ANN ARBOR, Mich. – One of the Maine fans on hand for Saturday’s Michigan-Maine NCAA Tournament game was former Bears center Todd Studnicka. Studnicka played on the late coach Shawn Walsh’s first four teams, including the first two of his 11 NCAA Tournament teams.

He also played on the first Frozen Four team in 1987-88. The Bears lost to eventual national champion Lake Superior State 6-3 in the semifinals after jumping out to a 2-0 lead.

“I’m really excited to come here and watch Maine. I haven’t seen them in about 15 years,” said Studnicka, who lives in Windsor, Ontario, with his wife and four children.

“I get on the Internet to watch how the team’s doing and once in a while I get a hold of [former Bear] Todd Jenkins. He’s in Michigan still and owns his own business. He might be here, I haven’t seen him yet. I’d like to see him,” said Studnicka.

“I’m just glad that Maine hockey is still thriving,” added Studnicka. “I think Tim Whitehead has done a terrific job in sustaining the tradition because that’s a tough role for anybody to take over from Shawn. The job Tim has done is just amazing.”

The 37-year-old Studnicka still has memories of that heartbreaking loss in the Frozen Four in Lake Placid.

“We went in to the Final Four ranked No. 1. We had a two-goal lead on Lake Superior and Lake Superior took it to us in the second period. And every morning, I still wake up and I think about that darned game. I’d like to have it back. Just 20 minutes of it. I’m sure all the guys think like that,” said Studnicka.

Studnicka said his four years at Maine provided him with a great experience.

“Shawn took a program and did a super job. He turned it right around. It was a great group of guys,” he said. “We could probably all go in the dressing room again and sit in our spot and blink our eyes and think, geez, it was last week that we saw each other.”

Low-scoring Black Bears

In UMaine’s last four NCAA tournament losses, the Bears were limited to five goals.

Besides Saturday’s loss to Michigan, the Bears lost to Minnesota 4-3 in overtime in the NCAA championship game last year; they were eliminated by Boston College 3-1 in the quarterfinals two years ago and by North Dakota 2-0 in the Frozen Four three years ago.

However, Maine’s senior class will graduate with a record of 97-41-24 and four straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

They went 5-4 in the NCAA tournament during the careers of Marty Kariya, Cliff Loya, Chris Heisten, Robert Liscak, Gray Shaneberger, Lucas Lawson and Tommy Reimann.

Kariya finished with 50 goals and 105 assists in 156 career games; Loya had 2 & 18 in 149 games; Heisten notched 35 & 47 in 128 games; Liscak accrued 46 & 58 in 149 games; Shaneberger had 19 & 17 in 111 contests; Lawson finished with 50 & 43 in 145 games and Reimann wound up with 24 & 59 in 140 games.

Kariya is the school’s 12th all-time leading point-getter and is 10th in assists. He also tied for seventh in games played. Liscak was 41st in points.

The loss to Michigan represented the seventh consecutive time this season Maine had lost the first game of a two-game weekend series or, in this case, a potential weekend series which didn’t come to fruition.

Crossing the borders

Roger and Terry Janusc attended their first UMaine men’s hockey game Saturday after jumping into their car at 9:30 a.m. and driving four hours to Ann Arbor.

The Januscs are proud parents of Maine student Morgan Janusc, a freshman defenseman on the Black Bears women’s hockey team.

Despite the fact her boyfriend is Steve Mullin, a freshman defenseman on the men’s hockey team, Morgan Janusc wasn’t able to accompany her parents.

“She’s back at school right now studying for exams,” said Terry Janusc.

So why did Morgan’s parents travel from their home in Hamilton, Ontario?

“If it’s within a five- or six-hour drive from us, we’ll try to go,” Terry Janusc said. “Whenever it’s possible, we go.”

“When we found out that they were in the Midwest Regional, we pretty much felt like we had to go to this game,” said Roger Janusc. “We’ve driven down to Maine a couple times to catch a few women’s games there, but we still haven’t seen any [men’s] games at Alfond yet.”

Roger showed up wearing a dark blue Maine away jersey with his daughter’s “88” on it, but wasn’t sure that was such a good idea.

“We were kind of worried coming down because we’re going into Michigan’s arena and it’s a home game for them,” said Roger Janusc. “But when you look at a college game, the fans are mainly educated people and not some people who are going to yell at you. If you go to a Bills game wearing a Patriots jersey, I mean, they actually advise you not to do that because it’s very dangerous to your health.”

The Januscs’ health was never in danger. They met up with several other Maine fans and were able to see a memorable game, even if it didn’t end the way they hoped it would.

The Bangor airlift

Travel arrangements for the NCAA Midwest Regional weren’t exactly run-of-the-mill for the UMaine hockey team.

Members of the team and school officials weren’t able to charter a flight, so the arrangements made through the NCAA resulted in 34 people being divided into three groups and flying out of Bangor International Airport on three different commercial flights.

So the first group – 17 players, two coaches and a trainer – flew out of Bangor at 2:50 p.m. Thursday; the second group – one coach, two managers, two players, and two school officials – took off at 4:20 p.m.; the last group – a coach and six players – left the ground at 5:15 p.m.

Due to a four-hour layover in Philadelphia, the second group was the last to arrive in Detroit – at 11:30 p.m. The third group arrived at 9:35 p.m.

“There wasn’t enough space on any one of the planes to have everyone on the same flight,” said Laura Reed, media relations assistant manager. “It’s hard to move 34 people from Bangor to Michigan on four days’ notice.”

Reed said the inconvenience was handled well by the UMaine contingent. It even became a source of joking by the players and coaches.

Accurate prediction

When asked about his prediction for Saturday’s game between Maine and Michigan, Maine President Peter Hoff opted not to go with a score or even a winning team. He still managed to hit it right on the head, however.

“Maine’s not going to go down easily,” Hoff said. “In fact, I think they’re going to play one of their better games of the year.”

Memorable matchups

Red Berenson, the University of Michigan’s 19th-year head coach, has been a part of some memorable NCAA playoff games against Maine. Maine rallied to beat Michigan 4-3 in the semifinals on the late Lee Saunders’ overtime game-winner in their first national championship season, 1992-93; the Bears won by the same score in triple overtime on Dan Shermerhorn’s goal in 1994-95 and then upended the Wolverines 5-2 in 2000 with Chris Heisten scoring the game-winnere.

“We had a real good team in 1993. We had [Steve] Shields in goal, David Oliver and [Brian] Wiseman. Mike Knuble was on that team and so on,” said Berenson. “We had a deep team. David Roberts was on that team. They had Snow and Dunham. We had a 2-0 lead but they came back. They came back in the third period. They had [Paul] Kariya and [Jim] Montgomery. They were horses and great players, too. They were probably the better team. We gave them a good run. The game-winning goal wasn’t even a shot. That was the difference between two great teams that had a great season.They had the best player [Kariya].”

“Next time was in Providence. An unbelievable game,” recalled Berenson. “Both teams played to win and that’s one thing I always liked about Shawn Walsh’s teams. They always played to win. They didn’t play not to lose. We played the same way. It was great hockey for the fans. It was heartbreak hockey for the coaches. Something had to give and finally it did. The last time we played them, they probably had the upper hand. We were a young team when we had [Mike] Comrie and [Mike] Cammalleri and [Jeff] Jillson. We probably had overachieved just to get there. And still we had the lead in that game and had them on their heels. Ironically, the depth on our defense came back to haunt us because we lost one of our top four defenseman the night before in the Colgate game [David Huntzicker]. We played five D and then down to four D all through the Colgate game, which was an overtime game, also. The next night, it was like we hit a wall halfway through the third period. Our defense just died and they took advantage of it. We couldn’t hold the fort and Maine won the game.”