ORONO, Me- The Maine mens ice hockey team got goals from four different players and another solid performance from goalie Jeremy Swayman Saturday night, to help sweep the St Lawrence Saints 4-1 at Alfond Arena.
Freshman Jacob Schmidt-Svejstrup got things started really early in the first period. Schmidt-Svejstrup took a pass from Chase Pearson behind the net right onto his stick to the left of St Lawrence goalie Athur Brey right above the faceoff circle, one timing the pass to the glove side of Brey and into the net just 31 seconds in to make it 1-0. “I think Binn (Alexis Binner) got it and shot it low, then Chase got it, came around the net and I was yelling for it, he put it right on my stick and I fired it”, said Schmidt-Svejstrup. The Bears outshot the visitors 14-5, but still had just a 1-0 lead after one period.
Maine (2-0) extended the lead to 2-0 shorthanded just over two minutes into the second period. Mitchell Fossier got a great feed from Patrick Shea on a 2 on 1 break, tape to tape one timing the pass past the stick of Brey. It was the second straight night Maine struck shorthanded. At the 14:18 mark of the middle period Rob Michel made a great play to make it 3-0. Michel did a curl and drag move from just inside the blue line, and fired a shot that was stopped by Brey, but the rebound came right back to Michel who fired another shot that beat Brey just under the crossbar. Exactly three minutes later, St Lawrence (0-2) got their lone tally when Ryan Garvey stepped into a drop pass by teammate Zach Risteau, firing a slapper while striding in from the blue line that Swayman got a piece of but found its way into the back of the net to make it 3-1.
The scoring was finished off at 7:07 of the third period when sophomore defenseman Brady Keeper fired a shot on Brey that was juggled and dropped, and pounced on by Tim Doherty who fired it home to provide the insurance goal. Fossier and Keeper both had two assists on the night, while Schmidt-Svejstrup also added one to go along with his goal.
Swayman stopped 23 of 24 shots in the Bears win. Brey had 35 saves on 39 Mane shots in the loss for the Saints. The powerplay for Maine was 0-5 and 1-12 on the weekend, while the penalty kill in the two games only gave up one goal in 12 chances for the visitors (0-4 Saturday night). Head coach Red Gendron said after the game, “Solid weekend, good win tonight. Got off to a better start than last night. After we got up 3-0, we did have a little lull in the second period. By in large we played quite well and was a big weekend sweep for our program”.
Maine returns to action next weekend when they travel to meet defending national champion and #3 Minnesota-Duluth for a pair of games on Friday and Saturday night. Faceoff is scheduled for 7 pm both nights.
