Northeastern sweeps Maine with a 6-3 win Saturday.
 
 From the radio it sounds like Maine played better tonight, but were
victimized by several things:
 
- Maine spotted NU a 3-0 lead, which makes it tough on everyone.
- average goaltending at best from Yeats who replaced Morrison who was not
good tonight (4 goals allowed on 18 shots).  Maine had been getting stellar
goaltending and don't get me wrong I am not blaming them, but they were not
as good as they had been.  They didn't get a lot of help.
- great goaltending from Mike Gilhooley who was key.
- odd-man rushes killed Maine.  I can think of 2 or 3 goals off of odd-man
rushes or breakaways.  They also benefited (again) from Northeastern
missing a number of breakaways.
 
Mike Schutte made his debut on defense for Maine replacing Robert Ek who
was a healthy scratch.  It sounded like he played pretty well.
 
Maine struggled to score goals this weekend (and really the last few
weeks).  I think the loss of Kariya and Cullen, along with the timely goals
of Stewart and Gustafsson shows a bit.  Maine is still looking for that
player who is going to step up and be the on-ice leader like Kariya and
Cullen.  We've got a great team, but even a team as balanced as Maine needs
that go-to player to emerge.
 
I hope no one jumps off the bandwagon after two losses.  Maine was not
going to go undefeated, and I'm sure we could all see the signs the last
couple weeks that Maine needed to work on a few things.  Maine seems to
have this type of "bump" in the first half of the season each year.  Last
year it was the 0-1-1 weekend at UMass.
 
What better motivation to improve and come ready to play than Boston
University coming to town Friday and with Maine looking up from
fourth/fifth place at the second-place Terriers, this is a huge game.
 
Thankfully, we don't have to see Northeastern again this regular season!
 
-dt