ORONO – With an NCAA Tournament at-large berth slowly slipping away and a Hockey East tournament berth far from a certainty, the University of Maine men returned to the practice ice on Monday with several positions up for grab.

The Bears will host archrival New Hampshire on Sunday afternoon at 4 and Maine coach Shawn Walsh said there will definitely be lineup changes from the one that was swept by Boston College 4-1 and 7-2 this past weekend.

“I need to give the guys who sat in the stands and watched the BC series the opportunity [to crack the lineup] in practice this week,” said Walsh referring to forwards Donny Richardson, Mike Mantenuto, and Gray Shaneberger.

Walsh wouldn’t specify which forwards are on the bubble, but two regulars who could find themselves in the stands are right wingers Tommy Reimann and Todd Jackson. Reimann has gone 19 games without a goal and Jackson is mired in a 17-game goal-scoring drought. Left winger Dan Kerluke has two goals in his last 12 games, but one was an empty-netter.

Excluding empty-net goals, Maine doesn’t have a forward with more than one goal over the last eight games. Senior defenseman A.J. Begg and freshman defenseman Francis Nault each have two goals over that span.

“I will be looking for defensive accountability and competitiveness,” added Walsh, whose team outshot BC 13-6 in the first period of Saturday night’s game only to find themselves trailing 5-0 on five goals by two-time Hobey Baker Award finalist Brian Gionta.

“A lot of that was our doing. You can’t leave players alone. That was the worst defensive effort we’ve had in a period all year,” said Walsh.

The Bears continue to struggle offensively. They have scored more than three goals only once over their last 12 games and that was the 4-2 win over Clarkson in which the fourth goal was an empty-netter.

But the Bear boss thought his team “tried to force offense” on Saturday night and paid the price for it.

Bear senior right wing Matthias Trattnig agreed.

“We were thinking score, score, score, and we forgot that defense creates offensive chances for us,” said Trattnig. “We weren’t doing the basics. And we’ve got to loosen up in front of the [opposing] net.

“We aren’t an offensive team. We aren’t going to score a lot of goals, other than maybe [once] every five or six games. So we have to play good team defense,” said Trattnig. “And we’ve got to stay positive. We have to learn from last weekend.”

Walsh and the players still hold out hope they can put together a winning streak that will put them in the NCAA Tournament picture.

“We’re still in the hunt, but we have to win a lot more games,” said junior defenseman Peter Metcalf. “We’ve got to take things a shift at a time.”

Junior defenseman and co-captain Doug Janik added, “We still control our own fate. And I still think we have enough guys who can produce offensively.”

Walsh said Matt Yeats will start in goal against New Hampshire even after his disastrous first period at BC Saturday night.

“Matt is entitled to one bad period. He hasn’t had one since November 3rd [three goals in first period of 5-3 loss to Providence],” said Walsh.

Maine is now 10-9-6 overall, 5-6-4 in Hockey East. The Bears are tied for fifth place with Northeastern. They are four points behind second-place New Hampshire and three ahead of ninth-place Merrimack.

Bear women lose Stone

University of Maine junior guard Lacey Stone, who was averaging 5.6 points and 2.7 rebounds per game, has been dismissed from the women’s basketball team for violating team rules.

Stone, who had been having her best season at Maine, had been placed on indefinite suspension prior to Maine’s game against Towson on Saturday.

Maine is now down to nine players.

Maine coach Sharon Versyp would not elaborate on Stone’s violation but said “it just involved her” and nobody else on the team and didn’t involve breaking the law.

She added that Stone’s minutes will be divided up among several players with Ellen Geraghty probably being the primary benefactor.

Stone appeared in 26 games last season and averaged 2.6 points and one rebound.

The 5-foot-10 Whitefish Bay, Wis. native played in just 10 games as a freshman due to a stress fracture that sidelined her for 21 games.

She averaged 3.8 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists.