College Hockey series game of the week: Hockey East championship

After a thrilling double overtime game to end the semifinal round, the finals are set for the Hockey East Championship. The University of Connecticut will face off against the University of Maine to decide who will win Hockey East.

For the UConn Huskies, this game means so much as they look to win their first Hockey East Championship.

For Maine, they have won Hockey East five times and are looking to get their first win since 2004.

It has been a great year for both teams as they are ranked in the top ten in the PairWise rankings and will both have a shot at making a run to the Frozen Four.

The teams started their path to the championship in the quarterfinals. Maine is ranked at two in Hockey East and played Umass Lowell who they defeated 7-1.

UConn is ranked at four and defeated Providence in the quarterfinals by a score of 3-1.

In the semifinals, we saw some great matchups. Maine played Northeastern who was coming off a major upset of Boston College. The Huskies gave everything they got sending the game to two overtime before the Black Bears would win it on a Nolan Renwick goal.

For UConn, it didn’t take overtime at all for them to advance to the Championship. They defeated Boston University by a score of 5-2.

Since they play in the same conference we have already seen these two teams play this year. UConn has the advantage in the games they have played.

The Huskies have defeated the Black Bears in two winning by scores of 4-2 and 3-2. The teams also tied once this year and Maine came out on top with a shootout win.

For UConn one of the reason they have been able to win is because they score goals and keep it out of the net. The Huskies score 3.4 goals per game, while their opponents only score 2.4 goals per game.

Along with this, they have a strong powerplay converting on 23.7% of their chances.

One player to watch for this team is Joey Muldowney. He leads the Huskies in points with 45, 27 of which are goals.

Muldowney is coming off a strong performance against Boston University in which he had a hat trick.

Maine is ranked higher in the PairWise than UConn and the stats show why. While they score a similar amount of goals per game to the Huskies with 3.3 the Black Bears opponents only score 1.9 goals per game.

Maine also has a strong powerplay like UConn converting on 21.5% of their power plays.

With the great powerplay, the Black Bears get great scoring from the entire team. Their leading score is Harrison Scott who has 34 points. The Black Bears also have 8 players who have at least 20 points.

In net, Maine has the advantage. Albin Boija has posted a .929 Save Percentage and a 1.76 Goals Against Average.

In goal for UConn, Tyler Muszelik does have good numbers. He has a .917 Save Percentage and a 2.20 Goals Against Average.

Both of these teams are really similar and it will make for a great matchup to see who wins Hockey East.

Maine did just go through a grueling game the night before which could affect them.

It doesn’t matter though because the puck drops at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 21 in TD Garden.

Andrew Matz is a third-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To Contact him, email atm5759@psu.edu.