Friday night, 3/11/94, Boston University defeated Maine, 8-5 at BU. In the first game of the 2-out-of-3 controversial first round series, BU dominated for 55 minutes, leaving early and forgetting that Maine was still playing. A 7-2 lead was cut to 7-5 when Maine pulled backup goalie Marsh for the extra skater with about a minute left. BU then scored into the empty net to ice the game. Observations: In the first, Maine did not come out with the emotion everyone expected. It appeared that Maine sort of sat back while BU took control. In the second, the Ferraros put on a clinique of conditioning. Although not major factors in the 5 on 5 situations, the Ferraro's were double shifting and trying to wear out the short-handed BU defensemen. (in actuality, both BU and Maine are each missing two quality defensemen) With about five minutes left in the second, BU seemed to lose its edge, allowing Maine to take it to them in the BU zone. It was a scary stretch, but somehow, BU managed to survive. In the third, BU appeared to put the game away. The reffereeing, which had been VERY good all night, shifted in what was being called and what let go when BU *seemed* (from a BU fan's perspective) to suddenly be getting all the border-line calls against them. (This was ONLY in the last 5 minutes) Maine, who's power-play was performing even better than BU's, scored three goals in that 4 minute stretch, one of them on a 5-on-3 situation. On Maine's behalf, they did not roll over and die when down 7-2 on the road. Although they were not able to come back (not against Herlofsky), they showed that they are not doormats. Although it was a good game to watch, what was the most shocking about the evening was that, #1, the crowds were both well under control and displayed more class (both team's fans) than has ever been seen at a BU-Maine game in many, many years and, #2, the play on the ice was relatively clean. Although I'm sure the fact that both team's power-plays were clicking had something to do with this, it is also a tribute to the job the ref's did to keep what could have been such a volotile situation under control. Double kudo's to both the refs and the BU staff people who not only set up the will-call situation in a logical fashion, but separated the BU and Maine fans to the best of their ability and worked *very* hard at preventing problems in the crowd rather than overreacting to them once they occured. Both schools being on Spring Break helped, but there was still plenty of possibility. When one considers the immense potential for things to go very wrong (ticket situation, fights on ice, problems in stands, etc), all involved did an excellent job. Game 2 of the series is Saturday at 7 PM Tony BU'92'93 Former Ogre