The Black Bears and River Hawks line up for the National Anthem Friday evening at the Tsongas Center. (Photo: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

Midway through the second period, the #7 Maine Black Bears were in a position they hadn’t often been in before.

They were being outshot, and not by a small margin either.

The #8 University of Massachusetts-Lowell River Hawks, buoyed by an early second period goal from Lee Parks to make it 1-0, were besting the Black Bears in shots on goal 16-9 by the middle of the second frame.

Lowell, who entered the weekend allowing the 6th lowest shots against average in the nation, was showcasing their well-structured defensive muscle. They were smothering a Maine offensive wagon that had fired 111 shots on net over their last three games and was leading the country in shots on goal created.

This season, Maine hadn’t been outshot by any opponent in any game, not even in either of their back-to-back losses at Boston College, where they were very much second-best.

So, with Maine down by a goal and the River Hawks' ever-increasing shots on goal margin widening, the wind was fully at Lowell’s back. The Black Bears were at risk of losing their perfect statistical record and, much more importantly, the hockey game.

They were on the ropes.

But on Friday night at the Tsongas Center, on the banks of the Merrimack River, a local who was wise to these parts stepped up to help navigate Maine through the rough waters and turn the tide in the Black Bears’ favor.

Owen Fowler grew up in the neighboring town of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and played for UMass-Lowell until transferring to Maine over the summer. Midway through the second, moments after Maine killed off a power play, Fowler snatched the puck and darted up ice with a head of steam. He carried the puck into the Lowell zone and rang a snap shot off the inside of Henry Welsch’s post.

While the clank of rubber meeting iron didn’t have the desired result Fowler or the Black Bears wanted, it signaled the spark of a crucial shift in momentum.

The Black Bears have always been a team that relies on a surge in momentum in their favor to get on top of their opponents, rattle their confidence, and boost their own.

“It’s just about building shift after shift, when you start to string together a couple of really good shifts in the offensive zone, that’s when momentum starts to come,” David Breazeale said on Tuesday.

Maine did exactly that.

Oskar Komarov’s line followed Fowler’s lead with an extended period of offensive zone time.

Nolan Renwick’s line with Taylor Makar and Ross Mitton then stacked another front-footed shift, holding the puck in their offensive zone tenaciously, winning their grinding battles against the boards, and putting pucks on net with purpose.

“Makar has been great, [Renwick] has been great. Ross Mitton was really good tonight I thought. He hasn’t gotten rewarded necessarily in production, but his work ethic has been fantastic of late,” Head Coach Ben Barr said after the game.

That work ethic from Maine’s bruising line paid off.  All of a sudden, in a matter of two minutes, Maine had gone from having their backs flat against the wall, to stringing a couple of really positive shifts together and manufacturing a sliver of traction in the game for the first time all evening.

They quickly used it to their advantage.

Captain Clutch

Smelling an opportunity, David Breazeale jumped up in the play and took a pass from Thomas Freel, streaking into Lowell’s end. Maine’s senior co-Captain took a couple of strides before firing a heavy shot along the ice from the top of the left faceoff circle. Breazeale’s shot didn’t seem to have much in it off his tape, and it looked as though it was a shot looking for a rebound, with Josh Nadeau bearing down on net in the vicinity.

But when you’re hot, you’re hot, and Breazeale, off the back of his game-winning goal to seal Maine’s remarkable Saturday night victory over Denver, is scorching. Breazeale’s got the Midas Touch at the moment, with everything he touches turning to gold, so it was no surprise that the puck found an opening on Welsh’s five-hole, squeaking itself into the back of the net to knot the game at one apiece.

David Breazeale’s shot and then celly after the senior defenseman recorded his third goal of the season. (Photos: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

Call him Captain Clutch because Breazeale is made for the big moments. His career-high three-goal tallies this season have all come when his team needs him the most.

“He can just will himself to do things because he is so mentally strong. He just seems to find a way to come through in those big moments, which is awesome. That’s leadership, it’s also a kid that works on all those things, not on the ice, but in behind-the-scenes stuff. He visualizes those things, he images those things in his mind so when he has a chance to do it, it’s there,” Barr said about Breazeale on Tuesday.

While Friday’s goal didn’t come late in the game like last week’s game-winning goal against Denver or his overtime winner over Quinnipiac earlier in the season, Friday night’s lighting of the lamp was at a pivotal moment in the game, enabling Maine to capitalize on the momentum they had generated just minutes prior.

“We don’t look at him to score a lot of goals, but he’s scored a couple of really big goals for us the last couple of weeks,” Barr said after the game.

After making the most of this crucial chance, the Black Bears never looked back.

A tale of two halves

With Breazeale’s goal coming just about exactly midway through the second period, the goal marked a night-and-day change in which direction the ice tilted.

The much-anticipated showdown between the #7 team in the country and #8 began a bit like a heavyweight title bout where each fighter spent the first few rounds sizing up the opponent, not wanting to take a blow to the chin. Neither team wanted to make the first mistake by forcing the issue. Instead, both were happy to play patient and plauding, searching for each other’s weak spots.

“I thought there was a feeling out process in the first period,” Lowell’s Head Coach Norm Bazin said.

Eventually, the River Hawks found an area of weakness and took control of the game, pushing the envelope by utilizing their blistering transition game to cause plenty of problems at the back for the Black Bears.

When Maine would set up in their attacking zone, Lowell was keen to pressure the points They pounced on the puck carriers at the blue line, forcing the turnover before springing up the ice with speed in numbers, directly and in the blink of an eye. 

With eight minutes remaining in the first period, the River Hawks got in behind the Black Bears after Maine’s pinching defenseman was caught out of position, allowing Lowell’s Connor Eddy to fly downhill towards Albin Boija’s net, all alone on the breakaway. Eddy slung a quick shot on net, but Boija’s blocker was there to stonewall the River Hawk forward and keep the contest scoreless.

“We had a couple of opportunities, a breakaway included, to make the difference, but we couldn’t convert,” Bazin said.

Lowell’s best scoring opportunities all came from rapid transition play where the River Hawks would sit in their defensive zone and wait for a Maine mistake before breaking past the Black Bears with breakneck speed.

“Their transition game is good when we have a puck and throw it to nobody or don’t hold it in the corner, and maybe our F-3 is watching, and now they have three guys going the other way, and we’re a little slow to react,” Barr explained.

The F-3 Barr mentions is the third Maine forward who is in on the play in the offensive zone. His job is to stay high in the zone to support the puck and not get sucked down low into the play, which would leave Maine’s defensemen vulnerable at the blueline if the play were to head the other way quickly.

Too often in the first period, Maine would get caught with all three forwards on the wrong side of the puck, allowing the River Hawks to use their transition speed to fly down the ice in numbers, creating odd-man rushes.

“When we go in there, and we’re trying to make a whole play, or you get the puck knocked off your stick right away, and they’re coming at you with speed, and our F-3 is standing still or something, that’s when you get in trouble, and they get past our D. They had a couple of 2-on-1s there that were pretty dangerous,” Barr said.

As noted, before Breazeale’s goal at the midpoint of the contest, Lowell was outshooting Maine 16-9. Afterward, the Black Bears were leading in the shots on goal department 17-10.

According to Barr, the most significant difference between the first half of the game and the second was Maine’s ability to do all the small things marginally better. Winning puck battles, getting to the net, and keeping bodies above the puck all helped Maine finally get their foot into the game as well as control its proceedings as the night wore on.

“In the first half of the game, they were winning more battles than us, getting to the net better than us, and I thought as the game went on, we started to do a better job at that. Getting back above the puck and keeping it in their zone a little bit more. I thought we got better as the game went along,” Barr said.

It also helped that Lowell’s seemingly endless supply of grade-A scoring off the rush dried up in the game's latter stages. For Barr, this was all down to his team managing the puck better in the UMass-Lowell end, not handing the River Hawks any free offensive opportunities through puck mistakes and a lack of structure.

“I thought we held on to more pucks in the offensive zone as the game went along, which took their transition game away,” Barr explained.

A pivotal moment in Friday’s contest came early in the third period, with the game deadlocked at one. This time, it was Maine’s transition game that broke the tie, giving the River Hawks a taste of their own medicine.

With Lowell cycling the puck in the Black Bears' end, Scott pickpocketed the Lowell puck carrier by lifting his stick at the top of the faceoff circle, allowing Mitton to scoop up the loose puck and motor up the ice in a flash. Mitton fed Freel, who took the puck wide, over the blue line, and towards the net. Now a 3-0n-2, Mitton’s presence in the middle of the slot took the focus of the Lowell defensemen, allowing Scott to drive toward the back post unmarked and tap Freel’s cross-crease pass home at the doorstep.

Thomas Freel and Ross Mitton celebrate with Harrison Scott after his 14th goal of the season. (Photo: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

“They capitalized on their 3-on-2, and kudos to them,” Bazin said. “[Poor] puck management. Their 3-on-2 happens because we turned the puck over on the offensive blueline, and we get taken wide.”

With the Black Bears in the lead, Maine closed up shop and completely shut down the River Hawks in the third period. Maine managed the puck well and kept the River Hawks completely at stick length,  ensuring they could only muster seven shots on Boija’s net in the third period.

Maine sucked the life out of the game. Not much of note happened for large stretches in the third period, as the Black Bears were perfectly content to squeeze out any excitement in the contest.

It was the definition of a mature performance when playing with the lead, not something the Black Bears had been able to do away from home up to this point.

Scott would ultimately put the game entirely to bed late in the third period. When he buried an empty netter, the River Hawk fans streamed to the exit, leaving the Tsongas Center with only the droves of cheering Black Bear Nation, their noise reverberating around the rink.

The Black Bears celebrate the victory with goaltender Albin Boija who stopped 26 of 27 shots faced Friday. (Photo: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

Excellent in execution

For a team that has struggled to convert on a plethora of scoring chances in the three games post-break, Friday evening was a big step forward, finally demonstrating an essential ability for ruthless execution.

In the games against Bentley and Denver, Maine had poured 111 shots on net yet only scored five goals, a rate of 4.5%. Friday night, however, Maine scored three goals on 27 shots, albeit one empty netter and one Welsch would like to have back, for an excellent rate of 11.11%.

While such a scoring percentage will be hard to maintain, the increase in capitalization was heads-and-shoulders above what they’d been delivering since the team returned from break.

In the end, the game actually felt like a snatch-and-grab for the Black Bears.

Maine had to weather an early storm however Boija made sure the Black Bears bent but didn’t break. Maine was opportunistic in taking their chances before completely shutting down a Lowell offense that had previously looked so dangerous.

It was as mature a performance as Black Bear Nation has seen from Maine in many years. It definitely wasn’t the type of game Maine would have ever won in the past decade.

The quintessential road-victory.

Endure the early push, quiet the crowd, capitalize on your chances, and suffocate the life out of the game.

On a night when upsets across Hockey East were plentiful, the Black Bears made sure to take care of their business. 

The Maine machine just keeps chugging along, picking up valuable conference standings points.

A sweep on the road on Saturday night would be quite a delight….