University of Maine freshman left wing Justin Poirier was brought to Orono to help fill the goal-scoring void left by the departure of players who scored 64 of the 124 goals produced by the Black Bears last season.<\/p>\n
So far, so good.<\/p>\n
The nineteen-year-old Poirier, who scored 94 goals in 126 regular season games over his last two seasons in the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, had a hat trick in his UMaine debut on Friday night to lead the Black Bears to a 5-2 victory over Holy Cross at a sold out Alfond Arena.<\/p>\n
UMaine has now won four straight home openers.<\/p>\n
Holy Cross fell to 0-2.<\/p>\n
UMaine outshot reigning Atlantic Hockey America regular season champ Holy Cross 35-20. <\/p>\n
The two teams will conclude their series on Saturday night at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Black Bears built a 4-0 lead as sophomore right wing Thomas Pichette scored his third career goal in the first period before Poirier sandwiched his two goals around one by freshman center Jaden Lipinski.<\/p>\n
Poirier capped his hat trick with a blistering one-timer from the slot off a Max Scott pass.<\/p>\n
Brody Gagno finished off the scoring for Holy Cross late in the third period.<\/p>\n
Junior right wing Connor Welsh scored his first collegiate goal in his 45th career game later in the second period to pull the Crusaders within three.<\/p>\n
Pichette, who had two goals and three assists in 19 games as a freshman last season, opened the scoring 3:09 into the game by converting off a scramble.<\/p>\n
With goalie Connor MacKenzie on his back in front of his goal, Bodie Nobes wristed the puck to the net from the point.<\/p>\n
Will Gerrior and Pichette converged on the loose puck, and Pichette squeezed it home.<\/p>\n
The Black Bears scored three goals in a span of 1:44 in the second period.<\/p>\n
Poirier dove head first across the crease to tuck in a backhander off a Lipinski rebound; Lipinski scored with a wrist shot through a crowded goalmouth that slid past MacKenzie\u2019s left skate and Poirier made it 4-0 on the power play with one-timer along the ice from a nifty cross-ice feed from Thomas Freel.<\/p>\n
Welsh converted a nice pass from Joe Solimine with a wrist shot into the upper short side corner from just outside the crease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of Maine freshman left wing Justin Poirier was brought to Orono to help fill the goal-scoring void…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,6055,1441],"class_list":{"0":"post-236758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-umaine-hockey","10":"tag-university-of-maine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115352981336299902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}