ORONO – Sophomore forward Will Merchant tallied two goals and third-string sophomore goaltender Matt Strickrott saw his first ice time of the season in the University of Maine men’s ice hockey team’s 4-1 exhibition win over St. Francis Xavier University Tuesday night in Alfond Arena, a contest that proved to be a good midweek warm up for the Black Bears’ two in-conference road tests this weekend.
“We would’ve practiced hard today, and instead we had a game,” UMaine head coach Dennis Gendron said. “I didn’t overplay anybody. It gave an opportunity for certain guys who don’t get a lot of ice time to play, to show the coaching staff what they could do.”
“We try to emulate the game as much as we can in practice, but nothing beats live game action,” sophomore forward Devin Shore said. “We do have a lot of depth on our team, so for everyone to play the minutes they played tonight and relish those minutes is awesome. The games we have coming up the rest of the season are to going to be tough where we’re going to need everyone going and skating and doing a job out there.”
The Black Bears struggled to capitalize on their territorial edge early on in the game before Merchant’s first tally just under six minutes in broke the scoreless drought.
Merchant gained the blue line through two X-Men defensemen and circled wide towards the right slot before beating St. FX sophomore goaltender Drew Owsley five-hole, with the assists going to sophomore defenseman Bill Norman and senior forward Jon Swavely.
UMaine added an insurance marker five minutes later. Freshman defenseman Dan Renouf’s initial attempt at a one-timer was deflected into the air towards the slot where Shore was waiting to glove it down. His ensuing snap shot squeaked by Owsley to put the Black Bears up 2-0, with freshman defenseman Eric Schurhamer also earning an assist.
UMaine senior Dan Sullivan got the start in net and would be called upon to make eight or nine quality saves throughout the contest to earn the win, including a huge effort to stuff St. FX senior forward Jason Bast less than two minutes into the second period after a scrum in front of the blue paint.
Sullivan would finish with 25 saves on 26 shots.
“Every game is important to us, exhibition or non-exhibition,” Sullivan said. “I thought I played alright. There’s definitely some things to improve on, but I played well enough to get the win, so that’s the most important thing.”
“The bottom line is Sully can play for us if we need him to – that’s clear,” Gendron said.
UMaine sophomore forward Ryan Lomberg had a chance to put the Black Bears up three while on the power play, but back pressure forced his backhand attempt to go wide halfway through the middle stanza.
The Black Bears would go up by three moments after the penalty expired on a Norman wrist shot from just inside the right dot, with junior forward Stu Higgins and senior defenseman Brice O’Connor earning assists on the play.
Junior goaltender Morgan Clark would replace Owsley following Norman’s tally and play well the rest of the way. Owsley mustered 11 stops in the loss while Clark stopped 21 of the 22 shots he faced in relief.
The X-Men spoiled Sullivan’s shutout bid with just over nine minutes remaining in the period. Bast took a nice feed from senior forward Rob Slaney in the slot and snapped it by Sullivan’s glove to cut the deficit to two.
Merchant’s second goal of the game would put UMaine back up by three with just over four minutes remaining in regulation, but the highlight of the final period was Strickrott’s appearance, and the crowd’s reaction to his appearance, with 6:35 to go.
“It was a lot of fun,” Strickrott said. “The boys supported me, and my D-men played well in front of me and made it easy for me, so it was a great experience. I could die tomorrow and be happy.”
Strickrott, who usually shoots the game video for the Black Bears with Sullivan manning the backup duties behind senior starter Martin Ouellette, stopped all three shots he faced to preserve the 4-1 victory.
The Black Bears, who are 11-7-2 overall and 5-2-1 in Hockey East, are currently ranked No. 19 in the latest USCHO.com poll. They are tied for 16th in the Pairwise Rankings, which measures how likely a team is to make the national tournament based on records against common opponents.
Gendron says his team, which is 5-1-1 since being swept by the University of Vermont Nov. 29-30, will need to play better than they did Tuesday night in order to get points on the road against No. 10 University of Massachusetts-Lowell and No. 3/4 Boston College this weekend.
“I thought we were okay in the first, lethargic in the second and better in the third,” he said.
“We wanted to play real well for 60 minutes, and that didn’t happen.”
UMaine outshot St. FX – who is 9-9 in the Atlantic University Sport conference – 36-29 in the contest.
The teams combined to go 0-4 on the power play.