.
“The longer the game stays close, the more dangerous it becomes because they’ll gain more confidence,” said junior goalie Blair Allison.
“We will definitely go into the game respecting them,” said Purdie. “If we think all we have to do is show up, we’ll be in for a long night.”
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