The seventeenth time is the charm.

The #6 Maine Black Bears ended over a decade's worth of Matthews Arena misery Friday night, defeating Northeastern 4-1 to snap the program’s 0-14-2 skid at the historic home of the Huskies.

The victory to open up Hockey East play continued a smoking start for the Black Bears, who are now sitting pretty with a perfect 4-0 record.

However, Maine’s performance to achieve their fourth win of the young season was anything but perfect. In fact, at times, it was rather poor, lacking the usual swashbuckling, heavy-metal identity for which the Black Bears are known.

“I’m pleased with the result. But I honestly don’t think we played very well,” Maine Head Coach Ben Barr said after Friday’s game.

While the stat sheet and the scoreboard might suggest that the Black Bears got much the better of the Huskies, outshooting Northeastern 34-25, it was Maine who was actually outplayed for significant stretches of the game, especially during the first two periods of play.

For the first half of the game or so, the Huskies howled, hounding Maine all over the ice. Northeastern played faster, smarter, and much more physically. They put the Black Bears on the back foot right from the opening puck drop, leaving Maine scrambling to shake off their sluggish start.

Maine, usually the ones to shoot out of the gates with a blistering blitz of battering pressure, this time were at the receiving end of such a start, forced into fighting fires around their goalmouth with last-ditch defending early on.

Much of the Huskies’ success stemmed from the fact that Northeastern dominated Maine in the neutral zone. Super-skilled and with the roar of ‘The Dog House’ cheering them on, the Huskies used their silky mitts and blistering pace to beat the Black Bears around the outside or cut up through the middle, getting in behind Maine’s defense all too easily and often.

“[Northeastern] do that to you because they have really good sticks and are very skilled. When you play loose, you give up a lot of breakaways,” Barr said.

Northeastern won the lion’s share of one-on-one battles, ruthlessly finished each and every one of their hits, and were, therefore, able to dictate much of the first thirty minutes or so of the game.

Physically, it was not until the third period that Maine was able to establish their black-and-blue game and get their teeth into the contest like they normally do with such gumption. Prior to that, they lost too many battles, were getting outhit by the Huskies, and simply could not match the hammering intensity Northeastern was throwing at them.

“The identity of our team is those little things. When we’re successful, that’s what makes us successful. We weren’t winning a lot of those battles in the first couple of periods. I thought we did it towards the end of the game, which allowed us to settle down a little bit,” Barr explained. 

The mental side of the game was not much better for Maine. Simple mental mistakes and failing to take care of the puck allowed Northeastern a ton of odd-man rush and breakaway chances on the Black Bear net. Usually, these came as the result of overzealous rush chances by Maine, when an overeager Black Bear blueliner made the poor decision to jump up into the play, overextending, and leaving their backend exposed, while Maine’s puck carrier didn’t take good enough care of the biscuit, failing to put it in a safe area of the ice.

“We’ve just got to be smarter. A lot of that starts with us going on the rush and missing the net by seven feet. Then they come out and get a breakaway,” Barr explained. “That’s just focus. That’s just things that we can control; the third or fourth guy diving into the rush. It happened to us last week against Quinnipiac, it happened a couple of times tonight. It didn’t cost us a goal tonight, but it could have. It did last week. Those are just mental mistakes that can’t happen.”

But up-stepped Maine netminder Albin Boija to save the day. Boija made sure to bail out the Black Bears time and again, standing on his head to deny Northeastern high-quality Northeastern scoring chances off the rush, one after another with steely composure.

“He’s solid. He’s solid every night usually for us, and composed. When you give two-on-ones and breakaways, and he makes some of those saves, it gives us a little jolt,” Barr said about the calming presence in Maine’s net.

The save of the game came with seven minutes remaining, and the Black Bears up by two. One of Northeastern’s most dangerous forwards, Dylan Hryckowian, had the puck on his tape, bearing down all alone on Boija on yet another breakaway chance for the hosts. With Black Bear Nation peering anxiously through their fingers, Hryckowian made a forehand to backhand move that seemingly had Boija beat. But the sophomore Swede slammed the door shut with a groin-stretching post-to-post save that was cheered by the smattering of Maine fans in attendance as though it was a goal.

The Black Bears bent, but Boija refused to break.

While Boija was indeed a brick wall for Maine, the Huskies let the Black Bears off the hook, all too often failing to capitalize on their wealth of scoring chances.

“It's frustrating because I thought if you look at our first thirty minutes of the game, I thought we were playing well, and I thought we had plenty of good looks. We just didn’t finish,” Northeastern Head Coach Jerry Keefe said after the game. “Goals are hard to come by for us right now. I’m not really sure why. It’s not like we are not getting 2-on-1s and 3-on-1s and breakaways. We had all of those tonight, we just didn’t finish.”

The usually clinical Huskies’ offense that snuck 11 goals past Maine in three games last year has dried up at the start of the season.

“The thing that was frustrating was that the guys that we want with the puck on their stick in those situations tonight had it on their stick,” Keefe said. “You hope that its just a matter of time before those guys are making those plays or finishing at the net front. They’ve done it their whole lives, so hopefully, it’s just a little bit of bad puck luck.”

But as every coach at every level will tell you, the difference between winning or losing always comes down to execution.

While Northeastern may have outplayed Maine for large chunks of the game, particularly at center ice, it was the Black Bears who out-executed the Huskies in the areas that matter the most. The netfront.

Simply put, Maine executed more ruthlessly in front of Northeastern’s goal, while Boija and the Black Bear defensemen executed better in front of their own net.

Late in the second period, two quickfire scores within 1:19 of each other proved not only invaluable for Maine on the scoreboard but also marked a noticeably positive shift in the Black Bears’ play.

With a Maine power play winding down, Brandon Holt threw a low and heavy shot off Huskies goaltender Cameron Whitehead’s pad. The pucked kicked out onto the stick of junior forward Thomas Freel, who was lurking in the netfront weeds. The Scottish-born, Ontario-raised left-winger took no time messing about, immediately slamming the puck into the back of the net. It was Freel’s third goal of the season, all of which have come from his diligent work owning the opposing side’s netfront with his established presence.

Just over a minute later the Black Bears would double their lead to the chagrin of the majority of the 4,521 in attendance.

Charlie Russell received a pass at the blueline from Jack Dalton. Cutting through the heart of Northeastern’s defense, Russell toe-dragged himself into the slot on the rush, ringing a shot off Whitehead, which once again was pounced on by a Black Bear crashing the net. This time it was senior forward Taylor Makar who was Johnny-on-the-spot, scooping up the rebound on his backhand to give Maine a two-goal advantage and stunning the Huskies both on and off the ice.

Makar, Maine’s lone NHL-drafted player and the younger brother of pro superstar and Stanley Cup champion Cale, struggled last season at UMass, only scoring four goals in 36 games for the Minutemen. His tally Friday night matched his goal total from last year, in just his fourth game wearing the Maine script since transferring in over the summer.

“He’s just playing a simple game and within that simple game he is a good hockey player. He can skate, he’s big, he’s got good skill level,” Barr said about Makar’s success. “He’s not playing outside of himself trying to do things that he shouldn’t be doing. And he’s getting rewarded for it. He’s been a huge catalyst for us.”

A catalyst indeed. Makar has been a revelation for Maine, alongside his line-mates e center Nolan Renwick and right-winger Ross Mitton, leading the Black Bear charge with electric play.

“We’re getting the production we’ve gotten out of [Makar] and Nolan Renwick and Ross Mitton on that line. So far [that] has really been kind of the identity of our team,” Barr said about the heavy, in-your-face, front-footed style of play the line excels at.

The trio of two veteran transfers and a healthy Nolan Renwick have tallied one-third of the Black Bears goals this season. Their efficient and reliable production has been massively important to Maine, who are still waiting for two of their top goalscorers from last season to find the back of the net this year.

Sophomore Josh Nadeau had 18 goals last season, graduate student Lynden Breen had 9, and sophomore Sully Scholle had 7.

All three were paired on a line together through Maine’s first three games this season, and while they did have flashes of brilliance, creating a handful of grade-a scoring chances, none of them have yet to light the lamp.

Barr is adamant that the scoring ‘drought’ — still only four games into the young season — is simply mental hurdle each of the individuals will have to overcome. Scholle did score in Maine’s exhibition win.

“Do we get frustrated and start smashing our sticks? That’s a maturity thing. I thought Josh played really well at the end of that game,” Barr said during the week. “You could tell [Nadeau] was getting his groove back there a little bit. Lynden’s still fighting it a little bit, he’s been through this before, he’ll pull himself out. Sully the same thing. It’s not that they aren’t playing well or not working hard. It’s just are they going to feel sorry for themselves or are we going to keep working to pull ourselves out?”

It’s important to remember that late last season, Breen fought a twelve-game scoring drought. Once he broke through, he went on to score two massive goals in eight games, including late-game heroics over UMass and the Black Bears’ lone tally at TD Garden in the Hockey East semifinal.

The goals will come, and once they do, they will most likely come in droves for the three Black Bears.

But Barr can’t wait for three of their best scorers to get the monkey off their backs, forcing the issue by splitting up the trio on Friday night, hoping that could spark their sticks. The Black Bears have to be able to roll four high-quality forward lines this season and can’t afford to have one stuck in the mud.

“[We’re] just trying to get some guys going, hopefully getting four lines that can play.”

Nadeau was moved alongside Harrison Scott and Thomas Freel, Breen was put between Owen Fowler and Charlie Russell, while Sully Scholle was with Oskar Komarov and Anthony Calafiore.

Maine’s two second period goals must have  boosted the Black Bears confidence, turning the tide in Maine’s direction.  At last they looked much closer to the pedal-to-the-metal team Black Bear Nation has come to adore. From a Northeastern perspective, the two goals appeared to take  the wind out of the Huskies’ sails, leaving them rueful at their failure to take advantage of their chances.

“We had plenty of chances to get the first goal, then they scored that power play goal on us to go up one nothing and I felt like that’s when our team just lost it there for a little bit. Next thing you know it’s 2-0 and we were chasing,” Keefe said.

Maine would go on to score two empty netters late in the third period by way of Scott and Renwick. Meanwhile Northeastern’s Cam Lund broke Boija’s shutout bid with a late tally, giving the Huskies’ confidence that they could indeed find the back of the net.

The Huskies gave the Black Bears all that Maine could handle on Friday night. Maine knows they will need to be miles better if they hope to complete the weekend sweep Saturday night.

Neither coach left the rink feeling particularly pleased with their team’s performance.

“Obviously, [we’ll] take the road win in this league, [which] is really difficult. Lots of room for improvement,” Barr said.

Meanwhile Keefe and Northeastern will look to quickly move on from their frustrating loss, with all eyes focused on a Saturday night payback.

“We can’t wear this loss into tomorrow night’s game, we just have to move on from it, and park it, and get ready to comeback out with a great effort tomorrow,” Keefe said.

Good teams are able to win ugly and that’s exactly what Maine showed they can do.

Even without putting their best foot forward, the Black Bears still found a way to bear down, grit their teeth, and drag themselves over the line and into the win column. On the road in Hockey East play, the ability to do that may prove to be a vital element in the success of this year’s squad,  which will no doubt continue to face every opponent’s best.

A 4-0 start, reversing the Matthews curse, with still boatloads of room for improvement. Good teams find a way.