The University of New Hampshire men’s hockey team had its first chance to build a gap and separate itself from its dismal 2015-16 season Saturday. The Wildcats were looking forward to their matchup with Bentley University as their first step to a quick start, one that might show the rest of Hockey East that this is a new team in a new season with a new identity.
Instead, Saturday’s play was more of the same and resembled the Wildcats that made an early exit from the Hockey East tournament in March.
UNH had plenty of opportunities to get ahead of Bentley with nearly 10 minutes on the powerplay, but failed to find the net on those chances and lost 5-1 in the season opener at the Whittemore Center.
“We had the opportunities, not only the scoring opportunities, but I’m talking about three five-on-three (powerplays) – not good,” said UNH Coach Dick Umile. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. Can’t score five-on-three, can’t hit the net. … We need to score goals, we had opportunities to score goals. Someone needs to step up.”
Down 2-0, sophomore Ara Nazarian finally gave the Wildcats some life with 3:19 left in the second period on a lifted shot from the right dot that hit the top of the net. But any momentum the Wildcats may have gained was short-lived as Bentley’s Dino Balsamo found the net on a backhand shot from low in the slot about 40 seconds later to go up 3-1.
“We got a lot of shots and we finally scored one and got some momentum going and then bang,” Umile said. “That was a tough one. That hurt.”
The Wildcats fell behind 2-0 in the first period despite leading the Falcons in shots, 14-8. UNH kept the puck in Bentley’s end for most of the period and had four minutes on the powerplay, but came up empty.
Bentley didn’t get a puck on UNH goaltender Danny Tirone until 11:55 into the game, and less than a minute later, the Falcons went up 1-0 on a post-in goal from freshman Connor Brassard, the first of his career. Bentley added its second goal less than two minutes later. Alexey Solovyev gathered the puck off a faceoff won by captain Matt French and buried it from the slot. French was credited with assists on both goals.
“(UNH is) always good at home with all that time and space out on the big sheet,” Bentley Coach Ryan Soderquist said. “I think they’re probably a little bit unproven – they had a lot of young guys in the lineup … so we came in and said they don’t have a lot of returning scoring so lets take our game to them, and if we can get the lead I don’t know if they quite have that guy or two that they can count on.”
The Wildcats’ frustrations continued in the second period. UNH had a five-on-three powerplay advantage for 1:40 about two and half minutes into the period, but couldn’t find the net. The Falcons were strong in front of their own net throughout the game with 14 blocked shots. UNH finished with eight.
“You’ve got to give them credit: they blocked a lot of shots,” Umile said. “But we missed a lot of shots wide of the net and it comes out of the zone. Those kill you.”
Shortly after Bentley came back to full strength, Matt Riggleman collected a loose puck in the neutral zone and carried it into UNH’s end for a breakaway chance. Riggleman deked and let off a shot right on the doorstep, but the puck snagged Tirone’s pad and dropped in the crease before it could reach the net.
Bentley’s Jonathan Desbiens dashed any hopes of a UNH comeback with a goal just 14 seconds into the third period to cushion the Falcons’ lead 4-1.
“It’s obviously extremely frustrating,” UNH captain Matias Cleland said. “We preach about how we need to do the little things and I thought we had some mistakes that led to their goals … we didn’t capitalize on their mistakes and they capitalized on ours and that was the big difference in the game.”
Umile pulled Tirone with 4:12 remaining to get an extra skater out there. Bentley hit the right post on its first open net shot and Kyle Schmidt buried the second from the other end to extend their lead to 5-1 with 3:29 left in the game.
The Wildcats will spend the week trying to correct their mistakes from Saturday as they prepare for a weekend road trip to face No. 16 St. Lawrence on Friday and Clarkson on Saturday.
“We’ve got a long road trip and a lot of work to do,” Umile said.
The game was delayed 15 minutes about halfway through the second period due to a “small fire” in the equipment room below the stands, according to UNH Athletic Director Marty Scarano. Fans cleared out of the arena and waited outside while the players left the ice. No injuries were reported in the fire and the game resumed promptly.
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3339, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)