Devin Shore:
Devin Shore’s season came to an abrupt end at the hands of a sweep by the Providence University Friars. The Black Bears failed to win a single game in the best of three series. The Black Bears kept things close, but only ever led for eight minutes in the whole series.
The Friars shut Shore down effectively in game one and skated to a 3-1 on an outstanding 34 save performance from goaltender Jon Gillies. Shore was a minus-1 and only managed to put 3 shots on net the whole game. He won 10 of 18 faceoffs.
The next night Shore assisted on both of Maine’s goals, but again it wasn’t enough to beat the Friars, who got another wonderful performance out of Jon Gillies (36 saves). Shore’s first assist helped set up the game’s opening goal and it looked like Maine was going to start out much stronger than they had in the first game of the series. Unfortunately, it only took Providence around eight minutes to tie things up and then 3:39 to take the lead, which they would never give back.
Shore finished the night with two assists and no shots on net as he went 13-of-25 on the faceoff dot.
While the early playoff exit stings, Devin Shore has so much to be proud of after this season. Immediately following elimination, he was named Maine’s captain for the 2014-15 season. This answers our question about whether he would come over after this season, but it’s still great for him. After scoring 43 points this season, and 69 through two seasons in 73 games, Shore now gets a chance to really lead the team and learn what being a captain is. While he probably won’t be a captain at the NHL level, he’ll gain a lot of valuable leadership experience from next year and will continue to grow. Things are just getting better and better for the 19 year old, and we should all be extremely excited about his future.
Alex Guptill:
Alex Guptill has also shown a lot of improvement over the last couple of months. He had a bit of a mid-season swoon, but he’s picked up his play and has been putting up points much more consistently in the last few weeks of the season.
The Michigan Wolverines ended their regular season with a two game home and home set against the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. In the first game of the series, on senior night in Michigan, the Wolverines absolutely killed the Gophers – skating to a 6-2 victory. Guptill set the tone early with a beautiful goal at 5:16 of the first period when he took advantage of a bad pass by a Minnesota defenseman and protected the puck while skating to the slot, where he ripped a shot past the goaltender.
This was Guptill’s only point of the weekend, but he finished with eight shots – five of which came during the game he went pointless. He’s been playing extremely well as of late and, while not putting up Devin Shore numbers, has once again a go-to guy for Michigan’s offense. This is great news heading into the first ever Big 10 hockey tournament, where Michigan will face off against Penn State in the first round. He’s getting hot at the right time and looks like he’ll end the season on a very positive note.