Maine and Quinnipiac face off at center ice to begin their game Friday evening at Alfond Arena October 14th, 2016. Photo by Chris Lessner.
ORONO, Maine- Freshman Mitchell Fossier has found a knack in his first three collegiate games to score big goals. He did it again Friday night, scoring an overtime game winner to lead the Maine Black Bears to a 4-3 win over #3 Quinnipiac before 5,125 fans at Alfond Arena.
Maine (3-0-0) rallied twice from two goal deficits on this night to start the season with three straight victories. For Fossier, it was his third straight game winner and fifth goal of the early season.
Quinnipiac had built a 2-0 lead through two periods on powerplay goals 1:06 apart from Andrew Taverner and Thomas Aldworth.
Maine cut the lead to 2-1 when Nolan Vesey scored a powerplay goal 5:49 into the third period. But the Bobcats built back the two goal lead 5:42 later, when Tannery MacMaster buried a rebound past Bears goalie Rob McGovern to make it 3-1 with just 8:29 left in the game.
Maine would chip away though as Eric Shurhamer took a perfect pass from Patrick Shea, and chipped it past Bobcats goalie Chris Truehl to make it 3-2 with 6:55 left.
Shea would send the Alfond crowd into a frenzy just 1:58 later when he would cut into the Quinnipiac zone by himself left to right. Against four defenseman, Shea would get a wrist shot off on Truehl that was stopped, but Shea would stay with the play and get a piece of the rebound and the puck would trickle past the Bobcats goalie to tie the game 3-3 with 4:53 remaining. “I don’t remember how the play started but I took it in and coach had been saying the whole game to shoot, shoot, shoot. So I shot it on net and followed it up, not sure how it went in, just whacked at it”, said Shea after the game.
Fossier would bury the game winner on the powerplay 2:08 into the extra period on a pass from Shurhamer through some traffic. The shot seemed to screen Truehl and went off the post and into the net. “We had some shots on net and there was some traffic up at the point. Shurhamer got it, and kinda found a seam to me, and I just tried to get it off quickly and it went off the post and in. It was kinda of a fortunate play for me”, said Fossier.
Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said after the loss, “Give Maine credit. They were really good. They battled hard and played hard. We were good in spurts. Thought we played with a little panic. I thought uncharacteristically our buy in was poor. We have to deal with the way the officials are calling the game on us and we need to adapt and we did not do a good job of that. Like 12 powerplays, that’s ridiculous”.
When asked another third period rally Maine coach Red Gendron said, “There was no magic elixir from any one individual player or from the coach or associate head coach. These kids, the ones that were here before, they are battle tested. They have been through alot. We went through a very difficult year last year but they never quit. They kept battling. And now it seems like we have a little more depth offensively at least through three games, scoring some goals. Our team got some confidence last week being down a goal in the third period and came back to win Saturday night against RPI. So it wasn’t excessively uncomfortable for our players to be behind”.
McGovern earned the win in net for Maine stopping 25 of 28 shots. Truel took the loss for Quinnipiac (1-1-1) and had 26 saves on 30 shots. Quinnipiac was 2 for 6 on the powerplay while Maine was 2 for 12.
Maine and Quinnipiac finish their two games series tomorrow night at Alfond Arena. Puck drop is scheduled for 7 p.m.
QUI 0 2 1 0- 3
UME 0 0 3 1- 4
Shots on goal: Quinnipiac 28 Maine 30
Win- McGovern Loss- Truehl
Video highlights from Maine Black Bears on You Tube
