Maine and Connecticut line up for the National Anthem. (Photo: Patience Hanley - UMaine Athletics)

Deja vu.

Against Boston University, there were 20.6 seconds remaining.

Against Denver, there were 31.9 seconds left.

And now, on Saturday night, with 37.3 ticks left on the clock, the Maine Black Bears once again left the door open for the Connecticut Huskies to secure a last-gasp, game-tying goal.

All too often this season, the Alfond Faithful have seen this same frustrating story play out. 

Death, taxes, and the Black Bears' inability to close out games at home.

“It’s just the same thing. It’s mental errors, and it’s not on the individuals necessarily; it’s on all of us. We’re not executing in those situations,” Head Coach Ben Barr said after the game. “It’s just disappointing that we couldn’t hold on to that game. It’s disappointing that that game ended that way. It’s just self-inflicted. We need to be better.”

In Maine’s two previous last-minute goals allowed at the Alfond, hopeful last-ditch shots from well outside the perimeter snuck through net-front traffic to be banged home in front of the crease.

UConn’s tying goal on Saturday night was no different, with Jake Percival tipping a Kai Janviriya point shot past Albin Boija to tie the game at two.

“We give up another floater from the point because we’re not in a shot lane. It’s just a nothing [shot]. Yeah, it was deflected, but you can’t be giving up a shot from the middle of the blueline with a bunch of bodies in front of the net,” Barr said. “You can give up the flank shots, but you can’t give up shots from the middle of the blue line. It’s just a simple rotation.”

Game changer

With Maine leading 2-1 with just over three minutes remaining in the third period, the Black Bears were very much in the driver’s seat, cruising to victory. At that point, Maine was keeping Connecticut comfortably at stick length and looked the more likely team to seal the deal and score their third goal rather than UConn knotting things even. The Black Bears were creating the better-scoring chances but narrowly missing  the moments of execution needed to put the final nail in Connecticut’s coffin.

Stop me if you’ve heard that before.

But a late hit behind the play at the UConn blueline by Ross Mitton knocked Ethan Gardula to the ice, leaving the Huskies’ forward unnaturally slumped, unmoving, and unconscious.

Mitton was immediately given a five-minute major penalty and, upon review, a game misconduct for contact to the head.

Black Bear Nation can debate whether there was head contact in the first place, whether the collision was intentional, and whether a five-minute major was warranted until the cows come home. But the simple truth is that Mitton gave the referees the chance to make that decision at that point in the  final period, with his team holding on to a one-goal lead in a must-win game.

“Really, really poor penalty, just a bad decision, it’s a bad play,” Barr said. “It was an absolutely horrific penalty to take; it’s just a weak mental penalty.”

Gardula eventually regained consciousness and was able to skate off the ice to the Connecticut dressing room, but the damage was already done. The Black Bears would have to play the remainder of regulation handicapped on the penalty kill.

Maine would battle gallantly, but UConn’s barrage eventually broke through the Black Bears’ back in the final minute. With UConn’s net empty and on a 6-on-4, Maine couldn’t cover the point on Janviriya’s point shot, and the Black Bears were unable to tie up Percival's stick at the netfront.

“We’re just making mental errors at the end of games, and it’s costing us games right now. It’s just not good enough,” Barr said.

“We’ve got to get our details better. We’re working, but we have to get better, we have to improve mentally, make the right choices,” Albin Boija said. “We lose our spots a little bit, lose our positions sometimes, and that’s what we want to try and tidy up.”

Salvaging the shootout

After the gut punch, the Black Bears' fight with the Huskies was still not finished. As a five-minute overtime period commenced, Maine still needed to kill Mitton’s penalty for almost half of the sudden death frame.

The Black Bears successfully held the Huskies at bay, weathering the Connecticut 4-on-3 power play surge, but neither team could capitalize on their chances during the overtime. The contest ended in a 2-2 tie, with both teams picking up one Hockey East point.

“That was really positive; fighting through that and getting through that 4-on-3 was tough. 4-on-3s are a lot tougher than 5-on-4s, so the guys did a great job at that,” Barr said. “I’m proud of the way the guys worked.”

A shootout followed, with the winner earning an extra league point and a moral victory.

Maine’s Nicholas Niemo got things started with an absolutely filthy toe-drag, backhand move that sent the puck into the roof of the net.

Niemo’s goal was the only successful tally in the shootout for either team, as Josh Nadeau was stopped by Callum Tung, and Harrison Scott was unsuccessful when his stick shattered at the most inopportune moment.

Meanwhile, Boija stonewalled all three Huskies’ attempts at the other end, clinching the shootout win and the extra point in the Hockey East standings.

“That was huge. He’s a brick wall when he needs to be. Our whole team was cheering for him, which was great, he did an unreal job,” Taylor Makar said about Boija’s shootout heroics. “He’s tough [to score on] in practice, that’s for sure, for me at least.”

Albin Boija celebrates the final of his three saves in Maine’s shootout win. (Photo: Anthony DelMonaco - UMaine Athletics)

The shootout ‘win’ left an odd feeling in the Alfond. While Maine picked up two points, they were 37.3 seconds away from all three.

37.3 seconds away from a win instead of a tie.

Frustrating and disappointing, the result left a sour taste.

“We should have been a lot better, tighten up our details and stuff like that…. But I think it was good that we rallied back, and we got a couple of points at the end there,” Makar said.

“We’re not playing the way we want to, but scramble and almost get away with a win and we get the shootout win. It’s okay, we’ll take it for now, but we have to get better in the future,” Boija added.

Scoring woes continue

After a poor showing on Friday night during which the Black Bears were second-best in just about every area but most worryingly, completely outworked and outcompeted, Maine’s response on Saturday evening was a somewhat better one.

Maine got back to playing Black Bear hockey — a lunch pail, nuts-and-bolts effort that was heads and shoulders better than on Friday. Maine’s forecheck was ferocious, their passes more precise, their energy used more efficiently, and their increased physicality much more purposeful. The Black Bears outplayed Connecticut for much of the first period, winning their battles and laying with an overall higher tempo, all while taking good care of the puck and dictating the game on their terms.

Maine was doing everything well enough, except they were once again struggling to make the final poised play and put the biscuit in the basket. UConn’s goaltender Callum Tung popped out plenty of juicy rebounds, sitting in the blue paint begging to be banged home by a Black Bear stick, but Maine’s forwards had trouble getting to the interior of Connecticut’s defensemen to crash the net for those rebounds.

The Black Bears were working extremely hard to create grade-A chances but could not capitalize on their momentum.

To make matters more frustrating, the Huskies were able to pounce on one of their few scoring opportunities when Ryan Tattle squeezed a non-threatening-looking shot under Boija’s pads. The shot was a changeup of sorts, with Boija expecting a hard-high headhunter but instead got a slow dribbler along the ice.

“I’m not sure if he whiffed on it or not, but I kind of thought he was going to roof it because he made that move, and then it kind of just slipped under my leg,” Boija explained.

It was a story the Alfond Faithful had seen too many times since the turn of the New Year. The Black Bears created boatloads of chances but could not score, while the opposition were opportunistic and efficient with their few.

“The first [UConn goal] was obviously a momentum killer, but I thought we responded and scored at the end there. That was big-time by [Oskar Komarov],” Barr said.

It did indeed take a big-time play for Maine to finally get on the board and tie the game. With seconds left in the first period, Komarov won the puck off a Husky stick behind the net and found Djurasevic with a pass as he came jumping down from the point. Komarov wheeled himself into the slot, enabling Djurasevic to repay the favor with a smooth no-look pass right into Komarov’s wheelhouse. Komarov then blasted the game-tying goal into the back of the net with just one second left on the clock.

Oskar Komarov wheels away to celebrate his first period goal. (Photo: Anthony DelMonaco - UMaine Athletics)

Relieved cheers rang out around the Alfond.

The second period saw a rampant UConn response as the Huskies took it to the Black Bears in the same fashion they gave it back. There was not an inch of open ice, with both teams sticking to each other like glue, sending bodies flying all over the ice, congesting all the space, and largely negating each other’s offensive prowess.

This led to plenty of ill-tempered chippiness and chirping between the whistles on the ice and between the benches. Owen Fowler signaled that a particular Husky who was in his face’s breath stank, while another UConn player taunted Anthony Calafiore’s height.

The third period was more like the first, with Maine dominating the play. The Black Bears’ defense rotated well in the offensive zone. Pinches were perfectly timed, the walls were sealed and supported, and vacated spaces were instantly filled. When the puck did go into the Black Bear end, Maine wasted no time messing about, took hits to make a forward breakout pass, chipped pucks out when they needed to, and motored their way through the zones when they could.

Six minutes into the third period, with the game still tied at one apiece, Brandon Holt carried the puck deep into UConn territory, stickhandling in the corner while waiting for reinforcements to jump up into the play. Holt swiveled back up the half-boards, finding Taylor Makar charging over the blueline. With Nolan Renwick’s big frame standing tall in front of Tung’s eyes, Makar snapped a quick shot on net, which Tung never saw before it went through his wickets and into the back of the goal.

“It was an amazing play by [Brandon Holt], unreal net front play by Renwick, and I just thought that I needed to help the team at some point here, and I thought I’d just get my shot off as quick as possible,” Makar said.

The rafters shook to the Alfond’s roar as a sea clad in blue and white raised its arms triumphantly in the air in unison.

Makar was a monster all night long. His ability to squeeze the puck off an opposition stick by the opponent’s half-wall makes him the essential second forechecker to come in on the play in Maine’s system.

Makar, Renwick, and Mitton have been Maine’s most influential line over the past few weeks. After a rampant start to the season in which the trio combined for eight goals in the first four games, running riot to start the year, the line cooled off and was split up in early December. Since being reinstated last week at Lowell, however, the line has looked like its scintillating original self, scoring three of Maine’s seven even-strength goals in the last two weeks. For Makar, the line’s veteran cohesion and wrecking ball-like force have brought them productive success.

Taylor Makar sweeps the ice in celebration of his third period go-ahead goal. (Photo: Patience Hanley - UMaine Athletics)

“Everyone’s super tight on this team, especially us as a line. We’re all older guys, we’re really good at communicating with each other, working on how we want to [play] in practice. I think the biggest thing for us is keeping our feet moving, gelling together, and pushing pucks forward, winning battles. That’s the biggest key for us and is what brings us success. We know we’re not a lot of skill guys, so we’re just going to keep working hard, and that’s where our success comes,” Makar explained.

But yet, even with one red-hot line, Maine’s offensive struggles have been considerable. The Black Bears have yet to score more than two non-empty net goals in any game in their seven games played since returning from break. In the first half, Maine scored more than two goals per game in eleven of sixteen times.

For a team that was scoring with ease in the first half of the season, the goal-scoring has dried up. At the break, Maine was tied for first in the country in goals-per-game, averaging 4.0 goals a night. This average has now dropped to 3.35 G/G, with Maine now 8th in this statistic.

Barr sees these offensive woes as being due to a number of top goal-scoring producers all having slumps at the moment.

“There are some guys that are struggling. It’s not that they aren’t working hard, if you keep working, usually, it will turn, but we’ve got some guys that are gripping it. Obviously, being down Breen and [Russell], those are guys that usually put the puck in the net and make plays, so we’re next guy up,” Barr said.

Charlie Russell didn’t suit up Saturday night after he left the game with a sore wrist at the end of Friday’s second period and didn’t return. There is still no timetable set for Lynden Breen’s potential return.

Meanwhile, Josh Nadeau hasn’t scored since Maine’s final game before the Christmas break. Although he is working hard off the puck, it looks as though he is trying to do too much with it on his tape, trying an elaborate stickhandle instead of making a simple play. Nadeau hasn’t registered an assist since then, either.

Sully Scholle is another naturally gifted goalscorer who has struggled recently, as he  hasn’t netted since the Northeastern series in October.

At the same time, Thomas Freel and Harrison Scott were held pointless for an entire weekend for the first time all season. While they still have an immense impact on the ice, they are clearly missing a right-winger  with whom they can gel. Nadeau played alongside Scott and Freel on Friday, while Niemo was paired with them on Saturday.

This weekend, Maine’s power play was held scoreless in seven attempts and didn’t record a single shot on net during a Maine 5-on-3, which they had for about forty seconds.

It’s not the weekend anyone with a Maine persuasion would have wanted. 

“We’re definitely not playing championship-level hockey right now,” Barr said.

Before the UMass-Lowell series, most of Black Bear Nation would have been happy with Maine taking 8 out of 12 possible points from the first four Hockey East tests of the season. The order they came in was a surprise.

If Maine wants to maintain a reputation as a serious team, they have got to be protecting home ice.

Now, with a weekend off before the final playoff push, the coaching staff has the time to wrap their heads around the roots of the problems, and the Black Bears can put in the hard work to make sure they are ready to rebound.

This weekend could have been better, but it also could have been worse.

On to the playoff push.