Two years ago, Maine came into the William D. Mullins Center, a place where it had often struggled, No.4 in the country. It left Amherst with a single point (a 1-1 tie). The weekend series was monumental for the Massachusetts hockey team.

This weekend, the Black Bears had no intentions of letting history repeat itself, closing out a sweep of the Minutemen with a 5-1 drubbing Saturday night.

Michael Schutte notched a hat trick and Dan Kerluke added two goals for the second consecutive night to lead Maine (13-9-6, 8-6-4 Hockey East) into soul possession of fourth place in the conference.

‘This is the best Maine has ever played in this rink,’ Kerluke said. ‘We’ve struggled on the big sheets, but we found a way to conquer that.’

UMass (7-20-3, 6-13-1 HE) got a late goal from Darcy King, but it was not even close to enough for the Minutemen, who remain just one point ahead of Merrimack for the final playoff spot.

‘There was clearly a real lack of energy,’ UMass head coach Don Cahoon said. ‘We need to become a much better skating team. You look at the big schools and we just can’t keep pace with them.’

The Minutemen came out strong in the first period, with hard skating and aggressive forechecking, but they could not get any high-quality shots on Maine netminder Matt Yeats.

‘We’re a team that really needs to deal with [the question of] when you fall behind by a couple of goals, how do you get back into sync,’ Cahoon said. ‘We’re a sinking ship once we fall behind by a couple of goals.’

As for the Black Bears, fast skating and crisp passes tore apart the Maroon and White defense, torching it for three-second period goals.

‘Our performance this weekend reminded me of Maine teams of the past which seem to get better as the season goes on,’ Maine head coach Shawn Walsh said.

Schutte scored the eventual game-winner 5:41 into the second period on the power play. After an attempted clear was kept in the zone, the puck found its way to the converted defenseman. After being denied by Markus Helanen on his first attempt, the rebound found its way through the senior goalkeeper.

Under two minutes later, Martin Kariya took a puck through the neutral zone which lead to an eventual two-on-one. After drawing the defenseman to him, Kariya slid the puck to Schutte who was left alone in front of the net. Schutte would add a third tally in the final session.

With nine minutes to go in the second frame, Kerluke sealed the victory for the Black Bears. After a break-up in the Maine defensive zone, Kerluke zipped by freshman defender Nick Kuiper to leave just Helanen between himself and paydirt. He was stopped on his first attempt, but put in the rebound for his fourth goal in the two-game series.

UMass got its lone tally at the 11:23 mark of the third period when King tipped in a Luke Duplessis slap shot from the point.

‘We played a tremendous defensive game – that’s why we won,’ Kerluke said. ‘Our defense created our offense.’