At Walter Brown Arena in Boston on Saturday the University of Maine men’s hockey team finished off a two game Hockey East series with Boston University, while the women’s team started their two game set with the Terriers later in the evening.
In the afternoon, the BU Terriers got two goals from Jay O’Brien and also had three other goal scorers to cruise to a 5-1 win and sweep the weekend series with the Black Bears.
Dylan Peterson scored on a rebound at 6:20 of the first, before O’Brien tallied his first of the day at 5:05 of the second and Fridays overtime hero Rob Mastrosimone made it 3-0 at 17:22. Despite the shots being in favor of Maine at 24-18 through 40 minutes, BU freshman goalie Drew Commesso had shut the door. Luke Tuch would make it 4-0 hosts with a goal 59 seconds into the third. The Bears did ruin the shutout bid and got on the board on a nice wraparound powerplay goal by Adam Dawe at 16:41, but it was little too late and O’Brien finished off the scoring with an empty net marker at 17:35. Maine got 20 saves in the loss from their freshman goalie Victor Ostman, and Matt Thiessen made one save in relief over the last 11 or so minutes. Ben Poisson and Thiessen assisted on the Dawe goal. Along with the two goals from O’Brien, David Farrance had three assists in the win while Alex Vlasic had two helpers. Commesso finished with 30 saves. Farrance now has 13 points in seven games as BU goes to 5-1-1. The Black Bears fall to 2-7-1.
In the women’s contest, a second period goal from Nara Elia was all BU needed as Corinne Schroeder stopped all 20 shots she faced for a 1-0 Terriers win.
Boston University (2-2-0) was playing a home game for the first time in 329 days, and got the game winning goal at 3:12 of the second from Elia. Maine had a golden opportunity with 1:29 left in the game, as BU was called for a penalty and the Black Bears also pulled goaltender Loryn Porter for a 6 on 4 advantage but couldn’t find the equalizer. Kaleigh Donnelly and Andi Calderone assisted on the lone goal. Maine has not scored more than two goals in any game this season and drops to 4-6-0. Porter made 28 saves in the losing effort. Game two is scheduled for a 3 p.m. faceoff on Sunday.
