BLAINE, MN– In their first trip to the Robertson Cup Final, the Maryland Black Bears took on the regular season champion Lone Star Brahmas. In a very hard-fought, tightly contested match-up, the Black Bears fell just short of the title, dropping the final game of the year by a score of 4-2.
Maryland relied on their defense to start the game, with Owen Lepak making several early saves with Lone Star’s offense barreling down on him. The defense did what they could to keep chances to the outside, but it took time for the offense to get going. However, before anything big could happen for Maryland, Lone Star took the lead with Justin Kerr notching his sixth of the playoff to open the scoring 13 minutes into the period. A big turning point in the period was when Ray Perreault was given a five minute major and game misconduct for kneeing Kerr– who was okay to play the rest of the game. The Black Bears would go down two players due to another penalty, but the Black Bears PK was able to kill off one of the penalties leaving about three minutes of carryover time going into the second on the major penalty.
Lone Star would tally their second goal at the tail end of the major with Connor Bergeron netting his fourth of the playoff 2:42 into the second. Maryland’s offense then started to get going with the Black Bears starting to pepper Lone Star goalie and former teammate Jack Wieneke. Of the 19 shots in the second, Dimitry Kebreau would have one get behind Wieneke on the power play for his ninth of the postseason, cutting the Lone Star lead in half. Lepak continued to play strong in net to keep it a one-goal game going into the third.
With two early power play chances, the Black Bears continued to pressure the Lone Star net, but couldn’t find the back of it in those chances. Maryland pinned Lone Star in their zone for a while, but just past the midway point, Saxton Tess got his first goal of the playoff on a loose puck in front to make it 3-1 Lone Star. As time was winding down, Maryland had several chances and finally got to within one goal, as Luke Janus netted his fourth of the playoffs to make it 3-2. With Lepak pulled late, Maryland had a couple glorious chances to get the tying goal, but Brock James would put home the empty netter to seal the game and the Robertson Cup for Lone Star by a score of 4-2.
Despite it not being the result the team wanted, they closed the book on a historic season by making their fans proud and fighting until the bitter end. To join in on the action of Black Bears hockey, visit Tickets.MarylandBlackBears.com for season ticket information for the 2024-25 season.
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