UMaine players celebrate a 7-1 Hockey East quarterfinal victory over UMass Lowell on Saturday in Orono. The fourth-ranked Black Bears will head to Boston for the semifinals Thursday at TD Garden. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

ORONO — This was the offensive outburst the University of Maine men’s hockey team has been missing for, well, months.

The Black Bears scored a season-high seven goals Saturday night, cruising to a 7-1 win over UMass Lowell in front of a packed house of 5,043 fans at Alfond Arena in a Hockey East quarterfinal.

Fourth-ranked Maine (22-7-6) advanced to the semifinals at Boston’s TD Garden for the second straight season. It’s opponent Thursday will be Northeastern, which upset top-ranked Boston College, 3-1. Boston University plays UConn in the other semifinal.

UMass Lowell ends the season at 16-16-4.

The Black Bears scored six goals in five of 16 games before the holiday break, but since then the offense has struggled, producing more than three goals just three times in the next 18 games.

“I thought we played a pretty complete game,” Maine coach Ben Barr said. “The strength of our team is our depth. I thought everyone showed up tonight.”

The Black Bears took control with three goals in the second period. The game was scoreless until Sully Scholle’s power-play goal at 7:13, on a low shot past Henry Welsch after a give-and-go feed from Frank Djurasevic. The goal came with 1:41 left on a five-minute advantage after Lowell’s Scout Truman, the River Hawks’ leading scorer with 10 goals, was given a game misconduct for contact to the head.

Truman’s ejection was the second of the game. At 19:33 of the first, Maine’s Brandon Chabrier was ruled done for the night after being called for butt ending. Chabrier’s penalty left the Black Bears with just five defensemen.

“I think we’ve got a lot of strong guys back there. Quick shifts, and just rolling through our five D. Tonight was a great example of how deep we are,” Djurasevic said.

The River Hawks barely got any power-play time out of Chabrier’s penalty. Libor Nemic took a penalty for interference at 1:04 of the second period, and Mirko Buttazzoni went off for high sticking at 2:23, turning Lowell’s five-minute advantage into a Maine power play.

“They were great. Luke Antonacci’s been very good the last couple of weeks, and that’s been huge for our team. Bodie Nobes was really good, and obviously David (Breazeale) and Frankie, and (Brandon) Holt’s just an animal. That’s a lot of time to go five D, and they did a pretty good job of it,” Barr said.

Five seconds after Maine’s five-minute power play ended, Djurasevic scored on a shot from the point, giving the Black Bears a 2-0 lead. Maine made it 3-0 at 15:31 when Lynden Breen scored on a pass from behind the net by Charlie Russell. It was Breen’s first goal since returning Feb. 21 against UConn from the broken leg he suffered Nov. 30 at RPI after scoring a hat trick.

A captain, Breen was glad to score in his final game at Alfond.

“It’s special, you know? It was a lot of work for us to get to this point,” he said. “Our message is, whether it’s playoffs or not, this is our last game here for the group together as a whole, and we weren’t going to let (Lowell) get a sniff all night.”

Thomas Freel scored just 1:39 into the third, taking a pass from Breaeale on a 2-on-1 break, to push Maine’s lead to 4-0. It was Freel’s 12th goal of the season, but his first since Feb. 15 against UNH.

After the River Hawks scored when Nick Anderson’s shot off a rebound found the upper right corner, the Black Bears added three more goals. Harrison Scott scored his team-leading 17th goal at 14:26, ending a drought that dated back to Feb. 14. Josh Nadeau and Ross Mitton, playing his first game since he was injured on Feb. 15, closed out the scoring.

“We played very well tonight. Offensively, defensively, all around. The boys just buzzed out there tonight,” Scholle said.

Albin Boija made 27 saves to earn the win. Welsch had 35 saves for the River Hawks.