The Maine Black Bears and Quinnipiac Bobcats line up for the national anthem before their game at the Alfond Arena on Saturday, October 15, 2016. Photo by Chris Lessner.
ORONO, Maine- The Maine Black Bears hockey team rallied back from a deficit for the third straight game Saturday night, but Craig Martin would bury a game winner in overtime to lead the #3 Quinnipiac Bobcats to a 3-2 win at Alfond Arena before another sellout crowd of 5,125.
Maine took four penalties in the opening period and after Tommy Schutt started the scoring at 17:30, Tim Clifton scored a powerplay goal just 1:26 later to make it 2-0 Quinnipiac.
Maine (3-1-0) would again battle back though as Cam Brown found a wide open Blaine Byron to the left of Quinnipiac goalie Andre Shortridge on the powerplay and Byron deposited it in a half open cage to cut the Bobcats lead to 2-1 at the 4:40 mark of the second period.
Black Bear goalie Rob McGovern made several huge stops in the middle period, including several flurries of shots from Quinnipiac, to keep the game at 2-1 after two periods.
The Bears would tie it late as Nolan Vesey scored 15:37 into the third period and sent the game into overtime.
Martin scored the game winner just 1:15 into the extra period, after another flurry in front of McGovern, where he stopped several shots before the puck bounced to Martin who slipped it home to give Quinnipiac the split of the weekend series.
Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said, “Certainly happy with the outcome. I thought our attention to detail was much better tonight, thought we played a much better hockey game. I give Maine alot of credit they found a way to tie it there. I was very impressed with Maine tonight too. Very impressed with their team this weekend, I think they are gonna win alot of games. Coach Gendron has done a good job”.
Coach Gendron on his teams first loss of the season said, “I thought it was another good game. I thought we could of made more simple plays throughout various parts of the game. I thought we took some penalties that we didn’t need to take. That being said, the score is 2-0, and by the end of the third period it’s 2-2. And so our team, something that has been happening here in the first four games, our people keep coming. So that’s the positive. But the lesson for us to has to be we have to do all the little things start to finish and make it easier on ourselves”.
Shortridge picked up the win in net for the Bobcats making 20 saves as Quinnipiac improved to 2-1-1. McGovern made 30 saves in the loss for the Bears. Quinnipiac was 1 for 8 on the powerplay while Maine went 1 for 5.
Quinnipiac heads back home to host Connecticut on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. before heading to Boston University for a 7 p.m. contest Saturday night. Maine hits the road for the first time this season for a pair of games at Miami of Ohio on Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 7 p.m.
QUI 2 0 0 1- 3
UME 0 1 1 0- 2
Shots on goal- Quinnipiac 33 Maine 22
Win- Shortridge Loss- McGovern
Time of game- 2:16
