Black Bear Nation has a lot to be thankful for this holiday season.

Their Maine Black Bears are currently ranked as the #5 team in the nation according to both USCHO and USA Hockey polls, and they are #3 in the all-important Pairwise, which determines the NCAA Tournament field.

Maine also sits atop the Hockey East standings, albeit with more conference games played than most other teams.

The Black Bears have continued their dominant home display with a near-perfect 6-0-1 record, outscoring their visitors 32-1o at the Alfond.

Meanwhile, Maine also looks like they may be turning the page on their road woes with a decent 2-2-1 record away from home, most recently highlighted last week in Durham by a hugely satisfying victory over Border Battle rivals New Hampshire.

The team has demonstrated its greatest depth in over a decade, getting notable production from top to bottom and on all lines. Leading this muscle have been Harrison Scott (6g-10a-16pts), who is one the top point-getters in the country, Brandon Holt (2g-11a-13pts), who is one of the best-producing defensemen on both sides of the puck, and Thomas Freel (7g-4a-11pts), who leads the nation in power-play goals (7).

All of Maine’s veteran transfer portal acquisitions have meshed with Maine’s system like a well-oiled machine, with Taylor Makar (4g-6a-10pts), Owen Fowler (4g-3a-7pts), Ross Mitton (2g-3a-5pts), Frank Djurasevic (2g-7a-10pts), and Charlie Russell (3g-10a-13pts) all notching solid starts to their Black Bear careers.

The Black Bears are also blessed with one of the best goaltenders in the entire country. Albin Boija has been a horse in net with an excellent .931 Save Percentage and a minuscule 1.58 Goals Against Average. The sophomore has quickly become Maine’s most pivotal player. 

Meanwhile, the renovations to Alfond Arena and the Shawn Walsh Hockey Center have been taking shape in the background, advancing the program into the 21st century.

Step by step, brick by brick, everything has continued to build in the right direction on the ice and off.

Most promising, however, is the fact that although Maine has rattled off an impressive number of wins with a fair chunk of their most challenging games in the rearview mirror, they have yet to play to the best of their ability.

“We’re not there. We’re close, but we’re just not there. And our guys know that,” Head Coach Ben Barr said after Tuesday’s practice.

Own worst enemy

Barr has noticed a frustrating trend in his team: they can be their own worst enemy.

When playing on the road in hostile environments, Maine has had the tendency to shoot themselves in the foot through a lack of composure and maturity, shying away from the big moment.

“There’s players that, when the situation arises, they hide under the rug. We have a lot of guys that have turned themselves into the players that want to be the guy, but we don’t have a full team of [them]. That’s our challenge as coaches and as a program,” Barr explained.

This self-destructive tendency in big-stakes situations was noticeable during their third-period collapse at Boston College a few weeks ago. And while it was better last Friday at UNH, it still reared its head. When Maine has been on top, their unforced errors have allowed opponents to raise their tails and get back into the game.

“We had a 5-on-3 and had all the momentum in the world. We get lazy and take a penalty at the end of it; then we take another penalty, and they score. The game should have been 2 or 3-0 to us at that point. Instead, it’s 1-0 to them. It’s not good enough. We scored an empty net goal, but it gets called back because we slashed a guy for no reason. Those types of things, good teams, and championship-caliber programs don’t do that. They don’t self-destruct like that,” Barr said.

To remedy this, Barr and the coaching staff have continued to replicate game-like intensity every day in practice, working towards pushing the players out of their comfort zone to get them used to playing in unpleasant scenarios. By doing this time and again, players can gain confidence that they have the ability to rise above the most challenging of situations and play without uncertainty and fear, ingraining this in their muscle memory.

“We just have to put ourselves in these situations where it’s really uncomfortable. We try and do it in practice every day,” Barr said.

With a little more time than usual to recover from the UNH game and prepare for this weekend's series at Rensselaer, Maine has had the opportunity to practice with as much intensity and vigor as they’ve been able to since the season got going.

“Our biggest thing is just finding a way to tighten the rope every week and keep building. Our practice today was probably our most intense, energized, sharp practice we’ve had in the past couple of weeks, and that’s the stuff that’s going to translate for us in the weekend,” graduate forward Lynden Breen said.

Back where it all began

For most of the Black Bears, this will be their first experience playing at Houston Field House, the nation’s third-oldest college hockey rink still in use.

For Barr, this weekend’s trip to Troy, New York, will be a homecoming.

Barr played for Rensselaer from 2000-2004, captaining the Engineers in his senior season. He was one of the top scorers for RPI during his junior and senior years, being named team MVP in 2003 and earning the Rensselaer Coach’s Award in 2003 and 2004.

Persuaded by his parents to take the step to the college level immediately as an eighteen-year-old, Barr didn’t have too many Division One offers, with Army and Rensselaer being the two suitors. Barr was originally planning on attending West Point before RPI demonstrated interest.

Barr, a Minnesota native, had never heard of tiny Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute but he developed a strong relationship with then-Head Coach Dan Fridgen and decided to commit to Rensselaer rather than enroll at Army, where he would have had to incur eight years of military service after graduating.

“I was a little unsure of the whole military thing; it wasn’t necessarily anything I had ever thought about, so that was really the main reason,” Barr said.

Instead, after graduating from RPI, Barr was able to immediately begin his coaching career as a volunteer assistant for his alma mater, as well as staying in the area to serve as the head coach of the Capital District Selects for two seasons. Barr would eventually move on from RPI but remained in the Albany area to be an assistant coach for rivals Union College for four seasons. At Union, Barr helped build the Dutchmen’s 2014 National Championship-winning roster.

Barr’s decision to begin his college career in the Albany area was life-changing.

Not only is it where he met the right people who have since helped him climb the college hockey ladder to where he is today, but it was in New York’s Capital Region that he met his wife, Tara, who is native to the area.

There have been a lot of sliding door moments in his career that ultimately have led him to Maine.

Obviously, committing to play at RPI and not at Army West Point was one of them, but so were disappointing job rejections. In 2017, he was a finalist for the Rensselaer Head Coach gig, but the job was given to current RPI Head Coach Dave Smith. In 2020, Barr was also a frontrunner to take over for Vermont but didn’t get the job.

A few months later, Barr would secure the Maine Head Coach role, and the rest has been history.

“When I went through the head coaching process at three or four places, and I was always kind of one of the last two, and I didn’t get jobs at RPI and Vermont, then sometimes you step back, and you realize how fortunate you are just to be in this game, whether that’s as a head coach or assistant coach and things happen for a reason. So I think it just puts everything in perspective,” Barr said.

Everything does happen for a reason. From a Maine perspective, thank goodness it happened the way it did.

This weekend’s return to Houston Fieldhouse won’t be Barr’s first trip back, as his teams have played at RPI numerous times over the years.

“I’ve been back a lot. It was weird the first time. When I was at Union, that was our big rival,” Barr said. “Then we played there at UMass, and I’ve played against them at other places, so I don’t think it’ll be as weird as it was the first couple of times,” Barr said.

However, this weekend’s return will be significant because it’ll be the first time Barr has coached against his alma mater as a head coach, although Barr is playing down its noteworthiness.

“We’re so wrapped up in trying to figure ourselves up here. You’re in the season, and it seems like there’s not a minute to think about any of that stuff. Maybe before the game starts, it’ll feel a little different, but it hasn’t yet,” Barr said.

Meanwhile, his team, while still focused on themselves, are motivated to get some victories for their coach at his old stomping grounds.

“I’m sure, deep down, there’s a little bit of fire under his skin to get a win, but it hasn’t been talked about so much. We’re kind of just mainly focused on our process, but we’ll get the job done for him,” Breen said.

Examining the Engineers

It will take quite an effort to get the job done and come away with two wins from Maine’s longest road trip of the season this weekend.

Although the Black Bears swept RPI at the Alfond in dominating fashion to open up last season, outshooting Rensselaer 108-32 over the two games, that was against an inexperienced team on the first weekend of the year. Last season, RPI’s program was still recovering from a Covid-canceled 2021/22 season that saw the loss of many of its players.

This season, RPI has engineered themselves a solid 5-4-1 record, with impressive road sweeps over Canisius and Miami (Ohio), as well as a notable exhibition victory against UMass. 

“I think they are a confident bunch. They were probably a tentative group when they came up here last year just with all of the new guys, and they were playing their first weekend [at Alfond Arena], which is never easy for anybody, so I think we’re going to see a totally different team,” Barr warned.

Coming into the weekend buoyed by self-belief, the Engineers will also come into Saturday’s matinee full of energy and a well-detailed gameplan, having not played last weekend and so benefitting from extra time to prepare for perhaps their biggest games of the year. For RPI, a win over the #5 team in the country would be season-defining.

“Obviously, they are a team that is going to push us, they are going to come out hot, any team that plays us at this point of the year is going to give us all they got, so we have to be ready and be at the top of our game for sure,” Breen said.

Rensselaer has returned a lot of experience and talented firepower from last year’s disappointing season with 16 upperclassmen or graduate students on the 28-man roster. Especially deep in defense, the Engineers have a solid spine with reliable veteran D-men #8 Will Gilson (4g-5a-9pts +12), #4 Elliot McDermott (2g-4a-6pts +12), and  #7 Max Smoliniski (1g-5a-6pts +/- 0) providing production on both sides of the puck.

Meanwhile, notable RPI forwards include #28 Tyler Hotson (3g-6a-9pts), #11 Rainers Rullers (5g-2a-7pts), #17 John Beaton (4g-3a-7pts), and #18 Jakob Lee (3g-3a-6pts).

Blessed with size in all positions, Rensselaer forechecks hard and heavy, and they utilize their size advantage to protect pucks stubbornly. The Engineers are great at getting the puck off their opponents and good at making it tricky to get the puck back off them.

Like the Black Bears, RPI plays meat-and-potatoes blue-collar hockey.

“Their rink is a little more conducive to that; it’s a little bit bigger of a rink than we play in, so those big guys, they are long, and they can cover some space and protect pucks; it’s a tough defensive matchup,” Barr explained.

Maine will need to continue their diligent defensive display (1.6 G/A, 4th best in the nation) to halt a confident RPI offense that is equal to the Black Bears’ offensive production (3.6 G/G tied for 7th best in the country). Maine can’t give Rensselaer any free offense, which means they must limit mental errors, puck mistakes, and lazy penalties, as RPI’s powerplay is the 11th best in the country, scoring at a rate of 25.8%.

Offensively, if Maine can take better care of the puck than they have on the road to date, they should have enough talent to score past an RPI defense and a graduate-transfer goaltender from Ferris State, Noah Giesbrecht (2.77 GAA .912 Save %), that have leaked 3.2 goals on average this season. But Maine’s 7th best goals for average in the nation hasn't been nearly as clinical away from home, with the Black Bears only scoring over three goals once this year, compared to five times at the Alfond.

These are games Maine must win if they are to continue punching at the top end of college hockey. But watch your step – this weekend and next against Stonehill have the potential to be banana-peel games if the Black Bears are not careful and take their opponents for granted. 

There is so much to be thankful for, but even more to be hungry about.