For 59:13, the Alfond Faithful didn’t have much to cheer about on Friday night.

Their beloved Maine Black Bears were being completely outplayed by their bitter border rivals, the New Hampshire Wildcats.

In arguably the biggest weekend of regular-season hockey at the Alfond all season, the neighbors to the south outcompeted, outworked, and outplayed the Black Bears in almost every aspect of the game and every area of the ice.

The expectant capacity crowd packed knee-to-knee to the rafters and the bubbling Balcony overhead had begun lining up outside the Alfond eight hours before puck drop in frigid February temperatures. They could only watch on in horror and frustration as the rivals dominated their team in their own building.

UNH had more hop in their step, more hunger in their bellies, packed more of a punch in their checks and played with a superior willingness and clearer identity than the Black Bears, who were disjointed, flat, and slow out of the gates.

At times, the performance bordered on embarrassing.

“We’re just getting out-competed right now, we’re getting out-competed by everyone we’re playing,” Head Coach Ben Barr said after the game ended in a 1-1 tie.

Students braved a bitterly cold Orono afternoon, with many lining up well before noon for the chance to see the Border Battle. (Photo: Madelyn Lussier - UMaine Athletics)

Struggling to create

Last weekend’s performance in Providence followed the Black Bears home into Friday’s Border Battle. Although Maine took four of six points from the Friars, the Black Bears were outplayed for lengthy portions of the weekend, saved only by Taylor Makar, turning into prime Wayne Gretzky, and Albin Boija being practically impenetrable in net.

Until last weekend, Maine hadn’t been outshot in a single game all season.

In Providence, they were outshot in both games, with their 20 shots on goal total in Saturday’s 1-0 win, their lowest of the season.

That is until last night.

This trend only got worse with Maine being held to a dismal 12 shots on goal for the first 59 minutes of Friday’s contest.

The same team that piled on scoring chances for fun in the first half of the season and against the defending champs in January all of a sudden looks utterly devoid of confidence with the puck on their tape. They appear unable to do what they had previously done best: overwhelm the opposition with their barrage.

In January, Maine’s offensive struggles boiled down to creating a bounty of grade-A scoring chances but not being able to execute on the final play.

Now, the Black Bears have not even been able to create many of these opportunities to begin with.

It took Maine until midway through the first period to register their first shot on target and until well over halfway through the third period for that shot-on-goal tally to reach double digits. The Black Bears’ three shots on net in the first period was their lowest single-period total of the season.

“Teams are defending us really hard, every team. We’ve got a target on our back and we’ve got to be able to respond to that and be able to get pucks down to the net. A big part of it is just generating offense, hold on to pucks, and be willing to go to the dirty areas to get them there. We’ve got to find that again and get back to that brand of hockey where we’re just putting pucks to the net and seeing them go in,” Senior defenseman David Breazeale said.

Maine and New Hampshire entered the weekend as two of the best teams in limiting their opponent's offense, with the Black Bears’ 23.3 shots-against average the best in the country, while the Wildcats’ 24.8 SA/G is 6th-best.

Billed as a defensive grudge match, Friday did not disappoint — if watching two offenses sputter is your cup of tea. The Alfond Faithful didn’t see a shot on goal from either team until 7 minutes into the contest.

“The game’s not pretty; they’re not giving us much ice to work with. Right now, we’re just having to kind of grind for every inch. It’s just hard right now,” Senior forward Harrison Scott explained.

Although neither team could overpower the other in terms of clear-cut offensive chances created, New Hampshire was far and away the better team on the night, playing one of their best games of the year, determined to spoil the Alfond’s party.

According to Barr, UNH did all the little things diligently while Maine tried to take shortcuts.

“It’s just a details thing. It’s not that we aren’t working hard, but it’s too much to finish your hit when you turn the puck over in the neutral zone. It’s easier to just go and loop away from it, hope it comes back to you, and you get a breakaway, which we’re not going to get right now. It’s easy to wait on the offensive side of the puck when the puck is moving back the other way, and hopefully, they turn it over, and you get a breakaway. It’s bad hockey,” Barr said. “We’re going through it; it’s the little details that we’re getting away from right now, that’s what’s hurting us.”

Aside from the forward line of Taylor Makar, Nolan Renwick, and Ross Mitton, which used their heavy physicality to break the game open, the rest of the Black Bears’ lines struggled to sustain any offensive zone time. Barr puts this down to many of his players playing without a clear identity.

“We’re trying to find that identity with the rest of our team right now; obviously, there are some guys in and out, and it is what it is, but we don’t really have an identity. Obviously, Harrison and Freeler have an identity, and whoever is playing with them, but the rest of it is just kind of ‘hope we don’t get scored on and hope we score.’ That’s not a sustainable way to play right now,” Barr said.

The Black Bears’ bread-and-butter game of putting pucks in deep, hammering the opposition D on the forecheck, and, as the team says: ‘drag them into the cave and maul them,’ was practically non-existent for large stretches of the contest as Maine’s forecheck was languid and lackluster.

“It’s too much just to go forecheck; one guy will go, and the other two will kinda watch,” Barr said. “They played harder than we did. They just finished more hits than we did. They just get it in the zone and go forecheck, and that was too hard for us at times. We’re going through it.”

Without being able to pen UNH in their zone for any extended periods of time, Maine could not muster any momentum, unable to string two solid shifts on top of each other. Every time the Black Bears showed signs of working up a head of steam, they would fizzle out just as quickly, being stuck in the mud for most of the contest.

“If one guy is not doing their job, it’s a five-man job on that forecheck. It’s all over the ice, being connected, we’re just missing that piece right now,” Scott added.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats were doing everything the Black Bears couldn’t, supporting each other all over the ice, playing as a cohesive five-man unit, breaking past Maine’s disjointed forecheck with one simple pass, and playing with a clear identity to their gameplan. UNH’s forecheck and, in particular, their 1-2-2 neutral zone trap bottled up the Black Bears, who were unable to move the puck up ice with any speed or success. The Wild Cats pounced all over Maine every time a white sweater touched the puck in all three zones.

UNH’s physical presence suffocated and stymied Maine’s offensive creation all evening, being held to a season-low 18 shots on goal. (Photo: Anthony DelMonaco - UMaine Athletics)

“They forecheck really hard, they defend really hard. They didn’t give us any time and space. The later you get in a season, the less time and space you’re going to have on the ice. They did a great job of sticking tight in their defensive zone, staying super tight and connected,” Breazeale explained.

So, heading into the final frame, with UNH outshooting Maine 15-9, it felt as though the next goal would end up being the winner.

That dagger would come from New Hampshire’s Connor Lovett with seconds remaining in an early third-period UNH power play. Lovett drove along the goal line, roofing a shot from close range over Boija’s shoulder and into the roof of the net to suck the life out of the Alfond.

Even while chasing a one-goal game against their hated rivals in their own barn, the Black Bears continued to be dire and dreadful. They were unable to string together a set of passes, frustrating the Alfond to no end as cheers of support turned into groans of exasperation with every passing minute and fumbled play.

Harrison, the hero

Just as the Alfond began to stomach the fact that New Hampshire was about to win their first game at the Alfond since 2022 and hand the Black Bears a major embarrassment, Barr pulled Boija from the net for one last-ditch attempt.

With only three third-period shots on goal and just under a minute remaining in the game, Makar rolled the puck up from the half-wall to David Breazeale at the blue line. Breazeale went back to Makar, who immediately fed Breazeale again. With his head up, the Maine co-captain took a few quick steps to his left, saw an opening, and wristed a quick shot on net.

The Wildcats had put on a shot-blocking clinic all evening, sacrificing their bodies to block 24 Black Bear shots over the course of the game.

But no Wildcat could stop Breazeale’s seeing-eye sling as it snuck its way through traffic and onto Harrison Scott’s stick blade in front of Jared Whale’s net. Batting the puck out of midair with the deftest of deflections, Scott’s tip snuck past Whale and into the back of the net. Scott had been on the ice for over a minute before his goal but dug deep and refused to stop battling in front of the goal crease.

“I was kind of thinking I wanted to get off [the ice]; my body was telling me I wanted to get off, but my mind was like, ‘I’m staying on, I’m going to find a way, and just go stand at the netfront,’ and Dave found me right in front, and it was a great tip. Off the blade, a nice tip,” Scott said.

The Alfond Faithful, who had had very little to cheer about all evening, were ready to explode, begging for a reason to erupt into rapture.

Did it ever!

Harrison Scott l out a roar in celebration of his game-tying goal with 43 seconds left in the third period. (Photo: Anthony DelMonaco - UMaine Athletics)

Like a bomb went off, the Alfond crowd euphorically howled in unison, arms raised high in the air in equal triumph and relief. The roar shook the old barn’ to its rafters,  the explosion loud enough to be heard all the way down in Durham.

“I was just trying to get it down onto the net, we’re not having much luck scoring, so you’ve just got to put pucks down there, and Harry did a great job of getting to the net and got a stick on it,” Breazeale said about the game-tying goal.

Scott’s late lighting of the lamp marked the first time the Hobey Baker Award nominee had scored since he tallied his 14th and 15th goals of the season at Lowell on January 10th, going goalless for seven games.

Scott’s snakebitten stretch is emblematic of the entire team’s scoring struggles.

“He’s still working, he’s fighting it just like everyone else a little bit,” Barr said about Scott’s scoring drought.

“It’s definitely slowed down; it’s gotten harder, but I was just thinking: don’t change my process, keep hammering my identity, get near the net, and good things happen,” Scott said.

Stealing two points in the shootout

Scott’s goal finally sparked the Black Bears into action during the final seconds of regulation and the sudden-death overtime frame.

A back-and-forth overtime saw each team inches away from securing the game-winner. Maine’s Brandon Holt clipped the outside of the post while Boija was called in to make a point-blank save, stonewalling the Wildcats early in the overtime and again in the final seconds.

With neither team able to find the winner, the game ended with Maine stealing a tie, with each side recording one point in the Hockey East standings. The following shootout determined who would walk away with an extra point.

Josh Nadeau was stopped by Whale, once again failing to score with his signature one-handed move. Meanwhile, Boija did what Boija does best, barely breaking a sweat to stop all three of UNH’s attempts. Boija has now saved 11 of 12 shots in the shootout, the lone goal coming in the game against BU.

Meanwhile, another shootout superstar, Sully Scholle, may only have one goal on the season, but his dangle past Whale on Friday was the sophomore’s third shootout tally of the season.

Scott on his attempt, patiently waited for Whale to react first before tucking a forehand shot past his outstretched pad, snatching the extra point from the Wildcats and sealing the shootout victory for Maine.

“I’ve been kind of looking shot first, and the past couple of times, it hasn’t really worked, so I kind of went with my secondary option there and found him biting on the shot, so put that away,” Scott said about his shootout goal.

Scott buries his shootout attempt to seal Maine’s snatching of two points from Friday’s tie with UNH. (Photos: Anthony DelMonaco - UMaine Athletics)

Undeserved, but finding a way

For the third consecutive game, the Black Bears somehow managed to find a way to get a positive result while being outplayed.

Good teams find a way, but Maine looks anything but a good hockey team right now.

“It doesn’t really feel like we deserve [the points]. Obviously, we want to play better than that and dominate teams. I feel like we got dominated for part of that game, and that’s not our identity,” Breazeale said. “We got two points tonight, so we’ve got to be grateful for that. We’ll go out there and give it our best tomorrow night, we’ll learn from it.”

After the game, Barr made the apt point that during this time last year, Maine was also struggling, stumbling through a February malaise and playing their worst hockey of the season. But last season the Black Bears weren’t getting the job done, losing game after game, falling in 6 of 9 games during the final stretch of the season.

“The good thing is that when we went through it last year and were losing all the time, right now, we’re finding a way to win, tie, whatever it might be,” Barr said.

But Maine can’t keep relying on Boija standing on his head or more late-game magic in contests they are being utterly outplayed in. This needs to change and it needs to change soon. If the Black Bears are to have championship aspirations, they need to peak in the playoffs, which are looming right around the corner with just eight remaining regular season games.

“It’s not sustainable hockey,” Barr said.

But like Barr mentioned, they were in the same rut at this time last year and managed to work their way out of it in the nick of time. 

A snatch-and-grab type of a game, Maine was incredibly fortunate to get anything out of this game and will need to be ten times better Saturday night.

Black Bear Nation is counting on it.

It’s borderline inexcusable to be outplayed on home ice by the team from down south.

But Maine wouldn’t know the definition of quitting if a dictionary hit them in the face. 

There’s a lot of character in that Black Bear dressing room and there’s a lot that the Alfond Faithful can be proud of.

Now, please just let it rip Saturday night.