The Black Bears huddle before their Hockey East Championship Game victory over UConn last Friday. (Photo: Matt Dewkett - UMaine Athletics)

“One down, one to go!”

That was the message from David Breazeale on Saturday afternoon as he hoisted the Lamoriello Trophy high above his head, surrounded by a churning sea of Black Bear Nation welcoming their Hockey East Champions back home to Orono.

Just one week after the Maine Black Bears captured their first Hockey East title in 21 years, sparking memorable celebrations throughout TD Garden and the entire State of Maine, the Black Bears’ focus has quickly shifted to college hockey’s greatest prize, the holy grail: the National Championship.

Playing hockey at UMaine is a unique experience. Immediately beloved by Black Bear Nation as soon as you set foot on campus, idolized by fans of all ages throughout central Maine, and receiving rockstar status from the entire State, playing for the Black Bears automatically makes you a local celebrity.

Meanwhile, winning a Hockey East Championship ensures your name will never be forgotten and that you will forever be heralded as a hero around these parts.

But bringing home a National Championship, well, bringing home a Natty is something else. It completely elevates your name to a whole other order of recognition, a legendary status where the tales of your triumphs will be passed down in fables from generation to generation of Mainers, your name forever memorialized in Maine lore.

Will the names of legendary National Championship-winning Black Bears Monty, Paul, Alfie, and Shawn soon be joined by the likes of Breener, David, Albin, and Ben?

Never been hungrier

Maine’s triumphal feast at the Garden last weekend has by no means filled the Black Bears' bellies.

If anything, Maine is now hungrier than ever, chemically addicted to chasing that championship-winning feeling, no longer satisfied by the taste of second-place, their appetite only satiated by another championship.

Craving more, demanding more, expecting more, needing more.

“Once you win one, you’re just hungry for the next one. When it’s been something that you’ve been talking about for three years where we’ve wanted to win a Hockey East Championship, we’ve wanted to win a National Championship, and we’ve kind of just manifested that where it’s just the expectation for us. We expect ourselves to go out there and be able to compete for a National Championship,” Breazeale said after Tuesday’s practice.

Maine’s got the championship-winning itch, and getting their hands on more silverware is the only remedy to scratch it.

“We’re a group that’s never satisfied,” Harrison Scott said. “Having that taste of what we had on Friday just makes the urgency to get the next one that much more important, that much more special. We want it, and for us, it’s just confidence that when we’re playing our best brand of hockey, we can beat anyone.” 

Black Bear Nation’s unparalleled support for their team last weekend at the Garden and the unrivaled homecoming return to Orono the team received was eye-opening and mind-boggling for many of the Black Bears, leaving them only hungrier than ever to bring a National Championship trophy home to their fans, their supporters, their people.

Having transferred from UMass last Spring, Taylor Makar is desperate to win for the people of Maine. For someone who hasn’t even spent a full calendar year in the State, his passion and gratitude for the fanatical fan base says a lot about the rest of his team's desire to win and for whom they want to win for.

They want to win not just for themselves, or each other, or for their school. They want more than anything to win it for the State of Maine and its people.

“I don’t even think it’s part of winning the championship; I think it’s more than that, just seeing how happy the fans were, how much support we got at TD Garden, how much the State showed up for us when we were driving back. We were all talking on the bus; it just fuels to us that we want to do more and bring it home. We can’t thank everyone enough for the support that we get here, and we just want to do it for all of our fans,” Taylor Makar said.

The Black Bears spent the weekend basking in the glory of their Hockey East title before returning to the ice for practice on Monday. Flipping the switch, their steely-eyed focus turned back onto hockey and forward to a Friday night fight with the Pennsylvania State Nittany Lions in the NCAA Tournament East Regional semifinals in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“We want bigger than just Hockey East. We focused on that a little bit. You know you’ve got to celebrate the little things, and then we kind of just wanted to get right back at it after getting back on Saturday. It’s been a good week, and we’re just kind of looking at the next thing now,” Makar said. “We’re just hungry for more.”

“You’ve got to let that go and move on, and I think we have the maturity to do that,” Head Coach Ben Barr added.

Into the Lions’ Den

Maine’s reward for winning their conference championship and a #3 overall ranking is a first-round date with one of the hottest teams in the country in this daunting competitor’s own backyard.

The #1 seed, Maine, will play the #4 seed, Penn State Nittany Lions, in the second semifinal in Allentown. The puck is scheduled to drop at 8:30 PM on Friday night, but that is subject to change depending on when the first semifinal game between #2 seed Connecticut and #3 seed Quinnipiac ends.

Just under a three-hour drive from Penn State’s main campus in State College, Allentown is unquestionably deep in the heart of Nittany Lion country, with the PPL Center bracing for Penn State’s famous White Out to pack the rink and give the Nittany Lions a home-crowd advantage.

But the Black Bears aren’t worried about any of that; that’s just outside noise to them.

In fact, they are embracing the challenge, excited to prove themselves in the most difficult of scenarios. Even though Maine is the #1 seed in the region, facing off in enemy territory actually enables the Black Bears to stick to their underdog, us-against-the-world mentality, which has produced their best performances this season.

“We’re not too worried about it. Obviously, we are aware of it. It’s college hockey; we want to go play in an awesome atmosphere. You don’t want to go to a building where there’s only 200 people there. We want to go there where it’s sold out, you’re playing with high intensity whether that is the Maine fans or the Penn State fans,” Breazeale said. “We’re looking forward to the challenge; we’re a team that we love the grind; we love the discomfort; whatever the situation is, we look forward to that; we chase that because that makes us better players and makes us more prepared for whatever situation we face. I think we’re ready for this moment; we’re ready for whatever we face down in Pennsylvania.”

After all, playing in front of a packed, hostile crowd is a better experience than playing in front of a rink packed with fans dressed as empty seats, a phenomenon that seems to have plagued so many recent NCAA Tournament Regionals.

“We want a good crowd. We just want juice in the building, baby,” Harrison Scott said.

Makar, whose #4 seeded UMass ‘hosted’ #1 seed Denver in Springfield, Massachusetts in last season’s Regional semifinal, knows that ‘home-ice’ advantage loses its value a bit when it comes down to playing at ‘neutral’ venue sites since his Minutemen fell to Denver last season in double-overtime at one such location. For Makar, it’s just another hurdle for Maine to overcome. After all, Maine sure does seem to love overcoming hurdles; they seem to always end up only jumping higher because of them.

“As for going to Pennsylvania to play Penn State, it’s nothing crazy. Denver had to do it to UMass last year and ended up winning, so I feel like it’s just another block that we can get past,” Makar said.

But don’t fret, Black Bear Nation, as hundreds, maybe even thousands of Mainers are expected to march down to eastern Pennsylvania as one big, blue army, bringing a slice of their Alfond advantage with them to Allentown. After all, the area won’t be totally foreign, with Allentown having neighboring towns named Bangor and Bath to help make Mainers feel right at home.

Don’t count the Best Fans in College Hockey out; wherever Maine goes, Black Bear Nation follows.

“I’ve been saying this to everybody lately: Black Bear fans continue to surprise me with their support and dedication. I mean, at the Garden was crazy, the reception we got back in Orono was unbelievable, and I’ve already talked to some people that said they want to make the drive down to Allentown, so I have no doubt that there’s going to be some Black Bear fans there,” Nolan Renwick told Jon Shields on the Black Bear Insider Podcast.

Focused on themselves

The Black Bears, overflowing with confidence and self-belief that they can accomplish anything and everything by playing their brand of hockey, are solely focused on themselves and what they can control. For good reason, the way the Black Bears played last weekend showed them that they can be unbeatable and achieve anything so long as they play to their standards and identity. 

“We’re rolling right now, we’re feeling ourselves. It’s just a confidence thing; it’s a belief in the room, and I think more than ever right now, our team is clicking, and we’re feeling good, and we’re trusting ourselves, and we’re trusting our process. That’s what you want this time of the year,” Scott said. “Right now, we don’t care who we play, where we are playing.”

The way Maine is playing at the moment, they would be confident that they could beat the 1970s Soviet Union Red Army team in a game played on the moon. 

After last weekend, Maine can now trust that their style of game and the pieces they have in their dressing room combine to provide what it takes to win a championship.

Maine’s formula is a winning one; they’ve proven that to themselves.

By being able to trust that as long as they play their game and focus on themselves and stick to what they do best, the result they so desperately desire will follow. Trusting in their process, Maine can turn their attention to maintaining their focus on themselves and not worrying if what they have is enough to achieve their ultimate goals.

“That’s knowing that the process is going to take care of the outcome. I think that’s just the most important thing going forward is managing our focus, not getting too caught up in everything. It’s just one moment at a time, one play at a time, and really not taking for granted where we are right now. Being grateful for this opportunity and knowing that it's special to be playing for Maine and wearing the script that we are,” Scott explained.

First five

Last week, Maine was able to carry their incredibly intense, dizzyingly dominant ending to their semifinal double-overtime victory over Northeastern into the Championship Game just 20 hours later, overwhelming Connecticut with a complete, suffocating, focused, and high-flying performance that matched the heights of any of their boatload of impressive regular season victories.

“We were all just so amped up and ready to get right back at it. You play two OTs, teams are maybe like, oh these guys are going to be tired and stuff like that. But for us, it felt like we just kind of wanted to keep playing how we finished up that last game against Northeastern, and I think we did a good job doing that,” Makar explained. 

Maine will be looking to carry their high-performance levels with them down to Allentown and are hyper-focused on starting strong Friday night, emphasizing the importance of the first five minutes of the game to set the tone for the rest of the evening.

“Our focus is on the first five minutes of Friday night. It will be really important for us to have the same kind of energy we had both nights. That sets the tone for the whole game; that’s everyone’s first shift. If you set the right standard early, usually the rest of the game falls into play,” Barr said.

A strong start for Maine will be extra important given how boisterous the Penn State-heavy crowd is expected to be. If the Black Bears start back on their heels, the Nittany Lions’ frenzied fans and energized Penn State players could jump all over Maine and put the Black Bears in an early hole. But a quick start for Maine would quiet the crowd, allow Maine to dictate the tempo, keep the contest controlled and manageable, and set the standard for the rest of the evening.

“Those first five minutes, you want to win that, you want to set the tone for that whole game. You can do that in the first five minutes by winning the first faceoff, getting a big hit, putting a puck in behind them, establishing your forecheck, getting a shot on net, staying out of the box. Those first five minutes of the game really set the tone for the rest of it, and we want to make sure we’re on our toes, we’re dictating the pace in those first five,” Breazeale said. “We remind guys, hey, we’re coming out with that intensity, everybody’s first shift, go out there and be as tight as possible. If we can do that in the first five and let that carry over to the rest of the game.”

Red-hot Penn State

Friday night’s contest with Penn State will be Maine’s first look at the Nittany Lions in program history and their first contest against a team from the highly heralded Big Ten conference since October 2015, when Maine kicked off that season against Michigan State in a game played in Portland as part of the 2015 Ice Breaker.

Penn State’s modern-day Division I program began only 12 seasons ago, but since then, the Nittany Lions have reached the NCAA Tournament four times, most recently falling to Big Ten rival Michigan in the Regional Final two seasons ago.

This year’s rendition of Penn State, led by 14-year Head Coach Guy Gadowsky, is one of the best Happy Valley has ever seen. Although the Nittany Lions got off to a slow start, going 0-8-1 against ranked opponents to begin the season, since late-January, Penn State has been one of the hottest teams in all of college hockey. They’ve gone 8-3-2 against ranked opponents down the stretch and 10-3-2 in Big Ten play with massive victories at #2 Michigan State, at #15 Michigan, vs #5 Minnesota, vs #10 Ohio State, and sweeps at #28 Wisconsin, vs #38 Notre Dame, and a playoff series sweep over #15 Michigan all coming in the past month or two.

But the Nittany Lions fell two weekends ago in the Big Ten semifinal to Ohio State and have been licking their lips since, hungry for the opportunity to rebound on the national stage.

Like many of their Big Ten counterparts, the Nittany Lions play is blessed with a wealth of high-end talent. Penn State plays a free-flowing whirl-and-twirl offensive-minded game that looks to overwhelm their opponents by throwing everything on net.

“They are a high-powered team, really offensive, they’ve got some really good players who score a lot of goals,” Breazeale said. “They want to flow into pucks; they want to be fast and put a lot of pucks on net.”

The Nittany Lions average 3.5 goals per game (T-7th in the nation) and create 32.6 shots on goal per game (T-11th).

They’ve got a really good team. Some great players, they are well coached, they are fast, they play a fast style, up-tempo style,” Barr said.

Penn State also has one of the most highly-skilled, goal-scoring machines in Hobey Baker Award nominee #18 Aiden Fink (23g-29a-52pts), whose 52 points are the third-most in the country and 1.405 points per game is the second-best ratio in all of college hockey.

“He can skate, he can shoot the puck, he’s a highly skilled guy, drives their offense,” Barr said about Fink.

Fink plays right-wing on the top line with other offensive wagons in center #29 Reese Laubach (15g-15a-3opts) and left-wing #13 Danny Dzhaniyev (12g-18pts-30pts).

Penn State’s second line is also extremely dangerous, consisting of #15 Charlie Cerrato (15g-22a-37pts), #14 Matt DiMarsicio (14g-15a-29pts), and #20 JJ Wiebusch (12g-18a-30pts).  

The Nittany Lions’ third and fourth lines have the potential to score as well with the likes of #12 Ben Schoen (7g-12a-19pts), #19 Dane Dowiak (9g-8a-17pts), and #16 Dylan Lugris (4g-8a-12pts), all offensively capable double-digit point-getters.

Penn State’s reliance on their top-six forwards to do the heavy lifting for the Nittany Lions offensively will allow Maine, the ‘home’ team with the last line change, to mix-and-match their shutdown defensemen and defensively diligent two-way forward lines with Penn State’s offensive-minded top-two forward lines. 

“We’ll have to be ready to match their offensive guys with some guys that can shut them down. I think we have guys that can do that; I think we have the guys that are really solid two-way players and that’s probably what it takes against a guy like [Fink] and some of the other guys they have too,” Barr said.

Similar to how Northeastern is built in this top-heavy sense, Penn State is also akin to the Huskies in that they create most of their offense in quick, north-to-south transitions through their speed and skill. But the Black Bears did a splendid job last week, completely neutralizing Northeastern’s blistering speed with their smothering forechecking physicality and puck precision in all three zones, very rarely letting a missed hit or a puck mistake catch them out of position, not allowing Northeastern’s creative attackers the time and space to work their magic in transition.

“What made us so successful [in Boston] was just suffocating the other team, being on top of them, and taking away their time and space. They are a little more of a free-flowing kind of team, and we’re structured and detailed, and I think that’s going to play into our advantage,” Scott said.

“Those Big Ten teams are full of skill, if you make a mistake they’re going to make you pay. Obviously the transitions are going to be quick and they’ve got some heavy scorers. You just have to play them hard, play them tight, and at the end of the day just focus on us,” Makar added. “Hold on to pucks, play with poise. They’ve got some skilled players that can shoot the puck. We’ve just been looking at their transitions and the way they play; we’ve been working a little bit on that. So we’re just looking to play our game and suffocate the other team, not give them any time and that will bring us success, I feel like.”

The Black Bears feel confident that Maine’s style of game can stymie Penn State’s offensive arsenal, especially considering the Black Bears’ defensemen have played lights-out as a complete D-men core for the past few weeks. Especially the depth blueline pieces such as Bodie Nobes and Luke Antonacci have both been playing the best hockey of their Maine careers of late. One of Maine’s biggest weaknesses this season, their defensive depth, may now be one of their biggest strengths.

“Having six D, and all of those guys played fantastic in both games last weekend, so that’s such a big deal when we can roll six or seven sometimes, and they can all take minutes efficiently, and that helps the forwards. We got out of our zone clean on Friday night; we got through the neutral zone clean, and that was because our D were moving their feet, making the right play, and it makes the game easier for everyone else,” Barr said.

And then, of course, if all else fails, Maine has one of the best goaltenders in the country between the pipes to bail out the Black Bears if need be. They say defense wins championships, and to win a National Championship, you need elite goaltending. The Black Bears are getting both of those right now.

“Albin’s been Albin, obviously most of the year, he’s one of the best in the nation, which is the most important position,” Barr said.

At the other end of the ice is Penn State’s defensive core, which is led by #4 Simon Mack (+18-3g-2a-27pts), #6 Jimmy Dowd Jr. (-3-1g-9a-10pts), and #27 Cade Christenson (+19-2g-7a-9pts). But Penn State has lost the reliable blueline minutes of #2 Carter Schade (-0-0g-9a-9pts) due to an injury suffered in practice on Tuesday, ending Schade’s season. This is where things might get a little hairy for the Nittany Lions, as they will lean heavily on young, inexperienced defensemen to log big minutes against the Black Bears.

Defense isn’t the Nittany Lions’ strong suit in the first place; their 3.1 goals-allowed average (T-41st best in the country) and their 31.5 shots-allowed average is the 13th worst in the nation.

In net for Penn State is UConn transfer #35 Arsenii Sergeev (2.655 GAA-0.915SV%), who shut out the Black Bears with UConn last season on January 13th in Hartford, stopping all 27 Maine shots on goal.

Maine hopes to learn from their heartbreaking experience of falling in the Regional semifinals last season to Cornell. The Black Bears are looking for their first win in the NCAA Tournament since 2007. (Photo: Dmitri Chambers)

Learning from last year

There’s one thing that no coach can teach, and that’s experience.

Last season, Maine’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2012, was a great first step for the program in reestablishing itself among the college hockey elite, but that’s all it was. A first step.

In Maine’s 3-1 heartbreaking Regional semifinal loss to Cornell, the Black Bears learned the hard way that, at this time of the year, the smallest mistakes and the tiniest miscues make all the difference between moving on and going home.

The Black Bears by no means played poorly against the Big Red, but their failure to extend their early 1-0 advantage and execute on a first-period five-minute power play came back to haunt them as Cornell goaltender Ian Shane’s heroics alongside the Big Red capitalizing on a few Black Bear mistakes sent Maine home in tears.

“I think that you just learn that every puck moment, every moment in the game matters. We didn’t play poorly in that game, and we didn’t play poorly in the Garden last year against BU, but it wasn’t good enough. When you have chances to make a play, last year we probably could have been up 2 or 3 in the first period against Cornell, and it was 1-1, and the game goes the other way. Everything matters; every moment in a do-or-die game matters. I think our guys understand that, and then it’s up for us to execute and make plays,” Barr said.

With the experience of last year’s bitter disappointment under their belt, the Black Bears now know what it takes to win in the make-or-break National Tournament. Maine has already shown that they can take the experience of last year’s painful ending not just as motivation but as critical wisdom in what it takes to win do-or-die hockey games.

The way they performed last weekend at the Garden has already shown that Maine is far more prepared for playoff hockey than they were last year. In last season’s Hockey East semifinal, Maine played well against BU, but the moment may have gotten too big for them as the Black Bears struggled to keep their composure and poise in front of BU’s net, only scoring one goal on 33 shots.

But this season, the Black Bears, no longer satisfied with just being at the Garden, were able to raise their game to the next level and make plays in big moments, a standard that is required when playing on the big stage in a pressure-packed environment. This season, the Black Bears’ trip to Boston was seen solely as a business trip, focused exclusively on delivering the goods. Their mindset for the NCAA Tournament is much the same, where achieving anything short of punching their ticket to the Frozen Four this weekend is a complete failure.

“It’s just the experience, same with the Garden where none of us had been there before and when we went down there [this time] it was just [another] business trip, we’ve taken it all in the year before so we knew what to expect. It’s the same thing with the regional where we know what to expect now; we’re going in there with the mindset that we’re going to come out of it on top, and we’re going to make it to St. Louis,” Breazeale said. “Set the tone and know that it’s another big game, but you’ve got to treat it like it’s just another one where you’re just going out there and playing your brand of hockey and whatever happens, happens.”

The Black Bears showed last week that as the lights shine brighter, the games take on more meaning, and the pressure ratchets up, so do the Black Bears, raising their game to new levels and playing their best hockey of the season when it mattered the most. 

More of the same, please.

“Just the focus and the details and the intensity that we were playing with. Our forwards were forechecking so hard out there, getting on pucks fast, not allowing them clean breakouts, and then when they did have a clean breakout, our forwards were reloading super hard, taking away time and space, not letting them get to the redline, and then our D were transitioning super fast. It’s just the intensity and the effort in which we do everything; it’s playoff atmosphere; it’s playoff hockey, so we know that Penn State is going to bring that as well; it’s who’s going to be able to do that better,” Breazeale explained.

A victory on Friday night would set up the Black Bears with the winner of the East Regional’s first semifinal, a clash between Nutmeggers Quinnipiac and UConn.

But all eyes are focused on Friday night and the incredibly difficult task of squelching the Nittany Lions’ roar in their own home state.

The Black Bears have been working towards this moment, this game all year long. Thousands of sprints in the summer, hundreds of hours on the ice all winter, Maine has spent their entire lives preparing for this tournament, for this game.

They understand what they are playing for and who they are playing for.

They understand the history of Maine hockey and are desperate to leave their own mark on the program and their own National Championship banner hanging high above the Alfond ice.

The 1999 National Championship team, celebrating their 25th anniversary, was honored all the way back on October 5th, Maine’s first game of the season.

Afterward, players from the ‘99 team and the great Grand Standbrook, Shawn Walsh’s right-hand man, spoke to the team.

The ‘99 Black Bears explained to the ‘25 Black Bears that they are built in much of the same mold. Unlike the ‘93 National Champions blessed with that year’s Hobey Baker Award winner Paul Kariya, captain Jim Mongomery, and future Olympians Peter Ferraro, Matt Martin, Chris Imes, Garth Snow, and Mike Dunham, the ‘99 team was more similar to this year’s Black Bears. They’re a blue-collar, lunchpail effort, often overlooked pack of Bears that have had to fight tooth and nail for every breadcrumb they earned.

“The ‘93 team, they said, were full Draft picks, NHL kind of players, and [the ‘99] team is kind of more like an underdog mentality; they didn’t have ‘fancy guys’ or the guys who have the big titles around their name. They have a bunch of blue-collar guys that just earned it, and that’s just what we’re about. We go out there and we earn it, we play with that underdog mentality, and it really doesn’t matter who we’re playing or facing, we’re just going to go out there and work and compete and attack,” Scott explained.

Who knows where the 2025 Maine Black Bears story ends? But one thing is for certain: this group is hungry, determined, and completely capable of making Black Bear Nation’s dreams come true.

This team can achieve anything; this team can achieve everything.

Four games to greatness.

Four games to number three.

Put your dance shoes on, Black Bear Nation, it’s time.

The real March Madness begins now.