|
Men's Ice Hockey Travels to Vermont
Feb. 27, 2008
Complete Release in PDF Format
Fresh off a sweep of Massachusetts, the University of Maine men's ice hockey team travels to Vermont for a crucial two-game series with the Vermont Catamounts. Maine is 10-17-3 on the season and 6-14-3 in Hockey East play. Vermont is tied for second in the Hockey East standings with a record of 12-11-7 overall and 11-7-5 in conference play. MAINE DEFEATS UMASS 5-4 IN OVERTIME: Wes Clark (Oakville, Ontario) scored his second goal of the game 2:56 into overtime to lead the University of Maine men's ice hockey team to a 5-4 victory over UMass on Sunday afternoon. Chris Hahn (Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan) opened the scoring for Maine 8:40 into the first period when he tipped a Travis Ramsey (Lakewood, Calif.) shot past UMass goalie Paul Dainton. Keenan Hopson (Prince George, British Columbia) also assisted on the goal. Maine when up 2-0 when Andrew Sweetland (Bonavista, Newfoundland) scored his seventh of the season from Rob Bellamy (Westfield, Mass.). UMass got on the board when Chris Davis scored from Justin Braun and P.J. Fenton at 9:48 of the second period. Maine answered back when Bret Tyler (Maynard, Mass.) fed Wes Clark who broke in alone and scored on Dainton at 13:22 of the second period. Maine made it a 4-1 lead when Sweetland scored his second of the game from Hopson on the power play at 18:11 of the second frame. UMass then scored three straight third period goals by Fenton, Alex Berry and Mike Kostka to knot the score at 4-4. Midway through overtime, Sweetland stole a puck from a UMass player and shot it towards the net where Clark tipped it past UMass goalie Dan Meyers, who had replaced Dainton after the second period. Maine goalie Ben Bishop (Des Peres, Mo.) made 36 saves in goal and improves to 10-17-3 on the season. Dainton stopped 12 shots in 38:56, while Meyers made 12 saves in 22:56. Meyers picked up the loss and fell to 2-2-0 on the season. SCOUTING THE MAINE BLACK BEARS: Maine is led by Wes Clark who has nine goals and 10 assists for 19 points. He has three power play goals. Bret Tyler is chipping in with six goals and 12 assists for 18 points. Rob Bellamy has four goals and 12 assists for 16 points. Andrew Sweetland is adding eight goals and seven assists for 15 points. He leads the team in power play goals with four. Billy Ryan (Milton, Mass.) has four goals and eight assists for 12 points, while Keenan Hopson has three goals and eight assists for 11 points. Jeff Marshall (Kyle, Saskatchewan) has four goals and six assists for 10 points, while Travis Ramsey has three goals and seven assists for 10 points as well. Tanner House (Cochrane, Alberta) is also chipping in with 10 points on a goal and nine assists. Simon Danis-Pepin (Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec) has four goals and five assists for nine points, while Matt Duffy (Windham, Maine) has six goals and two assists for eight points. Chris Hahn has five goals and two assists for seven points. Ben Bishop is 10-17-3 with a 2.63 goals against average and a .914 save percentage. He has one shutout on the season. SWEETLAND NAMED PRO AMBITIONS ROOKIE OF THE WEEK: Freshman Andrew Sweetland was named the Hockey East Pro Ambitions Rookie of the Week on Monday, Feb. 25. Sweetland scored two goals and added two assists for a team-high four points last weekend against UMass. He assisted on Keif Orsini's goal late in the third period on Saturday which tied the game at 2-2 and allowed for Matt Duffy to score the game-winner. On Sunday, Sweetland scored a pair of goals and set up Wes Clark for the game-winning goal in overtime. COMEBACK WIN FOR MAINE: Maine came back to win when trailing in the third period for the first time this season on Feb. 23 against UMass. With the game tied 1-1, UMass took a 2-1 lead just 37 second into the third period. The Black Bears answered with a pair of goals less than three minutes apart in the final 6:10 of the period. Maine trailed by two goals in the third period against Vermont earlier this season and came back to tie the game at 5-5. BISHOP SETS CAREER-HIGH IN SAVES: Ben Bishop recorded a career-high 49 saves on Saturday, Feb. 2 at UMass. It was three more than his previous high of 46 set earlier this season at Denver. Bishop stopped 21 shots in the first period alone against the Minutemen. KILLING PENALTIES: Maine has allowed just five power play goals in its last 18 games. Opponents are just 5 for 82 in that span for a 93.9 penalty killing percentage. MISSING TIME: Maine players have combined to miss 76 games due to injury this season. Chris Hahn missed 12 games, Billy Ryan has missed nine games, while Keenan Hopson and Andrew Sweetland have each missed six games. Ryan and Hopson were Maine's two leading returning scoring forwards from a year ago. Saturday, Feb. 23 against UMass was the first time that Maine had Hahn, Hopson, Ryan and Sweetland all in the lineup at the same time since November 25 against Vermont. RAMSEY WINS M CLUB DEAN SMITH AWARD: Maine senior Travis Ramsey was named the 2008 M Club Dean Smith Award winner on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2008. The award is presented to the male and female student-athlete with outstanding academic and athletic achievement along with citizenship and community service. Ramsey, captain of the hockey team, has seen action in 130 career games with five goals and 22 assists for 27 points. He has played in 126 consecutive games. He was named an official candidate for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award, but was not selected as one of the 10 finalists. He is member of Lambda Pi Eta, the official communication studies honor society of the National Communication Association. Ramsey has been named to the Hockey East All-Academic Team and is also a three-time UMaine Scholar-Athlete Award winner. He is a communication major with a double minor in public relations and business administration. The M Club Dean Smith Award was first presented as the M Club Scholarship Award in 1980. The Award was renamed to honor Dean Smith in 1993. Dean Smith was a recipient of the Walter Byers Award presented by the NCAA. Smith combined the top grade-point average among senior electrical engineering majors with the NAC scoring title as the captain of the 1989-90 men's basketball team. Ramsey becomes the sixth men's ice hockey player to win the M Club Dean Smith Award joining Paul Kariya (1994), Jim Leger (2000), Martin Kariya (2002, 2003) Gray Shaneberger (2002) and Frank Doyle (2004). JUST ONE GOAL: Maine allowed just one goal in 120 minutes of regulation play against Boston University the weekend of Feb. 15 and 16. The Black Bears allowed two overtime goals against the Terriers. Ben Bishop finished the weekend with a 1.46 goals against average and a .958 save percentage. TYLER NAMED SEMIFINALIST FOR WALTER BROWN AWARD: Senior defenseman Bret Tyler has been named a semifinalist for the Walter Brown Award, presented annually to the top American-born hockey player in New England. He is one of 15 semifinalists. The semifinalists include 12 players from Hockey East schools and three from ECAC schools. Nine forwards were named along with four goaltenders and two defensemen. Tyler is second on the team in scoring with six goals and 12 assists for 18 points. DEFENSEMAN NEAR TEAM LEAD IN SCORING: Bret Tyler, a defenseman, is second on the team in scoring. The last time a Maine defenseman led the team in scoring was during the 1994-95 season when Jeff Tory led the team with 13 goals and 42 assists for 55 points. Tyler is tied for seventh this season in Hockey East in scoring among defensemen. PENALTY KILLING STREAK ENDS: Maine saw its streak of 34 straight penalty kills end on Friday, Jan. 25 against Boston College. The last power play goal that Maine allowed before Friday, January 25 was by Vermont's Peter Lenes on Nov. 25. Maine then killed off a power play chance by the Catamounts. Following that game, Merrimack was 0-2, New Hampshire 0-4, Clarkson 0-4, UMass Lowell 0-2, Northeastern 0-4, Rensselaer 0-6, Boston University 0-5, Providence 0-4 and Boston College 0-2 before the Eagles finally scored a goal with the man advantage. Maine entered the UMass game on Saturday night having killed off 19 straight power plays, but allowed a goal on their first penalty against the Minutemen. BLACK BEARS EXCEL IN CLASSROOM: The University of Maine men's ice hockey team posted their best grade point average in team history this past semester when they recorded a 3.15 cumulative GPA. Twenty players finished with a 3.0 or higher, with six student-athletes posting a 3.5 or better. The student-athletes were honored at a Scholar-Athlete Recognition Awards Ceremony on Sunday, Jan. 27 in the morning, and also at halftime of the Maine vs. Binghamton men's basketball game that same day. BIG BEN GETS 50TH WIN: Maine's Ben Bishop recorded his 50th career victory with a 4-0 shutout of Providence on Saturday, Jan. 19. Bishop has a career record of 52-32-7 with the Black Bears. With the win, he became just the fifth Black Bear goalie with 50 wins, joining Garth Snow (66 wins), Scott King (66), Blair Allison (62) and Alfie Michaud (60). MARSHALL HAS BREAKOUT SEASON FOR MAINE: Junior Jeff Marshall is having a breakout season for the Black Bears. After seeing action in just 19 games his first two years without recording a point, Marshall is Maine's lone forward to play in all 30 games this season. He has four goals and six assists for 10 points, which ranks seventh on the team in scoring and is tied for fifth in scoring in Hockey East games.
|
