At 5:44 PM 10/27/95, Deron Treadwell wrote:
>Some news out of Maine, Blair Marsh will get the start in goal tomorrow
>night when the Black Bears play Union. ...
[In 1994-95]
>Blair Marsh played in 9 games, playing over 100
>minutes without allowing a goal "in relief" of Allison.
 
The Maine media notes at the beginning of the year state that Marsh "enters
the season with a shutout string of 119:23 dating back to the end of the
1993-94 season."  117:39 of that was last season.  Maine's all-time record
was 130:38 by Garth Snow in 1991.  Since Marsh played the last 12:47 of the
game last night and did not allow a goal, he now holds the Maine record for
longest shutout streak - 132:10 and counting.
 
The difference is that Snow did it over three games (a shutout in the
middle), while Marsh has done it over 11 games!  That is quite unusual.
Marsh's streak has run thus far from 3/12/94 to 10/26/95.
 
It is interesting that both of the pre-season All-HE goaltenders are not
off to great starts.  Merrimack's Martin Legault has a GAA of 3.01 through
3 games, but he allowed about three bad goals against Providence.  No word
yet, but I will not be surprised if Eric Thibeault gets the call to start
tomorrow night's game against Northeastern.
 
Last season, Thibeault put together several straight outstanding games when
he finally got a chance to play.  This seemed to fire up Legault and when
he got back in there, he had a string of about 7 or 8 straight games
without allowing a bad goal and he played superbly the rest of the way.
Maybe if Marsh plays well, the resulting competition will have the same
effect upon Allison.
 
In another note, JohnH wondered if the Halkos (Michigan's Steven, Cornell's
Roman) were the only DivI brother combination playing for different teams.
I know of at least one more - the Guziors of Merrimack (Ryan) and
Providence (Russ).  However, like Cornell's Roman, Merrimack's Ryan has not
yet appeared in a game.
 
I found it interesting that Ken Baker said,
 
>Maine looks like a very physical team with some great size.
 
because Maine has virtually the same team as last year and I didn't see
them as big nor overly physical.  No defensemen are over 200 pounds (for
comparison, Merrimack has 3), and of the 8 Ds on the roster, only 4 are
over 6'0" (compared to 7 of 8 for Merrimack).  An advantage I felt
Merrimack had over Maine last season was size.  But I admit to not seeing
this game, and the Michigan roster seems to show a team that is at best as
big as Maine - perhaps even less physical.
 
Maine strikes me as a smaller than average but quicker and deeper team than
most.  Until their top forwards came into their own last year (Lovell,
Shermerhorn, Purdie), I felt that while their top line may not have been
better than many teams' top lines, their fourth line was good enough to
serve as a 2nd or 3rd line on many teams.  Now their top line deserves to
be considered among the best, and the rest of their forwards have all
returned.  Definitely a team to watch if their goaltending and defense
comes together.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
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