The Black Bears mob David Breazeale after his overtime winner. (Photo courtesy of Anthony DelMonaco — UMaine Athletics).

The Maine mentality monsters.

Things were looking bleak for the Black Bears with 1:34 seconds left in the third period, Saturday night.

The #7 Quinnipiac Bobcats had just roared back from a 4-1 second period deficit, scoring four unanswered goals, and were now leading the #9 Maine Black Bears 5-4.

With Maine’s net empty and Quinnipiac on the power play, the Bobcats had a golden opportunity to seal a stunning comeback win to split the series when the puck laid a mere four feet from Maine’s empty net on a Bobcat stick blade. 

But out of nowhere came Josh Nadeau to the rescue, sliding on his side into the crease to make a glove save and a beauty. Although Maine’s second-leading goalscorer from last year has yet to net his first of the new campaign, his heroic sprawl saved the Black Bears from a gut wrenching loss after a three-goal-blown lead.

Heart personified.

Frank Djurasevic picked up the loose puck behind Maine’s net after Nadeau’s save and fed Owen Fowler at the half-boards, who in turn found defenseman Brandon Holt with a cross-ice pass. Holt streaked forward, over the blueline, driving towards the Bobcat net. His direct pace forced Quinnipiac’s Davis Pennington to haul down Holt with a hold, negating the Bobcats' power play and giving the Alfond Faithful belief.

That belief would soon turn into sheer ecstasy.

“We took a penalty with two minutes left, which, when you’re down a goal, it usually ends the game,” Head Coach Ben Barr said. “Then they took a penalty, and it changed the whole game. It changed the whole dynamic.”

Fifty-four seconds after Holt drew the penalty, the junior from Grand Forks, North Dakota, wristed a last-gasp, net-seeking missile onto the Bobcat goal with twenty-eight seconds left in the contest, knotting the game at five apiece.

“I just saw a lane to the net and let it fly. I knew time was ticking down, so I figured I’d get the puck to the net, and good things happen,” Holt said. “It’s unbelievable, [the Alfond] erupts, you don’t know what to do, it’s an electric atmosphere, I love it.”

Thomas Freel and Charlie Russell celebrate Brandon Holt's game-tying goal. (Photo courtesy of Sophia Santamaria — UMaine Athletics)

Tied at five each, the game went into sudden death, three-on-three overtime when up stepped captain fantastic himself, David Breazeale, to send the Alfond Faithful into a jubilee that could be heard from Kittery to Madawaska.

A Bobcat body blocked Maine’s senior co-captain’s first shot in the high slot, but the puck fell kindly back to the Black Bear blueliner, who made sure to rifle the second attempt blocker-side, causing the Alfond to explode into a euphoric frenzy that shook the old barn’s rafters.

“Got the first one blocked, which was tough, but luckily I got it back on my stick, and I just saw open net in the top right, and it just went for us that it went in,” Breazeale said.

The Michigan native sped away down the ice towards a buoyantly bouncing Balcony, his stick raised triumphantly in the air, where an elated pack of Black Bear teammates mobbed him.

“I was just fired up. I was skating to Albin [Boija] and the student section, trying to get all the boys over there. I don’t score many goals, so I didn’t have any celebrations lined up, so I was kind of just skating around,” Breazeale said.

David Breazeale fires the game-winning shot to cap off a memorable night at the Alfond. (Photo Courtesy of Anthony DelMonaco — UMaine Athletics)

While the Michigan native doesn’t score many, he has a knack for stepping up in big moments.

1,072 days prior, Breazeale netted his first collegiate goal, an overtime winner in a 6-5 victory, the first win of the Ben Barr era. Now, four years later, at the same end of the ice, the senior scores the biggest goal of his career by that very same scoreline to seal a monumental win, and a series sweep over the #7 team in the country.

“I would have taken anybody scoring that one, but it was just fitting that it was him,” Holt said about Breazeale.

After a defensive grudge match on Friday night that saw Maine’s offense only really start to click in the third period, the Black Bears carried that front-footed, attacking momentum with them into the first period on Saturday. Flying out of the gates, the Black Bears scored early and often, with three of the four goals coming from Maine’s veteran transfers.

Taylor Makar, five minutes into the contest with the Black Bears short-handed killing a penalty, poked the puck out of Maine’s defensive zone, won the footrace to center ice, and bullied his way towards the Bobcat net before sniping Quinnipiac goaltender Matej Marinov blocker-side for the senior’s third-goal of the season. Already only three games into the season with his new team, the UMass transfer is only one goal shy of his total from last year.

Four minutes later, as a Maine power play was expiring, Owen Fowler gobbled up a bouncing puck from a spilled rebound in the crease, tapping it home for his first official goal as a Black Bear. Fowler scored in Maine’s exhibition win over Army.

Quinnipiac, a few minutes later, would make it a 2-1 score with a power play goal of their own via Aaron Schwartz, but Maine would immediately respond.

Taylor Makar celebrates with goalscorer Owen Folwer. (Photo courtesy of Patience Hanley — UMaine Athletics)

Makar, Harrison Scott, and Ross Mitton linked up on a quick developing rush with a series of quick passes before Scott found Mitton barreling on net in the slot, who one-timed his first goal in the Maine blue-and-white.

Mitton, a graduate transfer from Colgate, was the Raiders’ stand-out player when they faced Maine last season. A power-forward from Long Island, Mitton has been a revelation on the Black Bears’ stand-out line with Makar and Renwick. Mitton had come tantalizingly close to securing his first as a Black Bear on numerous occasions during Maine’s opening night win over AIC, including ringing a shot off iron on his first shift as a Black Bear, along with being the victim of highway robbery from the AIC goaltender on a couple of occasions that night.

So when Ross ‘the Boss’ Mitton finally tallied, the Alfond erupted for one of their new heroes. But nobody in the soldout Alfond was more excited than his father, who joined the Naked Five in a celebratory lap around the barn after his son’s first goal of the year.

Ross Mitton’s father celebrates his son’s first Black Bear goal. (Photo courtesy of Anthony DelMonaco — UMaine Athletics)

Junior forward Thomas Freel would keep the good vibes going less than a minute into the second frame when, on the power play, he and Scott whacked and thwacked away at a loose puck squirting around the net front, eventually popping off Freel’s stick into the back of the net to put Maine into a commanding 4-1 lead.

Because Fowler’s goal, Maine’s second of the night, came just as their man-advantage expired, Freel’s tally marked the end of an 0-for-6 dry spell for the power play, which is not including their o-for-5 showing against Army in an exhibition last week.

Much of Maine’s success early in the game stemmed from a relentless forecheck that kept the Bobcats on their heels. The Black Bears hustled and harried Quinnipiac, usually forcing the Bobcats to go from behind their net to either the corner or up to the half-wall, where the Black Bears were lurking to pounce on them, keeping Quinnipiac in the washing machine’s spin cycle for much of the first half of the contest.

Up by three goals early into the second period, everything was going swimmingly from a Maine perspective. But things soon started to unravel for the Black Bears as Quinnipiac roared back, scoring three unanswered goals in just nine minutes to knot the game at four heading into the final intermission.

The Black Bears had had the Bobcats on the ropes, but couldn’t land the knockout blow and put the nail in Quinnipiac’s coffin. Maine started to stray from their game, playing too cute and clever, drifting from their positions, overextending, and leaving themselves exposed at the back on a couple of occasions.

“We had a couple of chances to go 4 or 5-1, and we started just passing up shots and trying to jump in the offense,” Barr explained. “A bad play [by] David Breazeale [who] tried to jump in the offense. A bad decision. They get a 2-on-1 and score. It changed the whole dynamic of things.”

The air slowly seeped out of the Alfond with every passing Bobcat goal in the second period. Black Bear Nation was left stunned and deflated when, in the blink of an eye, the teams headed to the dressing rooms with the score suddenly tied.

But that’s when Maine’s character rose to the challenge.

Maine huddles before the opening puck drop. (Photo courtesy of Holly Arend — Hazze Sports Media)

Coming into the weekend, the message from Maine’s dressing room was that if the Black Bears were going to have any success over the well-oiled Quinnipiac Bobcats machine, Maine’s culture and character were going to have to overpower Quinnipiac’s own diligent work ethic.

And did that culture shine ever so brightly.

The mental toughness the team showed after Quinnipiac took a 5-4 lead six minutes into the third period speaks magnitudes to the enormous heart of these Black Bears.

“We weren’t hanging our heads or anything like that. The bench was good. [Quinnipiac] was just making plays and scoring goals. We were doing that the first half of the game,” Barr said.

The Black Bears were tenacious, and they didn’t panic. Refusing to lie down and roll over when things got difficult.

When the going got tough, the tough got going.

“I think especially going down 5-4, after having a lead for the majority of the game, I think it’s a testament to our culture and the fact that we just don’t want to quit. We’re always going to go out there no matter what the score is and give our very best,” Breazeale said about the attitude of his team.

Brandon Holt reiterated his fellow D-man’s point.

“I think it just says a lot about us as a team. It would have been easy to quit after we give up that lead, and then we give one up to one up in the third. But we battled back, and we never quit; it was just belief the whole time, and it paid off.”

Ross Mitton skates underneath the Balcony. (Photo courtesy of Patience Hanley — UMaine Athletics)

During the second intermission, when the game was still tied at four, Barr took all the pressure off his team’s shoulders — reminding them that they didn’t have anything to lose and could now play with house money.

Instead of playing fearful and not to lose, Barr pointed out the amazing opportunity they had to pull off the remarkable. It was an opportunity that everyone in the Alfond would have bitten their hand off for before the puck was dropped Saturday night.

“[The message] was, we have maybe the best team over the last five years in college hockey at our rink, in a tie game going into the third period to sweep a weekend. Any of us would have been happy with that. No one is going to feel sorry for us that we let a three-goal lead go. It’s zero-zero going into the third period. What a great opportunity.”

We all know what happened next.

Miraculous Maine.

Saturday evening, October 19th, 2024, will be talked about for many winters to come as one of the greatest wins in the long and illustrious history of the Maine Black Bears.

Toughness. Tenacity. Determination. Persistence. Belief. Guts. Heart.

When you say Maine Black Bears, you’ve said it all.

The Black Bears and Bobcats shake hands after a hard-fought, memorable series. (Photo courtesy of Patience Hanley — UMaine Athletics)