ORONO — Sean Romeo got his first victory as a Maine goaltender, turning aside 30 shots in a sparkling performance.
Liam Pecararo scored his first Black Bear goal on a tremendous shot after carrying the puck from the right corner into the slot.
But it was an improbable goal by Blaine Byron that got Alfond Arena really buzzing Saturday in a 3-2 victory over Massachusetts.
The sophomore forward had the puck on the UMass goal line late in a tie game when he looked to his left and noticed goaltender Steve Mastalerz slightly out of position and starting to move backwards in the crease. Byron fired the puck, hoping for a deflection or a rebound, and was surprised to see it in the back of the net.
His perpendicular shot had caromed off of Mastalerz’s pad and capped a dramatic comeback victory.
“You never expect to score from there but you always want to make a scoring chance out of something,” Byron said. “Shots on net is never a bad idea, especially late in the game. It just happened to work out.”
Maine scored three times in the final 17 minutes to rally from a 2-0 deficit and complete the weekend sweep of the Minutemen (2-5, 1-4 Hockey East). The Black Bears (3-4-1, 2-0) won 6-5 in overtime Friday.
In the first period Saturday, Maine looked like a team still celebrating.
UMass fired 18 shots on Romeo, a freshman who saved them all to preserve a scoreless tie after 20 minutes.
“We were awful in the first period,” Maine Coach Red Gendron said. “I said, ‘You guys have to dig yourself out of this. This isn’t a question of coaching, tactics or how we forecheck, anything like that. We were outworked, we were outraced, we lost most of the faceoffs, we lost most of the battles.’ And Sean Romeo made sure that we weren’t behind as a result of it.”
Romeo is competing with sophomore Matt Morris for the starting goalie job. His first two efforts were subpar, including being pulled in a 5-2 loss to Union on Oct. 18. He said Gendron had some stern words for him about needing to compete harder, and he took that message to heart.
“I just tried to battle and compete and not wait for the play to come to me,” Romeo said.
UMass got a power-play goal from Dennis Kravchenko 14:31 into the second period and a slapshot blast from Frank Vatrano a minute later.
Maine made up that ground in the third, starting with a Devin Shore goal on a deflected Mark Hamilton shot at 7:04. That got the 3,706 fans rollicking and seemed to unsettle the young Minutemen.
Pecararo’s goal at 12:42 tied the score. In the locker room, Shore called it one of the best first goals for a Black Bear ever.
And that set up Byron’s third goal of the season.
“I think in that third period, that’s what we got back to was our game, getting in deep and outworking them, using our speed,” Byron said.
And a little Alfond magic, too.
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