The Black Bears celebrate around the Lamoriello Trophy in front of their championship banner, which will hang from the Garden’s rafters for at least one whole year. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

The tale of the 2025 Hockey East Championship is a rekindled love story between the State of Maine, its proud people, and their beloved Black Bears hockey team.

As the song ‘You Said It All’ mentions ‘tucked away in the northeast corner of the good ol’ USA,’ the relationship is mostly a private affection hidden deep in the vast pine tree forests, out of sight and out of mind from the rest of the world.

The State may be forgotten by the rest of the country much of the time, but Mainers wouldn’t want it any other way, having their own secret Garden of Eden for much of the year. Overlooked and often disregarded, this suits the generally reclusive nature of its people, who are given the space and peace to enjoy the simplicities of life. While Mainers may at first glance seem cold, weary, and, at times, skeptical of outsiders, give it enough time, and their steely silence eventually gives way,  revealing their down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth nature through soulful warmth and hospitable friendliness.

With as tight-knit towns and cities as you will ever find, Mainers are no different from the rest of the world in that they care deeply about their family, friends, neighbors, and communities.

But if there’s one thing that sets the people of Maine apart, it’s that they love their Black Bear hockey with unrivaled passion and feverish fanaticism that borders on religious worship.

The Maine Black Bears are unique in that they don’t just represent the University of Maine, Orono, or the Greater Bangor Area. They are the State’s team representing each and every corner of the Pine Tree State and each and every single one of the people residing within its boundaries or far beyond.

The people’s team.

Practically its own spiritual sect, the Alfond is the church, the central place of worship where prayers are answered, and Maine miracles are performed on a seemingly bi-weekly basis.

The Alfond Faithful devotedly flock to Orono from all corners of the State and beyond. They make their routine pilgrimage south from the potato farming fields up in the County, east from the splendid lakes and majestic mountain ranges, north from the hustle and bustle of the ‘big city’ to the south, and west from the rocky granite coast and tiny island fishing villages that poke up out of the Atlantic beyond it.

Wherever they journey from, when they arrive, they enter under the proud portrait of its almighty creator, Harold Alfond. They take their seats in a transcendental space where stories and memories echo throughout the old barn’s wooden, hyperbolic paraboloid-shaped roof. Banners emblazoned with past glories hang from the sturdy wooden rafters above them, reminding Mainers of what was and what can be again.

The Alfond is a community gathering space. For the members of this devoted clan, it’s a place to come together, socialize, and reconnect. The rink is an oasis of warmth, excitement, light, and color, a momentary spark of life during the otherwise cold, dark, bleak, and isolating Maine winters.

While Mainers may be happy enough to keep their home state out of the spotlight, they burst with pride when the attention of the nation focuses on the success of their hockey team and their frenzied fan base’s unparalleled passion.

This weekend, this intimate and divine deep devotion reappeared in the consciousness of New England and the entire nation for the first time in over a decade when Mainers in the thousands invaded the region’s central hub.

Marching on the mecca of New England hockey, the Garden, Mainers – from Kittery to Madawaska all the way – flooded the streets of Boston, painting the city a mighty monsoon of Black Bear blue and white.

The army of Alfonders transformed the Garden into Alfond South, turning Beantown into Beartown and putting Maine back on the map, back on its perch, where it belongs.

Loud and proud, Black Bear Nation completely packed the TD Garden, turning Beantown into Beartown. (Photo: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

A Maine love fest

There was no doubt that the Maine Black Bears were going to claim the program’s sixth Hockey East Tournament title when they arrived at TD Garden before the Final on Friday.

From the moment the team bus arrived onto Causeway Street and as the team entered the rink on a red carpet adorned by a sea of blue as far as the eye could see, the game was already won, and the Black Bears were crowned Hockey East Champions for the first time since 2004.

From that point on, nothing was going to get in the way of the Black Bears getting their paws on the Lamoriello Trophy. Nothing. Not even a minor fender bender the team bus took as it turned the corner to the Garden.

It was destiny.

Head Coach Ben Barr looks over his shoulder at the sea of Black Bear Nation that greeted the team as they arrive at the rink before the game. (Photo: Simon French - UMaine Athletics)

“It was so cool from the moment we got to the rink, walking up those escalators. The greatest fans in college hockey, without a doubt,” co-captain David Breazeale said after the game. “Walking in, you almost get emotional going through that crowd of people going into the Garden. It’s just an incredible feeling to have so much support from the whole State behind us. It’s amazing; we’re so grateful to be a part of it. We couldn’t do it without them, back in Orono and having everyone come down here and support us. It’s incredible; you get emotional thinking about it, so we’re just grateful for all of them, it got us going.”

The story of Friday night was always going to be the State of Maine and its Black Bears.

No disrespect to the Connecticut Huskies, who are truly one of the best teams in college hockey and arguably the best since Christmas.

But Friday night was all about Maine.

Everywhere you looked, everything you saw, everything you heard was completely Maine, Maine, Maine all night long, the sheer scale of it all overwhelming the senses.

So when the TD Garden’s 17,605  seats, 200 short of a sellout according to Hockey East,  were packed with somewhere between 75-85% Maineiaks in full-voiced fervor, a Connecticut victory under those circumstances felt improbable and close being simply impossible.

It felt like the entire State of Maine rocked up to the Garden on Saturday to cheer on their beloved Black Bears. (Photo: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

The State showed up for their team big-time, and there was almost no scenario in which the Black Bears were going to let them down. They sure didn’t. 

“The effect that our community and the State has on our program – and you saw that tonight with what felt like everyone in here was from Maine or had a Maine jersey on, it felt like that when we walked in – it’s incredible what that does for us and when we get on the ice. It’s just cool; it’s going to take a while for it to settle in, I think,” Head Coach Ben Barr said. “Pretty surreal, being out there with what felt like the whole State of Maine.”

It did indeed feel like the entire State of Maine was in the Garden Friday evening. Was there even anybody still back home? It must have felt a little bit eerie and desolate walking around the streets of Portland, Bangor, or even Caribou that night. Where’d everybody go?

How many Alfond Arenas chock-full of Maine fans filled the Garden Friday night? Two-and-a-half Alfonds? Three?

The unparalleled home-ice advantage that Fortress Alfond gives the Black Bears made its way down I-95, turning the Garden into Alfond South and delivering an almost unfair advantage to the home team at this ‘neutral site’ venue.

“You see it every Friday and Saturday night in the rink; it’s an incredible experience. It gets better every time you go on to the bench; it’s crazy. One day, you think, okay, it can’t get any better, and then it’s better the next time. They really carry us through those games. It’s like starting up one or two, it really is. We’re just really fortunate,” Barr said about the innate advantage Black Bear Nation gives the team.

Tough sledding for the Huskies, who must have thought they took a wrong turn en route to the Garden and accidentally ended up in Orono with only a small smattering of Connecticut fans that together paled in comparison to Maine’s great blue horde.

“Hats off to the Maine fans. At times, I felt like I was up at the Alfond,” Connecticut Head Coach Mike Cavanaugh said.

Every time the camera managed to find and show a rare Huskies fan on the video board, a booming chorus of boos rang down onto the ice and was quickly replaced with a cacophony of crazed cheers when it displayed the ocean of Alfonders in the house.

Nobody does it like us.

How is anyone supposed to compete with that?

That’s Black Bear Nation for you.

That’s the State of Maine.

Sheer insanity in the best possible way imaginable.

‘When you say Maine Black Bears, you said it all.’

A sea of blue and white as far as the eye could see, Black Bear Nation once again proved why they are the undisputed best fans in college hockey. (Photo: Sophia Santamaria - UMaine Athletics)

Rest and recover

One Huskies, two Huskies, red Huskies, blue Huskies.

The story of Maine’s 4-2 Hockey East Championship clinching game actually began the night before.

Truthfully, it began long before then, some would say in Spring 2021, when Ben Barr was announced as Head Coach.

But for all intents and purposes, the Maine Black Bears, who were crowned champions of the most difficult conference in all of college hockey, jolted into championship form about four minutes into the third period against Northeastern Huskies during the semifinal game on Thursday night.

Maine had just thrown away an early Owen Fowler brace with a sloppy second period and a slow start to the third and were all of a sudden trailing Northeastern 3-2 in the final frame.

“I thought that as soon as we went down 3-2, the game changed,” Barr said after Thursday’s game. “You just felt it on the bench as soon as they scored that third goal.

With their backs pinned against the wall, the Black Bears refused to go away quietly into the night. Instead, Maine roared back, playing their best sequence of hockey in the entire season for the remainder of the game. Unlikely hero Luke Antonacci scored the tying goal, sending the game into overtime, where Maine continued to display dizzying dominance in overtime and double-overtime. They were only thwarted by Northeastern’s netminder Cameron Whitehead having the game of his life, stopping a remarkable 57 shots to keep the Black Bears at bay.

It wasn’t until 11:19 pm, with Maine and Northeastern still battling in a double-overtime dead-lock, that Nolan Renwick put his name firmly among the long list of Maine heroes when he scored the greasiest goal you will ever see to send the Black Bears to their first championship game in 13 years.

UConn, who were in bed fast asleep by the time the Black Bears returned to their hotel rooms well after midnight, were loving what they were watching from the second semifinal. Having gone to the well and emptied the tank playing 91:02 of the most intense, hard-nosed, high-energy, desperate hockey you’ve ever seen, Maine’s chances to overcome Connecticut the following night looked like an incredible uphill battle.  The Black Bears, equally spent mentally as they were physically fatigued, would have to face the well-rested UConn Huskies just 20 hours or so later.

Maine spent the time between games trying to slow their heart rate and get some sleep, guzzling water to replenish their electrolytes, making homemade ice baths, and sleeping in Friday morning, followed by a quick video scouting session and then a short power nap.

“We really didn’t do anything except go back and have them eat and drink a lot, then we showed them a little bit of video, and then they went back and just slept again,” Barr explained.

The Black Bears and the Huskies line up for the National Anthem ahead of Friday’s Championship Game. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

Picking up where they left off

Warming up before the game in the bowels of TD Garden, the Black Bears were rather quiet and low-energy, with some of the Garden staff joking that Maine’s tranquil demeanor was a good sign for the Huskies. But the Black Bears were saving their energy; cool, calm, composed, and completely focused on the task at hand.

With the ‘home crowd’ jolting endless amounts of electric energy onto the ice, as soon as the puck dropped on the 40th ever Hockey East Tournament Championship Game, the Black Bears flipped the switch back on and came out of the gates guns-a-blazin’, bellies full of fire, playing pedal-to-the-metal hockey right from the get-go.

“If I’m being honest, I thought that was going to be a really tough task to have the juice today, but when you have a guy like this in your locker room as your leader, he just finds a way to get the most out of everybody,” Barr said motioning to Breazeale. “We were a little worried, obviously, after last night, and then it seemed like five minutes in, we weren’t worried anymore about the kind of energy level. They always seem to find a way to turn it up when they need to. It’s just a credit to the guys in that room to find a little bit extra every night, so extremely proud of them,” Barr said. “

Still hopped up from the night before (and earlier that morning), Maine picked up right where they had left off, sensing their opportunity to jump all over UConn early while the adrenaline was still pumping in overdrive, Alfond South was still in a frantic frenzy, and before the fatigue of the last 24 hours set in as the game wore along.

In the opening minutes of the contest, the two teams engaged in a feeling-out process. But then Black Bears hit the throttle and, playing with scorching speed, incredible intensity, and a will to win greater than Mount Katahdin. Maine rode their wave of momentum from the prior night to overwhelm the Huskies. The Black Bears sensed their opportunity to play in fifth gear while the blood was still pumping, understanding that they wouldn’t be able to keep up the same break-neck pace for the entire sixty minutes.

“I think it kinda carried over. Definitely hard to fall asleep, pretty amped up after a double over time, and you’re thinking about the next night, getting to go out there. We just tried to get our minds to rest and then go back to the rink and, turn it back on, and take it right where we left off the night before. So it was definitely part of it, I think, and we were just able to carry that momentum over from the double overtime win and then were able to give us some juice early on even if our legs might have been a little bit tired,” Breazeale explained the game plan.

“We knew that they would have more rest, but we just wanted to come out and make a boom, and I think we did a good job doing that.” Taylor Makar told FOX/ABC Maine reporter Jack Webb on the ice after the game.

The Black Bears are usually a rock-em-sock-’em, muck-and-grind, dump-and-chase team fine-tuned to create their offense through a suffocating forecheck that gets the puck unstuck from the walls down low and on net. This night, what put Connecticut on the backfoot early was actually Maine’s ability to get the puck out of their zone in a hurry and, with poised confidence and their scintillating speed and skill through the neutral zone, allowed their creation of offense to be from rush chances that put Connecticut on the backfoot early.

Maine was beating UConn with their feet.

“I think first and foremost our D were moving their feet. We played them a few weeks back, and they really took it to us in that game, and we never really could get anything going, and it all starts kind of from your backend, your defense, getting the line, getting pucks in, getting us out of our zone, getting through the neutral zone which is really hard against UConn. So I think [it] was being able to get the puck in and get our forecheck going, which we didn’t do when we played them a few weeks ago. That was really important,” Barr explained.

During their three previous meetings this season, UConn proved to be Maine’s Achilles heel, delivering a 4-2 loss and 2-2 tie at the Alfond, followed by a 3-2 overtime loss in Storrs. The Huskies played a similar abrasive, in-your-face style of game as Maine, and they succeeded in hounding the Black Bears in their own end for much of those games, bogging down the Maine offense from getting to their own forecheck game.

But Friday night, Maine’s breakout game was direct, composed, and confident, breaking the UConn forecheck by moving the puck out of their end and up ice with staggering efficiency and directness, sending the Black Bears’ flying up the open ice like blue arrows darting towards the UConn net.

“They didn’t allow us to get our forecheck going; they did a really good job. Part of that was because we were in our own zone a little bit, so if you spend twenty seconds in your own zone, it’s hard to get a forecheck going. I thought we were just disconnected on our forecheck. We would have one going, but two just wasn’t there, and you need five guys connected to really establish it,” Cavanaugh explained.

Part of the open ice that Maine was able to exploit had to do with UConn’s game plan of trying to be aggressive early on, punching the Black Bears in the nose, and taking the wind out of the Alfond South’s sails. This strategy came back to bite the Huskies, who were left exposed on the backend, which only riled up the wall of blue in the stands.

“We got humbled tonight, Maine jumped us early. It was hard for us. We wanted to score first to try and take the crowd out of the game, but that wasn’t the case,” Cavanaugh said. “We had a tough start, I thought.”

With their tails up on the hunt, the Black Bears blasted down the Connecticut door with two first-period goals in the later half of the frame.

It was Maine’s New Brunswick boys who sent the Garden into early party mode.

In fitting fashion, it was Maine’s most senior member, Lynden Breen, the only holdover from the Red Gendron era, who lit the fuse and sent a ferocious fire of festivity through Black Bear Nation. Receiving a neutral zone-breaking pass from fellow New Brunswicker Josh Nadeau, Breen, like he’d been shot out of a cannon, dashed into the UConn end on a rapid two-on-two with Owen Fowler alongside. Driving towards Tyler Muszelik’s net, Breen ripped a low-hard shot from the right-wing faceoff circle through Muszelik’s wickets to the cacophonous celebration of Alfond South.

When Breen broke his fibula on November 30th at RPI and underwent surgery a few days later, everybody, including Barr, believed that was the last time they would see the heart-and-soul of Black Bear hockey wearing the Maine script again. Everyone believed that to be the case, except for Lynden, whose unfathomably rapid recovery had him back on the ice playing on February 21st. Immediately knocking off the rust, Breen was almost instantly back to his best self. His uncanny ability to twist, turn, and swivel off defenders with an incredible center of gravity below the goalline, underrated backchecking, and fearless forechecking ability The overall snarling and pestering play that he brings to his game sparked the Black Bears out of their February ‘slump’.

Lynden Breen flies down the ice moments before scoring the Championship Game-opening goal. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

Scoring in his final ever game at the Alfond, the fan-favorite’s opener at the Garden, which was his second tally since returning from injury, is just another big-time goal from a big-time player on a big-time stage, having scored some of Maine’s most-important, season-defining goals during his career at Maine, including the Black Bears lone-goal last year at the Garden and the game-winner on Senior Night last season.

“For him to score the first goal after he’s had two surgeries this year, broke his leg. I didn’t think he’d ever play this year again after that happened at Thanksgiving,” Barr said.

He began his Maine career during the COVID-shortened 2020/21 season, in which Maine won only three times in sixteen games played. The next season, Barr’s first, the Black Bears won only seven games, followed by fifteen in 2022/23, in which Breen scored 21 goals, the most in a single season by a Black Bear since Spencer Abbott in 2011/12. Then, last season, Breen led the charge to Maine’s renaissance season, registering a career-high 30 regular-season points in the Black Bears’ 23-win return to prominence season.

Alongside four-year players David Breazeale and Nolan Renwick, Breen has truly climbed the mountain.

The view must look pretty good from up there.

Those guys have put a lot of work into coming from a three-win team to a seven-win team three years ago. Our job is easy when we have kids like that in the locker room,” Barr said proudly about his veteran core of leaders.

“I love being a University of Maine Black Bear, I’m a Black Bear for life,” Breen told Webb. “We’re all a team, we’re all a family, and there’s no better family than being a University of Maine Black Bear. Coach Red, when I was a Freshman, when I was on the bench for morning skate at BC, told me I was going to win a National Championship before I leave this school. I’m going to do it for him, I’m going to do it for everyone, we’re going to do it for each other. It’s just incredible; I’m honestly at a loss for words.”

Somewhere up in heaven, Red is looking down on Lynden, grinning ear to ear with a chest full of pride.

Red knew before anybody else did.

Friday night, Maine’s all-action first-frame blitz would continue, with the Black Bears purring in unison, motoring all over the ice. On their heels, the Huskies took the only penalty of the game, called on Ethan Whitcomb, the lone player to sit in the sin-bin.

On the Maine power play, Connecticut cleared the puck down the length of the ice, where Albin Boija skated out of his crease to stop it with his paddle and dish a pass to Nadeau in Maine’s end. Nadeau, who played with unbelievable thunder and fire all weekend, burst up the ice, zooming past his bench, who could be heard yelling, “Go, Josh, go!” Flying through the neutral zone at breakneck speed with UConn bodies surrounding him, Nadeau soared past one Husky, entered the Connecticut zone, faked a move to the outside, and then beat his defender, cutting to the inside. Now, in the high slot with four Huskies around him, Nadeau tore past one more navy blue sweater before firing off a blistering wrist shot back from where he came, beating Muszelik blocker-side for arguably the best individual Black Bear goal of the season, with Boija registering his first assist of the season on the tap pass to his forward.

Nadeau’s highlight-reel coast-to-coast snipe and then celly after putting Maine up 2-0 in the first period. (Photo: Matt Dewkett – UMaine Athletics)

“I was hoping for it because I know he can do it, and there was kind of an opening. He had some good speed, so then he worked his magic. Happy with that one,” Boija said.

“That was a set play by Jason Fortier,” Breazeale joked.

UConn let Nadeau cook, and Josh tore the Huskies to shreds.

Watch out for college hockey; you don’t want to let Josh get hot.

“Nadeau made a great play. We probably didn’t handle it as well defensively as we should have,” Cavanaugh said. “He beat both guys and then shot back against the grain, it was a really nice goal.”

The Nadeau show has made its way from Orono to the bright lights of Beantown.

Masterful game management

Having been outplayed for really the first time in months, Connecticut came out for the second period full-throttle,  grabbing a stranglehold of the game, their turn to dictate the contest’s proceedings and creating the majority of scoring chances with an offense that buzzed ferociously around Boija’s net.

Suddenly, with their backs against the wall, Maine then took an icing, leaving a group of Black Bears huffing and puffing, stuck out of gas on the ice, and with a threatening faceoff in their own end.

Barr, sensing the danger, made the bold decision to take Maine’s one and only timeout early in the second period, allowing his players to freshen up their legs and figure out how they were going to weather the UConn storm that was brewing around their goal.

The decision was a rather simple one for Barr.

“We had just had a long shift in our end,” Barr explained. “But just to get a line change, that was all that went into it, whether it was right or wrong, I don’t know. But why give up one when you don’t need to if you’re up by a couple at that time.”

It was certainly the right decision, as the reset completely took the momentum away from the Huskies just as they looked to be turning the screw with a goal quickly approaching on the horizon.

“I just think [the timeout] was an opportunity for us to rest; they had us in our zone for a little bit; it was a smart move to get the timeout. We were able to come to the bench and talk about it with the guys, say what we were going to do on the faceoff to get us out of our zone, and get some momentum going back for us. It kind of just gives us a minute to be able to chatter on the bench and be able to come up with a game plan to go out there and win the faceoff and get us back out of the zone,” Breazeale said.

One of the most interesting aspects of Maine’s game this weekend was how little Barr and his staff were involved with discussions on the bench. Barr, a perfectionist, has constantly been getting on his players’ backs for every missed detail and slightly wrong play, never looking particularly pleased behind the bench, always critiquing no matter the score. After mixed performances throughout the long winter months, with Barr always demanding more from his players even while the team was still grinding out positive results,  he perhaps sensed that a shift to a more positive, supportive, and hands-off approach was just the thing the team needed in the playoffs. So far, it has certainly worked.

Barr barely uttered a word during the timeout, letting his team figure it out for themselves. 

“We didn’t talk as coaches much the whole game. These guys, they were doing it themselves, and there was nothing that we were going to say that was going to make things better or worse, they were going to find the energy from within,” Barr explained.

Maine, whose legs unsurprisingly began to tire as the contest went along, were no longer completely front-foot but instead played a very mature, composed, opportunistic approach that didn’t sit back on their two-goal cushion but also wasn’t going to continue to stretch the game and risk open ice at the back.

From this moment on, the Black Bears played a very grown-up game throughout the second and third periods, demonstrating a championship level of game management.

Although UConn, in the second and third periods, would go on to outshoot Maine 22-12, the Black Bears limited Connecticut’s second and third opportunities. They stifled the hottest player in college hockey, Joey Muldowney, who entered the contest on the back of bagging a hat trick in the semifinal and garnered seven goals in the last three games. Maine's backbone was able to keep the Huskies’ chances to the outside, a strategy aided by UConn constantly slinging missed shot after missed shot wide of the net.

“We got it back in the second period, and we were playing a lot better and had some chances, but it was one of those nights where when you had a grade-A , and you miss the net. Just really wasn’t our night,” Cavanaugh explained.

Meanwhile, it was very much Maine’s night as everything went right for the Black Bears. Moments after Boija made a huge stop at one end of the ice, Maine went up the length of the ice to extend the lead to 3-0. Breazeale, jumping down into the high slot from the point, slung a shot that bounced off a UConn defender. With the puck fluttering up in the air, Harrison Scott was on the spot. Showcasing exceptional hand-eye coordination, Scott pulled out his best Ted Williams impression, batting the puck out of midair in the slot to hit a home run into the back of the net.

UConn, with a much tighter defensive structure in the neutral zone, for the first time all evening got to their forecheck going through the rest of the second period and the final frame.

I thought we started to establish our forecheck in the third period, but it was too little too late,” Cavanaugh said.

Connecticut would cut their deficit back to two with a Tabor Heaslip tally early in the third, but Taylor Makar, who was quiet all weekend, got going in the third with two goals to his name.

Makar’s first goal came midway through the third, when Nolan Renwick’s tenacious play against the boards held up the Huskies, allowing Makar to swoop in and take the puck from just inside the UConn blueline barreling downhill towards the net.

From the left-wing faceoff dot, Makar blasted home a screaming wrist shot past Muszelik's far side before taking a mighty leap on the glass in front of the traveling Alfond Faithful, who exploded in full-throated ecstasy.

Taylor Makar celebrates his first of two third-period goals with the crazed Mainiaks jumping in jubilee. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

Heaslip would respond with another goal a few minutes later, but Makar would put the final nail in UConn’s coffin with an empty netter, sealing the deal for Maine’s first Hockey East Title since 2004. Black Bear Nation responded with ecstatic euphoria, bouncing up and down around the entire rink in crazed celebration.

As Alfond South counted down the final seconds, ending Maine’s 21-year title drought, the Black Bears poured onto the ice to celebrate with their heroic goaltender, leaping into each other's arms in joyous bliss.

Equal celebrations were taking place in the crowd as 21 years of hurt, frustration, and emotion all poured out at once, the long-suffering Black Bear Nation suffering no longer.

The two captains, Lynden Breen and David Breazeale, share a moment as the clock hits zero and the Black Bears pour onto the ice to celebrate Maine’s first Hockey East Championship since 2004 and sixth in program history. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

From worst to first, the Black Bears have climbed the mountain and are champions of the toughest conference in college hockey.

These Black Bears’ hearts are larger than the State of Maine. They can do anything they set their mind to. Nothing can stop them, they are playing unbeatable hockey.

“It takes blood, sweat, and tears, and it’s glorious. I mean, it’s exhausting, but this is what dreams are made of,” Harrison Scott said to Webb after the game.“I'm just manifesting it, I'm visualizing it, I'm doing whatever it takes to win.”

“We’re jamming.  We’re playing our best hockey,” Scott added.

This weekend has been Barr’s crowning achievement to date, taking this group of rag-tag ‘underachievers’ as he called them into champions of Hockey East. Tied for having the fewest NHL Draft picks in the league on his roster (one alongside Lowell and Merrimack), Barr has created an unstoppable machine that is the true definition of a sum larger than its individual parts.

Barr must feel like the luckiest man in the world, having not realized the sheer insanity of the program and the fanbase he walked into when he first got the job. Black Bear Nation sure feels like the luckiest fanbase to have him leading their team.

Taking the team from worst to first in just four seasons, Head Coach Ben Bar proudly holds the Lamoriello Trophy. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

“It just feels extremely fortunate to be able to be part of the University and the hockey program and Maine because it really feels like we get to be part of something bigger than just playing hockey, and that’s extremely humbling. It’s every week. The people are so passionate about it, and it means something to them. That’s what you spend your whole career trying to find. So I just feel like for our staff and for our players, we were just at the right place at the right time, and sometimes you get lucky,” Barr said.

Receiving a hero's welcome home outside the Alfond, the sun was shining down throughout the State of Maine on Saturday afternoon as thousands lined the streets of Orono and Old Town to welcome their champion's home.

“It's hard to describe what I didn’t know coming into this job: the effect that our community and the State has on our program,” Barr said. [I’m] happy for the guys in the room, happy for the school, and really the whole State of Maine because it felt like the whole State was with us tonight.”

One down, one to go

With the Black Bears playing their best brand of hockey on the biggest stage, confidence is soaring, and their hunger shifts towards the ultimate goal of hanging a third National Championship banner from the Alfond’s rafters.

“We’re going to have to compartmentalize this, the emotions of it and that kind of stuff and get back to work,” Barr said. 

“It’s just so special having the whole State of Maine rooting for us. We set out on a mission and accomplished this goal. But for us, this is the halfway point; we’re going to still push, still get better, and we want to bring it all the way home,” Scott said. “Now we’ve got four more games to win the whole thing.”

The Black Bears are on a mission, and the State of Maine is on the march.

They’ve conquered Boston.

Next is Allentown.

And then, St. Louis.

This is the team to make all of our dreams come true.

The good old days are right now. Soak it up; it doesn’t get better than this.

There’s nothing better than being a Maine Black Bear.

The Black Bears received a hero’s welcome home as fans lined the streets of Old Town and Orono to welcome the Maine team bus back to campus on Saturday afternoon. (Photo: Katie Peverada - UMaine Athletics