Team of the Week: Maine : College Hockey News

November 9, 2023
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by Anthony Travalgia/CHN Reporter (@A_Travalgia)

(photo: Maine Athletics)

Maine head coach Ben Barr knows a thing or two about what a winning program looks like. Serving as an assistant at schools such as Union and Providence, Barr helped build the foundation of programs that would soon win national championships following his departures.

An assistant to Greg Carvel at Massachusetts in 2021, Barr finally found himself behind the bench for a national championship.

Now in year three at Maine, Barr has continued to grow the program, hoping to bring Maine back to being the powerhouse program it once was.

Brick-by-brick and day-by-day, Barr is doing so, continuing to push the program in the right direction.

After a sweep of Merrimack this past weekend — another team in Hockey East on the rise — Maine has been named our CHN Team of the Week.

“It’s different because there’s such great history and there’s some of the best teams that ever existed in college hockey, if not the best played here in the 90s,” Barr said. “That’s a tremendous advantage and a tremendous disadvantage at times.”

The Black Bears won seven times in Barr’s first season. Year two saw Maine more than double its win total, finishing with 15.

Onto the current season, one that started with an impressive sweep of RPI. The Black Bears followed that up with a weekend set against Quinnipiac on the road. Maine’s series-opening 2-1 overtime win against the defending national champions was surely a confidence booster.

“As the game went on [Friday], we got better, which is good,” Barr said. “We played well in the third period going into overtime and then in overtime.”

Maine would fall short in the second game of the series 4-1. To date, Maine’s lone loss.

“Saturday was a total opposite. I thought as the game went on, they really took it to us and that was eye opening for us,” Barr said. “That was really the one game where I felt like we were outworked and we were outexecuted.”

A sign of maturity is how you respond to performances like the one Maine put forth in their loss to Quinnipiac.

“It’s good to go and be able to play teams of that caliber and especially on the road and see where you stand,” Barr said. “On Saturday we were nowhere near good enough and I think we learned a little bit of that and took it with us maybe last weekend a little bit.”

This past weekend was…