The #5 Maine Black Bears travel into enemy territory for a Friday night fistfight with their noisy neighbors to the south: the New Hampshire Wildcats. 

In recent years, the Border Battle has been dominated by the home team, with each side’s raucous crowds creating a charged home-ice advantage that the visitors haven’t been able to overcome.

Last season, Maine’s games against New Hampshire marked both the highlight and the low point of the Black Bears' season.

Maine cruised to victory in the two games at the Alfond, outscoring the Wildcats 10-2, which included a Hockey East Quarterfinal thumping that ended UNH’s season with a 5-0 victory. 

But UNH outscored Maine 11-4 in a humiliating mid-February sweep that ran the Black Bears out of the building with their tails between their legs. The shellacking resulted in the Maine train being knocked off the tracks for a couple of weeks late in the season.

“They play really well in their rink against us. We haven’t had success down there in a really long time. They smoked us down there last year two games in a row,” Head Coach Ben Barr said on the Black Bear Coaches Show.

Maine hasn’t won at the Whittemore Center since February 2nd, 2019, and while Barr and the Black Bears are eager for the chance to change the program’s fortunes in Durham, they are even more galvanized at the opportunity to put their road struggles in big games behind them.

Home cooking vs. Road woes

Maine has looked like two completely different versions of themselves when playing at the Alfond versus when away from home, not just this season but during the entirety of Barr’s time behind the bench. 

During his first two seasons, Maine’s record at the Alfond was 12-16-4 but dramatically dropped off to 5-22-5 on the road.

Even during last year’s breakout season, the Black Bears' 8-8-0 record away from home paled in comparison to their 13-2-2 record at Fortress Alfond.

This year has been much the same. Maine’s near-perfect 6-0-1 domination in Orono has the Black Bears outscoring their opponents 32-10, but they haven’t been able to play to the same level away from the Alfond. With a road record of 1-2-1 this season, Maine has never consistently gotten into their front-footed, dynamic style of game away from home this year, only scoring five 5-0n-5 goals in their four road games.

“It’s never going to look the same as it does [at home]. It will [look the same] in spurts. The best teams, the championship teams, can find a way to not make that a thing, but I’ve had yet to coach one of those teams where you are just as good [on the road],” Barr said.

As Barr alluded to, a team rarely plays on the road as well as it does in the friendly confines of its home building due to a number of factors.

“It’s always just a little bit harder on the road. It’s easier to do it in your own house. It’s familiar. You feel good when you get there,” Barr said after Tuesday’s practice. “When you go on the road, there’s always that uncertainty, so just to be able to have that laser focus and clear eyes is a challenge, but that’s what we have to get to.”

While Maine has won plenty of games on the road during Barr’s tenure, they have never done so in a packed road barn against one of their fiercest rivals, with all of the hostile commotion and chaos that these marquee matchups typically involve. 

For the Black Bears, learning how to win away from home in front of a hostile crowd out for their blood is the next step Maine must take in order to become a championship-caliber program. They’ve shown time and time again that they can win the big games at home but have yet to show that level on the road.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to prove to ourselves that we can play the same way on the road as we do at home,” Barr said.

It is clear from hearing Barr and the team speak they are still hurting from the stinging Friday night loss at Boston College a fortnight ago. It wasn’t the result that is still painful for Maine, but the way in which they shrunk in the spotlight in front of a cacophonous Conte Forum crowd that led to their collapse, which was the most disappointing. 

“We can’t have anybody having a mental meltdown and panicking. That was the disappointing part a couple of weeks ago, not to live in the past or whatever, but we had four or five guys who were completely just ready to get out of that game; it was too much for [them]. If we want to be the team that we want to be, that can’t happen. We have to go in and thrive in that environment, rather than go ‘oh jeez, get the puck off my tape,’” Barr explained.

The moment got too big for Maine, and it spiraled out of control as the Black Bears looked shell-shocked and nowhere near their usual mentally tough selves. But that’s what playing in enemy territory in front of a hostile crowd can do to you. It can chew you up and spit you out if you let it. The Black Bears let it.

“When you’re in [a hostile environment], people do crazy things,” Barr said. “You watch those games, and you see guys doing things they haven’t done in three years, playing tape-to-tape passes to the other team, falling down when no one is around.

But the Black Bears, in fact, are looking forward to this weekend’s trip into a hostile building as a challenge. They’re licking their lips at the opportunity to prove to themselves that they can succeed in the same areas they so recently failed in.

“We have all those things that are a part of taking another step as a team, and it’s going to take every single one of us. So that’s more of what I’m excited in seeing. Can we take a step as a program and go to a really tough place, knowing that the odds are stacked against us, and get a job done?” Barr challenged.

How to win at the Whitt

There’s no question that in order for the Black Bears to reach their full potential, Maine needs to overcome the mental hurdle of playing to their top ability on the road in a hostile environment.

Not only do they need to find a way to perform at the same level they so often do at the Alfond, but they will need to raise that level even more if they are to come away from Durham with their first win at the Whittemore Center in over five seasons.

“I think it’s obviously going to take a full sixty minutes, our best hockey of the year so far. That rink is obviously bananas whenever we go down there,” Junior forward Thomas Freel said.

For Maine to weather the Whittemore Center’s whiteout, the Black Bears will need their best, most complete performance of the season. And then some.

“You have to be like thirty percent better than you are at home to win a game like this on the road,” Barr said.

Both teams have a great deal of pride at stake. With the Wildcats desperate for redemption against the bitter rivals that ended their season just seven months ago and the Black Bears seeking to atone for their back-to-back failures at the Whitt last year, there’s no question that Friday evening will be an as emotionally charged contest as any.

Last season at UNH, Maine’s emotions got the better of the Black Bears who looked immature in the face of the Whitt’s whiteout, taking two five-minute major penalties during the Saturday game. It wasn’t only the two major penalties that highlighted Maine’s lack of composure The Black Bears looked mentally fragile, unable to play with much poise. They couldn’t string a series of passes together, with the swirling atmosphere getting the better of them.

“Anytime you’re playing in an electric environment like the Alfond is every night, like [the Whittemore Center] will be down there on Friday, controlling your emotions is a huge piece of it. It’s a huge piece of being able to function and make plays with poise; it’s a huge piece of when the whistle blows being able to walk away and not take dumb penalties; it will be important down there, no question,” Barr said. 

Maine has shown a lot more maturity this season, especially last Saturday evening against BU when, for the most part, the Black Bears refused to succumb to the Terrier’s after-the-whistle antics during a heated affair. But this Friday night will truly test their mental maturity and emotional regulation in the heat of battle in enemy territory.

Just two weeks ago at BC, the road version of Maine also looked emotionally vulnerable when the going got tough. The hostile environment ratcheted up, the momentum swung in the opposition’s favor, and the Black Bears fell apart.

“To mentally go to a place where you can function no matter what, and that’s what the championship level teams do, and we haven’t gotten there yet, but we are capable of doing it, and this is another chance to [prove that],” Barr said.

For Freel, when playing on the road in front of a raucous crowd that is hurling hostilities towards you from all directions, it’s all about staying present in the moment, embracing the crazed environment while also enjoying the role of being public enemy number one, embracing that identity.

“I think it's one of those things where when you’re skating around for warmups or for the anthem, you look around, and you recognize it and almost enjoy trying to be the villain. But once the game starts, you just have to focus on your own game. It's easier said than done,” Freel said. “It’s really kind of focusing on that next shift, not looking too far in the future, not looking too far in the past, focusing on what you can control.”

At Boston College, when the Eagles began to soar and the Black Bears began to crack, it was noticeable that the pressure and the atmosphere got to some of the Black Bears, who shied away in the big moments. For Maine to be successful on Friday night, every single one of Maine’s players and staff alike will have to approach the game with a steely, unwavering focus. Not only can none of the Black Bears shy away when in the spotlight, they need to step up and perform under the bright lights and increased pressure of a Border Battle game.

“You’re really looking to see if we can have every one of our players go out and play how they are capable of playing. Or is it going to be a handful of guys that need to go back into the locker room and start again? That’s where we were at two weeks ago and hopefully, we’ve grown from that,” Barr said.

What we know about the Wildcats

While much of Maine’s focus is on themselves and working on overcoming their own mental hurdles, the game isn’t played in a vacuum. There will be twenty-two dressed Wildcats imposing every inch of their will on the Black Bears, with thousands more screaming them on.

UNH has gotten off to a mixed start this season, entering the weekend with a 4-2-3 record. Wins over Bentley, Quinnipiac, Long Island, and Northeastern prove that on their day, New Hampshire can beat anybody. 

Much of the same cast of characters are back from last year. And they will have been counting down the days waiting for their rematch with the Black Bears ever since their season ended at the Alfond in mid-March.

Posing the biggest threat to the Black Bears’ back end is the line led by sophomore forward #36 Ryan Conmy (6g-4a-10pts), playing alongside #12 Liam Devlin (1g-5a-5pts), who scored four goals against Maine last year, and freshman #25 Nick Ring (2g-3a-5pts).

Meanwhile, there isn’t too much drop-off production-wise to UNH’s second forward line consisting of #29 Cy LeClerc (3g-3a-6pts), #6 Marty Lavis (2g-2a-4pts) and #23 Jason Siedem (0g-2a-2pts).

However, it is on UNH’s backend where the Wildcats are the strongest, with veteran senior defensemen #20 Colton Huard (0g-5a-5pts), #28 Alex Gagne (1g-3a-4pts), and #16 Luke Reid (0g-1a-1pt) providing plenty of solidity and experience on the blueline.

“I think they are one of the better teams in our league. I thought they were at the end of the year last year, and they have all of their best players back, for the most part, and added some really good pieces. They are older, like us; they have some guys with a lot of experience, especially on the backend,” Barr said.

One of their new pieces is in goal, Alaska-Anchorage transfer #41 Jared Whale (2.11 GAA — 0.912 Save%), who has started in all of UNH’s nine games this season. The Black Bears have faced Whale before, when the Alaska Anchorage Seawolves came to Orono in January of 2023, with the Black Bears putting four goals in forty shooting attempts past Whale in Maine’s 4-3 overtime win.

Last season, the Black Bears fell victim to New Hampshires' blistering speed in the neutral zone. This season, the Wildcats are no different, once again playing a rapid transition-style game that looks to pounce on puck mistakes and move through the zones quickly in numbers. Once in their offensive zone, UNH creates much of their offense through their defenseman walking the blueline and putting the puck into high-traffic areas in front of the net or by feeding seam passes to their forwards, who are in constant movement on the cycle.

Maine is going to need to play much better in the neutral zone than they did last year, laying a hit on every Wildcat that darts through the neutral zone so as not to allow UNH any quick zone enteries. And while in their D-zone, the Black Bears will need to keep their head on a swivel, box out rebounds, and clear loose pucks, things they did not do for BU’s game-tying goal on Saturday night.

However, as is the case in most of Maine’s games, puck possession will be critical.  They struggled with this last time on the road, at BC. The team’s mental strength and ability to keep their emotions in check will be crucial to staying poised with the puck, making good decisions, keeping their feet moving, and doing something productive with the puck every time they have it on their sticks.

“[Last season] a lot of their transition is probably us turning pucks over, us panicking, making poor decisions with the puck so that fuels another team’s transition,” Barr said. “That’s why we looked so bad at BC. We couldn’t make two passes without throwing a chili pepper to somebody. It was gross; it wasn’t like we weren’t trying, the poise wasn’t there.”

The on-paper statistics favor the Black Bears in just about every category. Maine’s goals-per-game ratio is tied for 6th best in the nation at 3.6 goals per game, while its goals-against ratio is tied for fifth best in the country at just 1.9 goals allowed. This is compared to UNH’s 2.6 goals-per-game, which is 45th in the nation, and their 2.6 GAA, which is tied for 41st.

Meanwhile, on special teams, Maine's power play percentage is 25.5%, the 8th best in college hockey, while the PK is 87.5%, the 11th best rate. UNH’s PP% is the 52nd (13.3%), and their PK is the 14th highest (87.1%). 

But games aren’t played on paper; they are played in electric, sold-out barns that tilt the ice in the home teams’ direction — the ultimate equalizer, the ultimate advantage.

For the Black Bears to get over the hump and win their first truly big-time road test of the Ben Barr era, Maine will need to produce one of their best-ever performances under his leadership.

They will have to succeed in every area in which they failed a fortnight ago. Puck management, mental toughness, quality team performances from top-to-bottom, and better execution in front of each net. But more importantly, Maine needs to play fearless.

Maine will get New Hampshire's best game of the year; the Black Bears will need to match that and raise it tenfold.

It is one of Maine’s most formidable hurdles to overcome. It will take their absolute best performance, but it sure would be one of the sweetest tasting.

Into the belly of the beast, we go.