ORONO, Maine- Jade Miller scored with a little under nine minutes remaining, and Hunter Shepard made 26 saves Friday night to lead the #10 Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs mens ice hockey team to a 2-1 win over the Maine Black Bears at Alfond Arena before 3,483 fans.
A power outage in the area delayed the start of the contest. The original start time was 7:05 p.m., but the puck didn’t get dropped until 8:27.
Many of the 3,483 weren’t even settled into their seats yet before the Bulldogs broke on the board. Karlson Kuhman took advantage of a Maine turnover, and found Riley Tufte who slapped it past Black Bear goalie Rob McGovern to make it 1-0 just 46 seconds into the game.
McGovern made several huge stops to keep Maine in the game however, especially in the second period to keep it 1-0. The highlight was a great save on a breakaway. “A little bit of a slow start. But we got better and better as the game went on”, said Maine head coach Red Gendron.
Maine (2-3) got the equalizer almost midway through the third period. The Bears had a three on two break, and Cannon Pieper slide a perfect pass to Eduards Tralmaks, who walked into a slapshot and beat UMD netminder Shepard to the stick side to make it 1-1. Just 1:37 later, Miller buried a backhander in front of McGovern for the game winner. Maine had chances late in the game, as they pulled McGovern with 1:40 left. The best chance came on scramble in front of the UMD goal, Maine defenseman Rob Michel had a backhander with Shepard out of position and the net open, but the shot sailed wide and high as the Bulldogs held on. Minnesota-Duluth head coach Scott Sanderlin said, “We will take it. Good road win. Hard fought. Certainly liked our first period alot. We had an opportunity to build on that lead. Their goalie made some key saves, we missed a few. We had a chance to build a two goal, maybe a three goal lead, give their goalie credit and their team credit. That was a big goal by our fourth line, those guys have been good all year”. UMD improves their record to 3-2-2.
Maine was 0-3 on the powerplay, while UMD was 0-1. McGovern made 27 saves in the loss (22 of those over the first two periods). Gendron added, “Thought we were good on powerplay. We had some bad breaks and some misses that could of been extremely helpful to us. We had some looks and some empty nets, just wasn’t able to finish off the plays.”
Maine and UMD will finish off their two game series Saturday night. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
