Weekend Preview @ UConn

The Black Bears resume Hockey East play with a tough trip to Hartford to take on the Connecticut Huskies.

To say the future is bright is quite an understatement.

An $80 million gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation to UMaine Athletics was announced earlier this week. The very foundation that enabled the construction of Alfond Arena and the formation of its hockey programs has once again put pen to paper, further cementing its dedication and support for Maine Athletics.

The generous donation comes on the back of a $90 million gift from the foundation in 2020 that has already begun to be put to use. Improvements to Athletic facilities across campus have been ongoing in the past year, including the revamped scoreboard and ribbon board at Alfond Arena. This facelift has already significantly improved the gameday environment and atmosphere this season and builds on prior improvements to one of college hockey's most historic barns.

The famous rink that is the focal point of the campus' athletic facilities is set to use its portion of the gifts to create a brand-new entranceway. It will also see an overhaul of the attached Shawn Walsh Hockey Center, which houses the teams' dressing room, coaches' offices, gym, and other amenities. On top of this, the university itself is raising $30 million to help contribute to these and other sports facility advancements, clearly showing its dedication to the future of Black Bear athletics.

On and off the ice, the Black Bears are building something special.

Shifting the focus to an equally galvanizing present, the Maine men's hockey team looks to build on their fantastic season to date with an arduous road trip this weekend, taking on the mighty Connecticut Huskies down in Hartford.

Already with their best season in over a decade, the Black Bears are sitting pretty with a 13-3-2 record that has them polled as #8 in the country based on USCHO.com's poll and #4 in the pairwise.

But now, on the eve of Hockey East play resuming and the start of the real playoff push, it's make-or-break time for the Maine Black Bears.

Last weekend, the Black Bears' first test of 2024 was precisely that: a test.

Over the two games that saw a Black Bear win and a tie, the Colgate Raiders played Maine extremely tough, a reality the Black Bears will meet every weekend from now on.

With a target on their back, Maine faced Colgate's best. The Raiders, structured and well-coached, were a handful for the Black Bears to deal with. Colgate's heavy, physical play kept Maine's high-scoring New Brunswick line from finding the back of the net on Saturday. At the same time, its own offense created plenty of danger around Maine's net, which Albin Boija hat to bail out.

While the Raiders made everything extremely difficult for the Black Bears, it allowed Maine to showcase their impressive fight-back and overall mental fortitude. On the midweek Black Bear Coaches' Show with Jon Shields, Barr noted that his team's determination to not give up and keep battling even while down 3-0 so early on Saturday's game was a great sign. Maine was able to grind out goals and find a way, even while nothing was coming easy for them.

Barr emphasized that the team will be able to use what they learned from the challenges presented by Colgate as useful knowledge to build on.

And they will undoubtedly need to take last weekend's lived experience down to Hartford with them, as UConn plays a very similar style to Colgate. Aggressive and physical, with a great net-front presence, the Huskies' way of playing is perfectly set up to frustrate the Black Bears' high-scoring offense before hitting Maine on the counter.

The 7-3 scoreline in Maine's victory over UConn in early December provides a misleading interpretation of the game, which saw the Huskies outshoot and outplay the Black Bears for much of the contest on Alfond ice. Connecticut controlled and dictated the play for most of the game, but a Bradly Nadeau hat-trick dragged the Black Bears over the line.

That weekend in early December, which saw back-to-back hat-tricks from the Nadeau brothers, was a wake-up call for opposition sides across the country. Since then, opposing defenses have established a heightened, tighter presence when defending the brothers, not allowing them any time or space on the puck, all while trying to physically halt the star-forwards by any means necessary.

Colgate was mostly successful in shutting down the Nadeaus, as both brothers were held to just one goal between the pair over the weekend. Saturday's pointless performance snapped Josh's thirteen-game point streak that had earned the freshman NCAA Player of the Month honors.

Frustrated by Colgate's physical nature and brick-wall defense, both brothers looked as though they were trying to set up the perfect play to score a goal, often overthinking the play and trying to pass the puck into the net.

UConn will give Maine an equally demanding test.

The Huskies have only improved since their trip to Orono, defeating Harvard in Storrs and earning an impressive tie in Amherst against a tough UMass side last weekend. UConn's lineup is filled with big, thick bodies that love to hit but are equally skilled skaters.

They won't allow Maine any open ice. The Bears will need to utilize a road mentality, making simple, positive plays with the puck, taking what UConn gives them and not trying to force the play.

During the Saturday comeback against Colgate, all of Maine's goals (Sully Scholle's highlight reel aside) came from instinctively firing pucks on net instead of setting each other up with a myriad of tic-tac-toe passes. More of the same will be needed against UConn.

As the late great Shawn Walsh once put it, "quietly efficient."

Barr also emphasized that the Black Bears must be ready for the hard-hitting contests that are bound to ensue in Harford over the weekend. He reinforced the notion of positively advancing the puck while being bashed into the boards.

Take a hit to make a play.

He also noted that a key to this weekend's series will be an increased Black Bear net-front presence. These conference games will get tighter and tighter as the season runs down and teams become more desperate for points. There will be significantly less open ice for his team to utilize, meaning Maine will need to "own the net front," looking for rebounds, screens, and tips. The dirty areas of the ice will be the most critical spots of real estate.

With every contest from here on out against a fellow Hockey East rival, the importance of each game increases tenfold. Not only will Maine be battling to stay in the top sixteen of the pairwise, but they must put themselves in a strong position for a Hockey East Tournament run.

The top three teams in the Hockey East standings earn a bye from the first round. With the tournament now being single-elimination, this is a major advantage that the Black Bears will be desperate to earn. Knowing all too well the perils of the one-and-done format with the heartbreaking season-ending loss to Vermont last year in the opening round, Maine will be gunning for a top-three conference finish that, if achieved, will put the Black Bears in good stead to make the big dance: the National Tournament.

The Black Bears are currently sitting at third, behind powerhouses BU and BC, who will be hard to catch. This series against UConn is critical for the standings as the Huskies only sit one point behind Maine.

Being a road series against a team that seems set up perfectly to negate Maine's strengths, a four-point weekend (a win and a tie with a shootout win) would be a terrific result to kick off the Black Bears' resumption of Hockey East play. A split would be very much okay; anything less would feel deflating, and a sweep would send yet another statement to the conference and the country that Maine was the real deal.

The road to the Garden starts now.

The Black Bears are coming.