Inside Maine's long climb back to the top of college hockey

ORONO, MAINE -- On a winter afternoon, under a Maine sky thick with clouds yet strangely bright, the temperature outside reads 15 degrees -- and that doesn't account for the wind chill.

The air is crisp, almost brittle. Yet on the northern edge of the University of Maine campus, dozens of students begin to line up at the entrance to Alfond Arena, its multi-peaked roof standing prominently like the snow-capped mountains of western Maine.

Within four hours, there are hundreds braving the bitter cold, the line now weaving through the parking lot, wrapping past the football stadium and around the corner toward the fieldhouse, nearly a quarter mile long.

If Duke basketball has the Cameron Crazies, you can call these students the 'Maine-iacs,' and, minus the tents, the scene often feels like Maine's version of Krzyzewskiville. A palpable buzz fills the air as fans clamor to see their Black Bears for the first time since returning from winter break. While it may sound like hyperbole, you might say Maine could have been considered the "Duke of college hockey" back in its heyday, producing Frozen Four appearances like the state produces lobster, its rabid fan base relishing in their national prominence.

Until, seemingly overnight, it wasn't.

By puck drop at 7 o'clock, the Alfond is packed to the rafters -- 5,000 strong -- some making a trip as long as three hours across the state. This isn't for "The Border Battle" against rival New Hampshire or a showdown with national powerhouse Boston College. The arena is rocking as the Black Bears face off against Northeastern for a rather pedestrian regular-season matchup.

Chants of "Let's Go Black Bears" rain down from the student section. The soul of one of the great barns in college hockey comes alive, or as locals would describe it, "the ol' girl starts to shake."

For those in attendance old enough to remember, it's hard not to feel nostalgic. It feels like the glory days have returned.

There's a saying in Orono: "Shout till the rafters ring."

It traces back to the 1930s hit "Stein Song," by Maine crooner Rudy Vallée. Once a surprise sensation, the song was adopted by the university as its official anthem.

Oh, fill the steins to dear old Maine
Shout till the rafters ring
Stand and drink a toast once again
Let every loyal Maine man sing

Lately, as the Maine band blares the song and the deafening crowd makes the rafters ring, the phrase carries more than the weight of an old lyric.

It signals a resurgence, one the team looks to take to a new level when it begins NCAA tournament play Friday night.

MAINE HOCKEY BURST onto the national stage in the late 1980s, led by its young, charismatic coach Shawn Walsh. By 1993, behind his leadership, the program produced arguably the greatest college hockey season of all time.

The 42-1-2 Black Bears, led by Jim Montgomery, Garth Snow and Hobey Baker Award winner Paul Kariya, dominated their opponents en route to the school's first national championship.

Six years later, behind the stellar play of goaltender Alfie Michaud (1.75 GAA in the '99 NCAA tournament), came another national title, a put-back goal by Marcus Gustafsson giving Maine a 3-2 overtime win over rival UNH.

The Black Bears' second championship sent a wave of excitement throughout Maine, where talking shop about hockey was a natural conversation starter, even in some unexpected places.

"I remember being in church," said Mike Tuell, a longtime Maine TV commentator, "and the priest said the only one with more saves than Alfie Michaud is Jesus Christ."

Maine hockey proved to be the one thing Michaud couldn't turn aside. After a run with the Vancouver Canucks' American Hockey League affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, and some time playing in Denmark, he returned to the Bears as an assistant coach in 2016.

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"[Maine] was dominant," Michaud recalled, sitting inside The Alfond, where the banner from his team's title hangs from the arena's signature wooden rafters. "This was the program that was getting to Frozen Fours and developing guys to the National Hockey League."

After Walsh -- the school's legendary coach -- died from cancer in 2001, the program was taken over by his handpicked successor, Tim Whitehead. Whitehead maintained the program's success through the mid 2000s, despite losses in the national title games in 2002 to Minnesota and 2004 to Denver.

In total, Maine appeared in 11 Frozen Fours and five national championship games from 1988 to 2007, staking its claim as one of the premiere programs in the sport.

In that era, few schools produced more NHL talent than Maine -- Paul Kariya, Jimmy Howard, Ben Bishop, Dustin Penner, Teddy Purcell -- and the man behind the scenes who helped get them to Orono was assistant coach and top recruiter Grant Standbrook.

Following the 2008 season, Standbrook retired, leaving the program without one of the chief architects of its heyday.

"Once Grant stepped away, the recruiting just wasn't the same," Tuell said. "The program went through a period where, honestly, it just wasn't very good."

FOLLOWING MAINE'S 2007 Frozen Four appearance, the team posted back-to-back 13-win seasons and made only one NCAA tournament appearance (2012) over the next six years, parting ways with Whitehead following an 11-win campaign in 2013.

Hoping to recapture its former magic, the university turned to a familiar face with a championship pedigree. Fresh off a national championship in 2013 as an assistant coach at Yale, Dennis "Red" Gendron knew what it took to win at Maine.

As an assistant coach for Maine's 1993 national championship team and with multiple Stanley Cups as an assistant with the New Jersey Devils organization, his résumé checked all the boxes for a program looking for resurgence.

But under Gendron, Maine posted only three winning seasons from 2014 to 2021, including a frustrating eight-win campaign in 2016.

According to Michaud, who was one of Gendron's assistant coaches, it was no coincidence that Maine's final NCAA tournament appearance in 2012 coincided with the graduation of Standbrook's final recruiting class.

"It's all based off of recruiting," he said. "After 2012 it kind of dropped off, and the program went through some bumps and bruises. We were at the bottom [of the standings] and thought we were gonna climb out of it and it just didn't happen."

On April 9, 2021, Gendron started his day at Penobscot Valley Country Club. He was an avid golfer and member at the club. He likely would have rather been preparing for the NCAA championship game, which would be played the following night, but Maine had long been eliminated from postseason consideration.

During his round, Gendron suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 63.

As word spread through the Maine community that morning, the sudden passing of the beloved coach shocked the region and the team.

"It happened so quick, getting the phone calls [Gendron had died] and all of a sudden you've got to tell the whole team," Michaud said. "It was tough for them."

Lynden Breen is the lone player that remains on Maine's roster from Gendron's regime. He had just completed his freshman season at the time of Gendron's passing, and now a graduate forward, he remembers the sorrow and uncertainty that lingered from losing their coach.

"It was super shocking and tragic," Breen said, now in his second year as Maine's captain. "We weren't sure where [the team] was going to go from there."

With only six months until the start of the season, Maine was scrambling to find a head coach.

Ben Barr had a reputation around college hockey as an elite recruiter and talent developer. The 2004 RPI graduate spent stints at Union and Providence as an assistant, helping build those programs. Union made its first NCAA tournament appearance in Barr's final year there in 2011 and would win its first national title in 2014. Providence won its first national championship in 2015, the season after Barr's departure, with many players he helped recruit and develop.

In 2016, Barr joined Greg Carvel's staff at the University of Massachusetts and immediately helped turn the program into a contender. The Minutemen improved from five wins in 2016 to 31 wins and a national title game appearance in 2019, and they won the program's first national championship in 2021. Barr played a key role in the recruitment and development of 2019 Hobey Baker Award winner Cale Makar, who won the 2022 Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defensemen.

An energetic coach with a track record of recruitment and development, Barr was an ideal hire for the Black Bears. He was confident he could put the pieces together again but recognized the process would take time, and initially, healing.

"Not only is there a new coach, but you've lost a coach that you really loved," Barr said.

In Barr's first season behind the Black Bears bench, the team struggled to earn seven wins with an inexperienced roster still reeling from Gendron's sudden passing.

"There were obviously some emotional things those first couple years that a lot of kids were going through," Barr said. "We had some work ahead of us."

By the 2022-23 season, Maine showed improvement, tallying 15 wins, including an upset over eventual national champion Quinnipiac.

"I always felt like right from the get-go with Coach Barr that his teams had a belief level that they hadn't had before," Tuell said.

For Barr and his staff, that belief came from establishing a culture of winning and accountability, and finding players of high skill and character who wanted to be a part of taking the program to the next level. Barr knows Maine won't have the same resources as larger programs in the NIL space, so having a sustainable culture means finding players that are the right fit for the team and trying to offer the best experience in college hockey. That approach has yielded initial results.

"That," Barr said, "is what Maine fans have been excited about -- the steady progression."

DAVID BREAZEALE HAD limited college hockey options coming out of the U.S. junior system in 2021. The 6-foot-3 defensemen would end up being a cornerstone to Barr's first recruiting class and recalls Maine getting off to its best start under Barr in 2023-24, which included a tie and win at home over second-ranked Boston College.

"I think we kind of foresaw that coming after my freshman and sophomore year. It was all building the culture up and getting the right people in here that were buying into the vision," said Breazeale, now a senior captain. "We knew we had some good recruits coming in. We had a really good start and were able to be nationally ranked."

The Black Bears finished the regular season ranked in the top 10 nationally and advanced to the Hockey East semifinals at TD Garden in Boston for the first time since 2012. They received an at-large bid to the 2024 NCAA tournament and were placed as the 2-seed in the Springfield Regional, where they met No. 3 seed Cornell.

Maine jumped to an early 1-0 lead, but from there the inexperienced Bears were stifled by the superb play of goalie Ian Shane and the physicality of the Big Red, falling 3-1 in their return to the national stage.

Maine senior forward Nolan Renwick has witnessed the steady improvement of the program under Barr's guidance since his freshman year. The progress feels promising, but Renwick and the Black Bears aren't satisfied yet.

"Maybe to the outside world, they were like, OK, they've made massive improvements. It was such a great, successful season, which it was, but I think, each individual in our locker room has a higher goal than to just be [in the NCAA tournament]," said Renwick, an assistant captain. "I think we've carried that mindset into this year. We're not just trying to get there, we're trying to win it all."

Taking the next step meant Maine needed to add the depth, physicality and toughness required to win in the NCAA tournament. The transfer portal offered an opportunity for Barr to accelerate Maine's rebuild through the addition of players who fit Maine's gritty, hard-working personality. Having already added Bentley transfer Harrison Scott in 2024, the Black Bears added forwards Owen Fowler (UMass-Lowell), Ross Mitton (Colgate), Charlie Russell (Clarkson) and defensemen Frank Djurasevic (Merrimack).

Possibly Maine's biggest splash in the transfer portal, however, was a familiar name with ties to Barr.

In three seasons at UMass, Taylor Makar skated underneath a banner hanging from the Mullins Center rafters that bears his brother's name. Like Cale, the 6-4 forward was recruited to UMass by Barr.

"I went with him on my official visit while my brother was playing there, and he took me around campus. I got to know him really well, my family got to know him really well, and spending that day with him I realized he was a great human and a great coach," recalled Makar, a seventh-round draft pick of the Colorado Avalanche.

After a promising sophomore campaign, Makar tallied only four goals and five assists during his junior season for the Minutemen and decided a change was needed.

"My three years at UMass were great. I just needed something a little different," he said. "And having the connection with Ben Barr was really great for me. He's always pushing to develop players and the way they talked and the opportunity I could get if I worked hard was something I wanted to be a part of."

Heading into the NCAA tournament, Makar has tallied career highs in goals (18) and assists (12), trailing only Scott (35) for the team lead in points, and his presence as a power forward has added a level of physicality on Maine's forecheck that was missing last season.

Maine stormed out of the gates to start this season, posting a 7-0-1 mark in its first eight games, before dropping a pair to Boston College, the No. 1 team in the country for much of the season.

If there were questions about Maine, the Black Bears seemed to answer them when they hosted the defending national champion and sixth-ranked Denver Pioneers for an early January series at Alfond Arena.

In Game 1, Maine dropped a 2-1 heartbreaker despite outshooting the Pioneers when Denver's Cole Ashcroft scored the winning goal off a faceoff with 20 seconds remaining. Barr didn't know how his team would respond after such a demoralizing defeat, but in Game 2, Maine played with a fire that hadn't been seen in Orono in years. The result was a 2-1 victory for the Black Bears, providing proof to the locker room -- and the country -- the team was ready to compete with the top teams in the nation.

Expectations are sky high for a hungry fan base with visions of a return to the Frozen Four, but Barr and his team take the hype in stride. It's a sign the program is headed in the right direction, but not a handout for success. Maine's roster doesn't have the championship pedigree of Denver or the individual offensive firepower of Boston College and its numerous NHL draft picks, so Barr knows the Black Bears must rely on tremendous work ethic and attention to detail night in and night out.

"It's going to be the hardest thing we've done in our four years here," Barr said. "We have to rely on our culture and togetherness, that's our edge. It's about the mentality that we can go out and be the best team in college hockey. Can we do that? We want to believe we can do that."

Maine finished the regular season ranked fourth in the country, then claimed the program's first Hockey East tournament championship since 2004 with a 5-2 victory over Connecticut. It seemed a fitting representation of the road this team has traveled, and the adversity overcome, when Breen -- Gendron's last remaining player -- got Maine on the board before three goals from senior transfers Scott and Makar finished off the win.

Maine will enter the NCAA tournament as the top seed (No. 3 overall) in the Allentown Regional, opening play Friday against Penn State (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2). For the first time in a long time, fans up in Maine are arranging their early April plans around the Black Bears ... just in case.

"The buzz is back in the community," said Larry Mahoney, who has covered the Black Bears for the Bangor Daily News for more than 30 years. "This community has been waiting a long time for Maine hockey to be winning like this again. They believe in Ben Barr and believe Maine is going to win a national championship again."