Brent Shepheard opened a three-goal first period at 8:37 with an unassisted tally for Maine and the Black Bears never looked back, as they downed Massachusetts-Lowell, 4-0 in front of 5,410 at Alfond Arena in an afternoon Hockey East game.<\/p>\n
“Maine came out all charged up, and they played well in the first period,” commented UML head coach Blaise MacDonald after the game. “They got a few past Chris Davidson, who I thought was the best player in the building tonight. This is a very tough place to come from behind, especially when you look at the makeup of our team. We just didn’t convert on those few chances that we had.”<\/p>\n
Both teams vied for control of the contest in the early moments, as each squad had quality opportunities on the power-play, but neither could put the puck in the net. Maine broke the scoreless tie at 8:37 in the first when Shepheard converted a wrap-around attempt, scoring after he poked his own rebound past Davidson on the right side low.<\/p>\n
The Black Bears made it 2-0 just under two minutes later. After a nice pass by Luciano Aquino from inside the UML blueline, Troy Barnes sent a sniper shot top-shelf from the right point at 10:17 to add to the Maine lead.<\/p>\n
Maine pushed its lead to 3-0 near the end of the third period, capitalizing on a two-on-one opportunity. Aquino collected the puck in his own zone and broke up ice along the left, with linemate Colin Shields trailing to his right. As Aquino hit the face-off circle, he dished the puck off to Shields who made his opportunity count at 14:55 for the three-goal advantage heading into the first break. The Black Bears outshot the River Hawks in the first period, 13-5.<\/p>\n
The River Hawks looked to have a chance to get back into the game at the start of the second period. Already on the power-play just before the end of the first period, Maine was whistled for high-sticking as time expired in the first. UML had a full 1:35 of 5-on-3 to start the second, and even though the River Hawks had quality opportunities with the two-man advantage, Black Bear netminder Frank Doyle kept the visitors off the scoreboard. <\/p>\n
“If we had gotten one past Doyle on that power-play, things might have been different,” said MacDonald of the 5-on-3. “He played very well, and it looked like Maine was skating by us all night.”<\/p>\n
Neither team found the back of the net in the second period, but UML, which had an early six-shot advantage in the period, out-shot Maine 9-7 in the frame.<\/p>\n
Prestin Ryan made it 4-0 Maine late in the third period on a four-on-four after he stole the puck in the Mass.-Lowell zone and floated it on net from the slot at 15:48.<\/p>\n
Davidson made 25 saves in net for the River Hawks, while Doyle picked up his second shutout of the season with a total of 22 saves. Neither team cashed in on the power-play, with UML going 0-for-7 and Maine ending up 0-for-5.<\/p>\n
Friday Mass.-Lowell (4-4-2, 2-3-0 HE) will face Boston University in a home-and-home series beginning at BU’s Walter Brown Arena, while Maine (9-2-0, 4-2-0 HE) will take on Massachusetts in Amherst Friday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brent Shepheard opened a three-goal first period at 8:37 with an unassisted tally for Maine and the Black Bears never looked back, as they downed Massachusetts-Lowell, 4-0 in front of 5,410 at Alfond Arena in an afternoon Hockey East game. “Maine came out all charged up, and they played well in the first period,” commented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4692"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}