ORONO — His aw-shucks attitude might be enough to fool you away from the ice, and his credit-others-before-himself banter following the game is convincing.

Unless you saw Garrett Bartus play.

The University of Connecticut netminder stopped 40 shots, many of them in jaw-dropping style against some of the best players he’ll face all season, and the Huskies killed off eight Maine power plays, earning for Connecticut a 3-3 draw with the Black Bears in front of 4,149 at Alfond Arena on Saturday.

“Bartus had a tremendous game, and it wasn’t lucky either,” Maine coach Tim Whitehead said. “We had a few posts, and it could have been a different score, but, I’ll tell you, he made some huge stops.”

“We’ve been working hard early in the season and in the off-season, and we came in here and just gave it our all,” Bartus said. “I was pretty happy with the way I played. You can’t ask for anything more, really.”

Bartus stopped 40 shots of the 43 Maine put on net. The Black Bears also hit the post six times, and missed the net or had shots blocked 41 times.

“I’d probably kiss them if I had a chance,” Bartus said with a smile, speaking about the posts.

The other Achilles heel for Maine on Saturday, surprisingly, was its power play. The Black Bears posted the best power play in the country last season, but were 0-for-8 Saturday, including a pair of extended 5-on-3s.

“The team did a great job blocking shots, getting in the way and taking away their back-door options,” Bartus said.

Ironically enough, the Bears also stayed in the game despite allowing a pair of power-play goals against thanks to their penalty-killing unit. Connecticut was 2-for-5 with the extra skater, but Maine also notched a pair of shorthanded tallies to keep things even through the first two frames.

Maine took the game’s first penalty, and Connecticut made the host team pay.

Miles Winter roofed a puck over Ouellette and clanged it in off the corner of the crossbar and right post just 3:02 into the game to put the Huskies on top 1-0.

The score didn’t change through the first intermission, but it wasn’t for lack of effort from the Black Bears. In addition to firing 12 pucks on Connecticut netminder Garrett Bartus — thanks in part to five full or partial power plays — Maine also saw the Connecticut defense block six pucks that otherwise had a chance to hit the cage.

Twice on the same power play, Gustav Nyquist and Spencer Abbott hit the pipe. In all, Maine attempted 25 shots in the first frame, and 12 reached their intended target.

“They had a real gutsy performance,” Whitehead said. “They did a lot of things that were very good out there, and that included blocking shots and getting in the way.”

The Maine power play continued to struggle, but the Bears’ penalty kill picked up the scoring slack. Tanner House pounded a rebound past Bartus 52 seconds into the second after a shorthanded break by Nyquist to level the score, and 1:06 later, on the same penalty kill, Brian Flynn netted his first of the season for Maine to put the home team ahead, 2-1.

The UConn power play got even late in the frame, though, as Alex Gerke rocketed a slapper from the left circle over Ouellette’s glovehand shoulder with 1:12 to play in the period to again knot the score, this time at 2-2.

In the third, Maine took the lead again on a Spencer Abbott strike from the high slot.

“We were never able to get over that hump and get a two-goal lead,” Whitehead said. “I think if we’d been able to do that, we would have been fine, but they battled hard.”

With 6:54 to play in regulation, Sean Ambrosie netted his first of the season to even the game at 3-3, forcing an overtime period. Maine carried a two-man power play into the overtime session, but again couldn’t solve Bartus.

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