Maine Hockey Journal

Maine snaps scoreless streak, but fall to Lowell, 2-1

The University of Maine men’s hockey team’s finally ended its scoring drought at 193 minutes and 20 seconds but Will Merchant’s power-play goal with 32.5 seconds left wasn’t enough to supply the Black Bears with their first victory as they fell to No. 5 UMass Lowell 2-1 Friday night at the Tsongas Center in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Junior defenseman Michael Kapla’s goal with 10:25 left in the third period snapped a scoreless tie and C.J. Smith added an empty-net goal with 1:01 remaining.

Maine received a power play and pulled goalie Rob McGovern in favor of an extra attacker and Merchant scored his team-leading fourth goal of the season with 32.5 seconds remaining.

But the Black Bears couldn’t get the equalizer.

“We could have won the game. We could have won nine of our 10 games. That’s the truth,” said Maine coach Red Gendron. “The guys executed very well. They played like a confident team. They battled like crazy. We had a lot of [scoring] chances. We just have to keep executing a little better every game like we have been.

UMass Lowell improved to 7-1-2 overall and 3-0-2 in Hockey East.

Maine fell to 0-7-3 and 0-3-0. The Black Bears’ 11 goals is tied for the worst season-opening 10-game total in the history of the hockey program dating to 1977-78. The 2012-13 team also scored just 11 goals in its first 10 games.

The two teams will play again at 5 p.m. Sunday at the University of Maine’s Alfond Arena in Orono.

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