Merrimack and Maine battled it out in a highly contested Hockey East matchup. Merrimack was seeking revenge after dropping Friday’s game to Maine by a 4-3 score. This was another tightly knit game that ended in a 5-3 Maine win.
“Our kids worked their tails off both days and got four points,” said Maine coach Dennis Gendron.
The first period was a battle of the goaltenders, as well as special teams. Each team made the stops they had to to hold the other scoreless after one period of play.
Merrimack killed off one penalty while Maine killed off a pair of its own. The first period ended in a scoreless tie.
The second period saw the score sheet fill up with six goals between the two teams.
Merrimack broke the tie when Hampus Gustafsson fired a puck past Matt Morris to give Merrimack a 1-0 lead just 16 seconds into the period. Just 45 seconds later, Jace Hennig jammed a puck in from the top of the crease to extend Merrimack’s lead to 2-0.
Maine quickly answered when Steven Swavely redirected a puck past Rasmus Tirronen to cut the lead in half at 2-1.
With just over 10 minutes left in the period, Maine’s Cedric Lacroix scored the lone power-play goal of the game and tied it at two.
Brian Morgan continued the scoring when he tucked a puck in the near side of Tirronen to put Maine up 3-2. Four minutes later, Maine doubled its lead when freshman Nolan Vesey scored to put the Black Bears up 4-2 heading into the final period of the game.
The third period saw Merrimack push back, but a late Maine goal put the game away.
Gustafsson made things interesting when he scored his second goal of the evening and put Merrimack within one goal at 4-3.
Maine’s solid defense kept Merrimack from finding the back of the cage for the rest of the game, and a Blaine Byron empty-netter with eight seconds to go gave Maine the 5-3 win and the sweep of the weekend series.
“I thought we played well for large stretches of the game; at the end of the day, it’s about winning and losing,” said Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy. “At the end of the day, it’s about winning.”
