NEWTON, Mass. ”“ The comuppance was as emphatic as it was unwelcome.
Then again, for UMaine, one might have been just about due.
The Black Bears, ranked third in the nation, suffered just its second loss of the season, a 4-0 whitewashing at the hands of No. 7 Boston College, before 7,126 at Conte Forum.
Four different Eagles found the net, and goalie John Muse turned aside all 32 Black Bear shots to halt Maine’s unbeaten streak at six games.
“I don’t know if we were ready to come out,” said Maine goalie Dan Sullivan. “We maybe gave them a little bit too much respect. We were reaching for pucks instead of just using the body.”
The Black Bears stumbled out of the gate and never managed to recover.
For starters, Gustav Nyquist failed on a penalty shot midway through the first period that would have given Maine a 1-0 lead.
Nyquist had been hooked from behind by BC’s Joe Whitney while on a breakaway, at 8:09.
However, on the ensuing penalty shot, Nyquist was stopped at the left post on a pad save by Muse.
“I tried to make him slide a little bit to the right,” said Nyquist. “He kind of bit on it, but I couldn’t get it up. He just made a great save.”
Indeed. Even at that early stage, it might have been a game changing save.
“That’s huge,” said BC defenseman ”“ and former Biddeford High standout ”“ Brian Dumoulin. “We always want to score the first goal. And Muse has been on fire. He’s been saving everything. That was really big for him to make that save.”
Then Maine put itself in a 5-on-3 bind, which Paul Carey cashed in to put the Eagles ahead.
The capper came with 1:02 remaining in the stanza, when Maine goalie Dan Sullivan misplayed a puck behind his net, leaving Brian Gibbons to pocket his shot from the right side, making it 2-0.
“He (Gibbons) read that like a book,” said Sullivan, a freshman, who has seized the Black Bear net. “I tried to reverse it to the ‘d’. But he was aware of what was going on. It’s unfortunate.”
Tommy Atkinson padded the BC lead at 7:34 of the second, when his shot from the right circle dribbled over the goal line.
Dumoulin garnered an assist on the goal. It was his third helper of the season.
He picked up another assist on a third period tally by Pat Mullane that put the game away.
EMPTY NETTERS: Dumoulin nearly netted his first goal of the season in the game’s final minutes, when he took an opportunity to sail in from the left point, only to slide his shot off the far post.
Nearly everyone in the building thought it was in, except perhaps for Dumoulin himself.
“I was embarrassed,” said Dumoulin. “I should have buried that puck. I just put my head down and sat back down on the bench.”
Maine lost defenseman Jeff Dimmen early in the second period to an ankle injury. Dimmen, a stalwart on the Black Bear blue line, was banged up when he crashed into the Boston College net. “I don’t even remember what happened,” he said. The teams will go at it again in Newton on Sunday, at 3 p.m.
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