BOSTON — Step outside the FleetCenter and tour the city’s North End and you quickly find yourself craving a grinder, or “grindahh” as it’s known in the local parlance.

How could you not? The local term for subs, or Italian sandwiches as most Mainers I know call them, is spelled out everywhere in this old Italian neighborhood – in neon, on sandwich boards, written in chalk on the daily specials blackboard.

I hadn’t heard Italians referred to as grinders until about 15 years ago. Research shows that the term originated in Connecticut and has slowly crept north. As Connecticut and Massachusetts transplants infiltrate Maine, it has begun to take hold.

The University of Maine hockey team’s reputation as a bunch of grinders, meanwhile, is spreading south and west.

With eight consecutive wins in one-goal games going into last night’s national championship against Denver, the Black Bears have had to do more grinding than a puree blender in a rest home for hockey players.

In the context of sports, the term grinder conveys hard work, doing the little things, even playing with a chip on your shoulder. and the end result is usually playing above your talent.

Therein lies the rub when you’re a grinder, though. Some athletes look at the term as a back-handed compliment. They think that what you’re basically saying when you call them a grinder is “Hey buddy, I like your moxie, but you got no talent.”

Lisbon’s Greg Moore, a sophomore at Maine, does not sniff at being called a grinder, though.

“I think it’s a compliment,” Moore said. “You look around at teams that grind it out, but they don’t have the character to stay in those tough games. This team has the character and the heart in tough situations that allows us to win every time.”

Hockey players seem to take special pride in the term, moreso than those in other team sports. Just look at the New England Patriots. Part of the “no respect” banner that they carried on their way to their first Super Bowl title two years ago was built on the media and opponents’ characterization of them as a grind-it-out team playing above their heads.

So why do hockey players take it as a badge of honor?

“It’s a blue-collar sport,” Moore pointed out.

No doubt, hockey is full of grinders, and Maine coach Tim Whitehead has brought a bunch of them to Orono..

The Black Bears were ranked fourth in the Hockey East preseason poll. Didn’t even get a sniff of a first-place vote behind Boston College, Boston University and New Hampshire.

The low expectations were understandable, if not completely justified. The Bears lost their top five scorers and their top two defensemen off a 24-win team. Eleven newcomers were brought in to fill the void. Back in October, the Frozen Four seemed a lot further away than Boston. If the Black Bears knew that they’d have to live on the edge every night to get there, they might have picked themselves fourth in the conference, too.

“I think it shows our team’s character that we’ve been in some tough situations and we’ve found a way to battle through it,” said senior defenseman Prestin Ryan.

In the postseason alone, they’ve survived the exhaustion of a triple-overtime game, a three-goal deficit in the third period, numerous breakdowns in their defensive zone, bouts of undisciplined play and an anemic power play.

“I remember coach (Shawn) Walsh saying about the 99 team that there wasn’t a lot of margin for error there,” he said. “That’s how I feel about this team and you can see that in the results of our games. I think one of the strengths of our team is we recognize that.”

Denver recognized it, too, and didn’t leave anything to chance. They pounced on Maine early and didn’t let up. Other opponents, Harvard being the most obvious, had allowed the Black Bears to get up off the mat and went home regretting it.

Denver recognized it, too, and wasn’t impressed. Forward Lukas Dora predicted Friday that the Pioneers would have an easy time of it with Maine. The Black Bears read his prediction courtesy the Boston Herald. They didn’t get a chance to tell him what they thought of it, though, because Dora was suspended for an unspecified violation of team rules.

Dora was right, and he would have looked pretty smart last night if he hadn’t been so stupid earlier.

He was right because whereas the Black Bears’ previous opponents didn’t make them pay for their own mistakes, Denver did.

They may be from out west, but the Denver Pioneers know a grinder when they see one.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].