The University of Maine men’s and women’s ice hockey teams were back at it on Saturday hoping to avoid sweeps in Hockey East play. The women played host to Vermont again in the afternoon, while the men were in Amherst for another matchup with the UMass Minutemen.
At the Alfond Arena in Orono, the Vermont Catamounts scored a pair of second period goals and held off the Maine Black Bears 3-2 in women’s conference play for the two game weekend sweep.
Kristina Shanahan put UVM (7-7-5, 4-5-3 Hockey East) up 1-0 with a powerplay goal at 6:12 of the first period, before Maines Ida Press tied it 3:42 later with a powerplay goal of her own. The later stages of the second period is where this game was won. Maude Poulin-Labelle tallied at 14:21, and then Corinne McCool made it 3-1 at 19:40. Michelle Weis scored for the Black Bears at 9:26 of the third, but Maine couldn’t come up with the equalizer in falling to 7-9-2, 4-7-1.
Ali Beltz, Liga Milijone, Nicole Pateman, and Teresa Vanisova had the Black Bear assists in the loss. Carly Jackson stopped 25 shots in net. Blanka Skodova made 23 in the Vermont win. Maine was 1-3 on the powerplay, while Vermont went 1-5. Maine is back in action next Saturday in Falmouth when they host non-conference opponent Franklin Pierce at 7 p.m.
At the Mullins Center in Amherst, Massachusetts the #11 UMass Minutemen used a three goal second period and rolled to a Hockey East men’s sweep with a 4-1 win over Maine.
After a scoreless first period in which the play was dominated by UMass (11-4-1, 6-3-1 Hockey East), Mitchell Chafee opened the scoring at 12:57 of the second with his nation leading 12th goal to make it 1-0. John Leonard made it 2-0 on the powerplay at 18:14, before Niko Hildebrand capped off a big period for the hosts by scoring 18 seconds later for a 3-0 advantage. Adam Dawe got Maine on the board with a powerplay goal at 4:27 of the third, but that is all the Black Bears could muster as the Minutemen got an empty net goal from Phillip Lagunov at 17:22 to end the scoring.
Mitchell Fossier and Levi Kleiboer assisted on the Dawe goal for the Black Bears. Jeremy Swayman made 30 saves in the loss, as Maine falls to 8-7-3, 4-6-2. Matt Murray made 23 in the UMass win. Maine was 1-1 on the powerplay, while UMass went 1-3. The Bears are now 1-4-1 in their last six games and will visit Yale Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in the last game before the holiday break.
