ORONO, Maine — Mathieu Caron couldn’t help himself.
The senior goaltender skated out from his crease and turned to face Maine’s jam-packed student section, which had been going at him since the moment he emerged for warmups.
He raised a finger to his mask and shushed the crowd into silence.
The rink stayed dead quiet as the Boston University men’s hockey team celebrated its shootout win over the Black Bears after salvaging a 2-2 tie in the final moments of Saturday’s game at Alfond Arena.
“It feels awesome,” said sophomore captain Shane Lachance, who played hero by scoring the tying goal with 20 seconds left in regulation. “That’s a big one for us…They’re hard to play against and they gave us their best effort, but we found a way in the end.”
Lachance tied it by poking home a greasy rebound with 20 seconds remaining in regulation and BU’s net empty. After a scoreless overtime period, Lachance’s co-captain, junior Ryan Greene, earned the Terriers an extra Hockey East point by sniping the shootout winner.
“This can give your group confidence,” said BU head coach Jay Pandolfo postgame. “Keep coming and keep pushing and find a way.”
Lachance’s late tally saved the day for BU, which was soundly outplayed for the final two periods of the game.
BU started the game strong and took a 1-0 lead on freshman forward Cole Eiserman’s goal at 10:00 of the first period. But the Terriers faltered as the game wore on.
The little things — like zone entries and clean passes — became difficult for BU, which looked disconnected and out of sorts. Maine, by contrast, strung shift after shift of consistent pressure.
The Black Bears scored their first at 16:35 of the first, a power-play tally off the stick of senior forward Nolan Renwick. With all four BU penalty killers crowded around the crease, Renwick swooped in from the slot all alone, flipping the puck over Caron.
That tally came on Maine’s first man-advantage of the evening, but the Terriers killed off the following three. The penalty kill has been a struggle for BU, which had been allowing power-play goals at a 33.3 percent clip, the worst mark in Hockey East and the fourth-worst in the nation.
Pandolfo credited the improvements to an emphasis on an “aggressive” approach.
“We wanted to make sure we were blocking shots, and our guys did a really good job of doing that,” Pandolfo said. “They did have some zone time, there’s no question, but for the most part we did a good job keeping them to the outside.”
BU blocked 18 shots, led by grad student defenseman Brehdan Engum’s five. Freshman forward Kamil Bednarik, who stepped into a role on the top penalty kill unit, had three.
Freshman forward Anthony Calafiore scored Maine’s other goal off a nifty feed from freshman Oskar Komarov at 9:56 of the second.
Caron made 29 saves, plus four terrific stops in the shootout. It was a bounce-back performance for the senior, who had been benched for sophomore Max Lacroix the previous two games after allowing 14 goals in his previous three starts (2 losses to Michigan and 1 to UMass Lowell, all at home).
“For him to come in and play the way he did was excellent,” Pandolfo said.
Caron made big stops throughout regulation — especially in the second and third periods — but none were bigger than his four shootout stops.
On the first, Caron snuffed out a deke from sophomore forward Charlie Russell, sprawling cross-net to stuff Russell’s last-ditch effort to get a shot on net. Next came sophomore forward Sully Scholle, who tried a more simplified deke to his backhand. Caron staved it off with his left pad.
Caron followed it up by stonewalling Hockey East points leader Harrison Scott and the highly skilled Lynden Breen.
That set the stage for Greene’s winner. The first three Terriers to take a crack at Maine goalie Albin Boija — senior Jack Hughes, Eiserman and sophomore Jack Harvey — tried fancy dekes and missed. So the Chicago Blackhawks draft pick kept it simple.
“This is kind of sh–ty ice, especially three periods and overtime, the ice gets chewed up,” Greene said. “So I thought I saw space up top on him, so I just wanted to be patient and wait for it to open up. I’m happy it went in.”
As Greene celebrated and jumped into a mob of teammates at center ice, there was Caron at the other end of the rink, finger up to his mask as the Alfond crowd filed off to the exits.
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