ORONO — Ben Barr sat behind the table and answered questions, and the press conference became a confessional.

“It’s not like they’re bad hockey players or bad people. Sometimes you get the benefit of the doubt when you’re done things last year, or you had a good game a month ago or two weeks ago. You can’t coach like that. It’s on me,” said Barr, the University of Maine men’s hockey coach. “The easy thing to do is run from it. We’ve got to run right toward it and be honest about it. Right now the honest truth is we don’t have a very good culture in our room, and that starts with me. I’m looking in the mirror.”

Barr just watched his team lose to the University of New Hampshire 3-2 on Saturday night. The loss gave the Wildcats a sweep at Alfond Arena, the first time in 2 1/2 seasons an opponent came into the Black Bears’ rink and left with two wins. The losses were the third and fourth in five games for Maine, which is 8-7-1 with three games left before what now looks like a much-needed and necessary holiday break.

For a lot of teams, 8-7-1 would be promising. For the Black Bears it’s frustration. It’s a symptom that the alchemy isn’t working. The talent hasn’t turned lead into gold. Four one-goal losses points to a lack of attention to the little things.

After steady improvement in each of Barr’s first four seasons, this is starting to feel like a backslide. The Black Bears won their first Hockey East championship in 21 years last spring. They played in two consecutive NCAA tournaments.

In the second period Saturday, the Wildcats scored a pair of goals to take a 3-1 lead and trigger chaos on the Maine bench. Barr said his team spent the period yelling at each other over every mistake. Here’s the thing, Barr said: If you’re a player and you’re calling out a teammate for a mistake, you’d better be really, really good yourself at whatever you’re barking about.

Right now the mistakes are permeating too deep to have anyone calling out anyone. Barr said he hopes the second period Saturday night was the low point, the nadir. The Black Bears did play better in the third period. That gives Barr and his team resolve that problems are fixable. This team has scored five or more goals six times. There was a sweep of Boston University at Alfond Arena last month. A 3-0 win at Boston College.

The proof is there. When they play to their potential, the Black Bears can play with anybody.

Making that potential the norm, that’s the riddle.

This team has 13 newcomers on a roster of 28 players. That’s 13 players who stepped into a program that’s enjoyed success the last two seasons without being a part of the grind that got the team there. Are they taking that success for granted? Is there an assumption that wins come as soon as you pull on the Maine sweater?

If so, somebody remind them that between 2008 and 2023, the Black Bears went to the NCAA tournament just once. Success is never promised. Leaders like captains Brandon Holt and Thomas Freel, who were there as the team improved and regained its status as a hockey power, know they’re the ones who have to lead the attitude adjustment.

What happened in the second period Saturday is unacceptable, Holt said. He wants his teammates to hold each other accountable. That was a key factor in the team’s run to the Hockey East title last season. Holding each other accountable and barking at each other on the bench between shifts are not the same thing. Not even close.

“It takes juice away from you. It takes juice away from the whole team when you see stuff like that. We can’t be fighting among ourselves. It’s hard to win when that stuff’s going on,” Holt said.

Freel took it a step further after Maine’s 1-0 loss to UNH on Friday. It’s up to himself and the other veterans to stay even-keeled. Getting too high during the good times and too low when the team struggles is a roller coaster the Black Bears need to get off.

“It’s not an excuse at this part of the season to be that way. I still think we’re guilty of it. It’s something that’s got to change, and change pretty quickly,” Freel said.

As he addressed the media after Saturday’s game, Barr was thinking out loud.

“I think we culturally bottomed out in the second period. At least that’s what I hope. We really don’t know how to talk to each other as human beings, and that’s on me at times, too, because I’m yelling and that’s what they know. Then they’re yelling at each other and it just snowballs,” he said.

There are three games left before the break, at Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena against Hockey East rival UMass Lowell on Wednesday and a pair back at Alfond this weekend against Lindenwood.

Those games are just a reflection. It starts in the locker room, and on the practice ice, and it has to start now.