Black Bears Will Look to Build Off Last Year’s Success in Year 4 of Barr Era
by Jashvina Shah/Staff Writer (@icehockeystick)
When the snow sweeps across the streets of northern Maine, there’s one place where you can find people.
That’s at Alfond Arena, where fans are packed to the rafters, a piece of warmth in the otherwise frigid reaches of upstate Maine.
It wasn’t always like this, though. Or it was, but then it stopped being like this. Because there was a decade where the Black Bears stopped being the Black Bears, when they nestled into hibernation.
In the 1990s, Maine was a perennial championship contender. It won its first championship under Shawn Walsh in 1993, when they went 42-1-2 and a freshman named Paul Kariya posted 100 points. From 1987-88 to 2006-07 the Black Bears made 11 Frozen Fours. They won another championship in 1998-99.
Steven Farley was young when Maine won in 1993. His grandparents had season tickets and then his parents took them over, so Farley was always at games. And when he attended Maine as a student, he became the letter M in the “Naked 5” (five students who go to games shirtless and spell the word “Maine,” a tradition that began in Shawn Walsh’s day.) When Farley graduated from Maine in 2013, he took over his parent’s season tickets.
“I live right down the road in Bangor, and in the winter, there’s not a lot to do,” Farley said. “In the late ’80s, early ’90s, Maine hockey was it.”
But then things changed.
The Black Bears started falling under .500. The team and coach Tim Whitehead (who had brought Maine to six NCAA tournaments and four Frozen Fours) parted ways. Wins and championships, stars like Paul Kariya — they all faded from the minds of students into the memories of their parents and grandparents. Packed stands at Alfond Arena reduced to half-full crowds.
And when Maine struggled, the community struggled. Farley, who now coaches high school hockey, noticed his players weren’t interested in watching Maine hockey on the weekends. And he saw the number of high school hockey players decreasing through COVID.
“We actually thought that we weren’t even going to have a high school season, because there weren’t enough players, really,” Farley said.
Before, you would need to show up an hour and a half before the game to…
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