ST. PAUL, Minn. -- As soon as the puck left his stick, Peter Metcalf knew he was in trouble.

So did his Maine teammates. So did the fans still trying to settle into their seats at the Xcel Energy Center. Even the national TV audience recognized the senior defenseman had made a major mistake.

	Senior captain Peter Metcalf scored twice Thursday, his first in 11 career NCAA Tournament games.

With Thursday's national semifinal against New Hampshire barely seconds old, Metcalf sent a pass -- from deep in the corner to the left of Black Bears goaltender Mike Morrison -- hurtling through the middle toward the blue line.

"'Oh, (expletive),'" Metcalf recalled after Maine's eventual 7-2 win. "I've been taught all my career to keep the puck out of the middle. But when I looked up I saw the guy against the glass so that option was gone. The middle was wide open and it was just a bad pass. I put it right on his tape."

UNH's Sean Collins took the gift from Metcalf just inside the line and fired it on net. It deflected off Maine defenseman Cliff Loya's stick, went up and over Morrison's shoulder and gave UNH a 1-0 lead just 21 seconds into the game.

Maine was able to tie the game a few minutes later but a shorthanded goal with 2:05 left in the period sent the Black Bears to their dressing room trailing 2-1 and in need of a confidence boost.

First, they got one from their coach Tim Whitehead.

"Coach came in and said there were going to be highs and lows and you just have to ride them out," Loya said. "I don't think we played all that well in the first period. He said we're a good hockey team and we just needed to come out and play the way we're supposed to."

And it was the captain Metcalf that led his teammates past the first-period mistakes.

He scored the only two goals of the second period on a pair of shots from the same spot at the top of the left circle. "You just have to shoot at the goal, you never know," he said. "(Their goalie) was a little jittery, we found out. Good for us.

"I had this feeling that we were going to come back in between the second and third and be ahead," Metcalf added. "We went up 3-2 and in the third just poured it on."

Maine outshot New Hampshire 18-8 in the second period, and Metcalf's second goal ended up being the game-winner as the Black Bears scored four more goals in the third period en route to the 7-2 win.

Metcalf's two goals were his first in 11 career NCAA Tournament games and marked only the second two-goal game of his career. His other multiple-goal game was during the 1998-99 season (Dec. 12, 1998 vs. Northeastern) -- Maine's last national championship season.

The lop-sided victory made it a little easier for Metcalf to laugh at his cardinal hockey sin.

"Did I get an assist on that?" he asked with a smile. "It was my fault on the first goal so I got a little redemption. I guess I went 2-for-1. That's pretty good odds, right?"

Good enough to send Maine into Saturday night's championship game.

David Albright is a senior editor for ESPN.com.