ORONO - Dave Wilson made 34 saves, including seven in overtime, as Maine salvaged a 2-2 tie with No. 1 Boston University.
Gustav Nyquist and Jeff Marshall scored for Maine (12-14-4, 7-11-3 Hockey East), while John McCarthy and Nick Bonino scored for BU.
The Terriers (23-5-2, 14-5-2) rallied from a two-goal deficit and tied the game on Bonino's goal with less than five minutes left in the third.
Grant Rollheiser, making his first start in more than a month, finished with 19 saves for the Terriers.
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Free candy, anyone? To steal a line from Jarkko Ruutu, that's what it seemed like Jeff Marshall was doling out when it came to Maine setting a physical tone in Saturday's game.
Marshall, who scored a goal in the tie with BU, played right wing on the fourth line with Kyle Solomon and Keif Orsini, and Marshall was hitting from the start.
"It was absolutely critical that we got out to a good start tonight," Marshall said. "We knew we had to come out and really, physically, be a big presence out there. The first four or five shifts they couldn't get (the puck) out of their end. We, basically, kept them from doing anything to get the puck out of their own end."
Maine does not keep statistics for the number of hits each player has in a game.
Ruutu (now with Ottawa) coined the term "free candy" during the 2008 NHL playoffs, when discussing then-Pittsburgh Penguins teammate Brooks Orpik and his penchant for physical play.
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Brett Carriere moved from forward to defense after Maine was hit with two suspensions as a result of Friday's game, when Jeff Dimmen and Will O'Neill each had to sit out Saturday's game after receiving game disqualifications.
"It's a bit of adversity when you've got not just two d-men but two highly skilled guys gone," Marshall said. "But the guys filled in fantastically. Keif Orsini came in and did a great job, de Kastrozza the same thing. Brett Carriere, stepping back on defense for the first time in a year, he just kept things simple and really, was able to stay calm and do the little things right back there."
Carriere, by the way, is Marshall's roommate.
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Gustav Nyquist scored his first goal since Dec. 13, when he scored two goals in a 5-1 win over Union.
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The Maine student section, in the upper deck of the north end of Alfond Arena, greeted BU forward Brandon Yip with a cheer, screaming the senior's name repeatedly. Who can blame them? It's a phonetically fun name. But if it was my generation (and I won't give away my age), the cheers probably would have been something like this, thanks to "Sesame Street" :
Rachel is in her fifth year as a sports reporter at the Portland Press
Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. A former college soccer and softball player,
she covered sports at newspapers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Colorado before
joining the Press Herald/Sunday Telegram staff in June of 2004.
Rachel takes over coverage of the University of Maine hockey team and was
introduced to Maine hockey as a seventh-grader in Annapolis, Maryland, after
reading a 1988 Sports Illustrated story about Shawn Walsh's impact on the
program. Nearly 20 years later, she still has the four-page article in her
possession.
She and her husband, Tommy (who also works for MaineToday Media, Inc.)
are avid sports fans who root for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Pittsburgh
Penguins and Kansas Jayhawks. After a year of marriage, their next step in
life is to find a bigger house!
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