A brief respite gives Maine time to focus on the Final Four semifinals.
By Randy Whitehouse
Staff Writer

ORONO – Following a welcome and well-deserved three-day break, the University of Maine Black Bears returned to Alfond Arena Wednesday afternoon to begin preparing for their Frozen Four national semifinal with Boston College a week from today.

“Having a couple of days off was real nice for us, just so we don’t get too burned out,” said Lisbon’s Greg Moore, who scored the game-winning goal in Maine’s 5-4 comeback victory over Harvard in the East Regional semifinal. “Everyone’s real eager now to refocus and prepare to play again.”

“We needed that three days off desperately,” said Maine coach Tim Whitehead, who was named a finalist for the national coach of the year on Tuesday. “Honestly, we probably needed another day off, but there’s a limit to what we can do considering we have to play next Thursday. We took as much time off as we could to get as much of a recovery and a recharging of batteries as we could, mentally and physically.”

Whitehead said his team is already playing catch-up with BC in terms of getting its legs back for the finals. The Eagles lost in the Hockey East quarterfinals and enjoyed a full two weeks off before they began play in the Northeast Regional in Manchester, N.H.

Maine had to play in two more hard-fought games in the conference tournament, including a triple-overtime marathon against UMass before moving on to the Eastern Regional in Albany, N.Y.

“They had a long break which really recharged their batteries,” Whitehead said. “I think that was a blessing in disguise for them. You could see the extra jump in their step (in the Northeast Regional).”

The Black Bears will hit the practice ice through Friday before their next day off on Saturday. Another practice is tentatively scheduled for Sunday. They will then have one more day off for the on-campus pep rally next Monday and skate one last time at the Alfond on Tuesday before heading down to Boston.

“We’ll be very careful with how we structure our practices to make sure we’re not overtrained over this next week but also not undertrained. But we’ve been through it a lot,” Whitehead said.

The coach and his staff have a lot to go through with the team this week, including figuring out a way to get its defense, ranked tops in the nation, to shut down BC’s No. 1 line, led by Hobey Baker finalist Tony Voce.

Maine will also have to find a way to generate its own offense against the Eagles’ defense, which is ranked second in the country, and improve its power play, which was 1-for-13 in the Eastern Regional games.

“We’ve just got to use this rest to our advantage and fine-tune some things on the power play,” said junior forward Derek Damon. “We really need to establish our forecheck and how we’re going to play our neutral zone and things like that.”