Blue Devils knock out Rams in OT

LEWISTON – Bangor High School goaltender Josh Seeley never saw it coming.

Pesky Lewiston High School forward Travis Lebrun, despite being a key cog in the wheel on the play, admitted that he, too, had no idea what was going on.

“He told me he just got pushed into the middle,” said Lewiston coach Norm Gagne. “He didn’t mean to be there.”

The Rams’ defenders probably wish they had shoved the fesity forward elsewhere at that particular moment. Instead, Lebrun created a screen for fellow senior Kevin LeBlanc.

“I couldn’t see [the puck] at all,” said Seeley. “Someone stepped out in front at the last second. I saw it coming down the side, but after he turned to pass back, I lost it.”

LeBlanc’s lazy slapshot from the high slot slithered through the screen into the top left corner of the net just 4:05 into overtime, lifting the No. 3 Blue Devils to a 2-1 win over No. 2 Bangor in the teams’ Eastern Class A hockey semifinal at the Colisee on Saturday.

“When I was coming in for the shot I saw the left corner wide open,” said LeBlanc. “I just took that shot when I saw it.”

Lewiston has eliminated Bangor from the tournament in each of the last three years, and this year the chance for a tight game was a great as ever. The teams met twice in the regular season, with each shutting the other out on the road.

“I knew it was going to be a one-goal game,” said Bangor coach Ted Taylor. “These teams are that close.”

The teams played at the Colisee in Lewiston, the Blue Devils’ home rink, despite Bangor’s higher ranking because the Colisee was picked as a neutral site to host all four regional semifinal games.

The Rams, meanwhile, finish their campaign with a solid 13-8 record, exceeding many preseason expectations.

“No one thought, most people were thinking we’d finish about .500,” said Taylor. “To lose two guys like that, and we got off to a slow start, but we had 11 seniors on the team, the kids never gave up.”

The “two guys” Taylor spoke of, Nick Payson and Aaron Buzzell, along with former head coach Dan Kerluke, all left the team last summer. Payson headed to junior hockey, Buzzell graduated and Kerluke is now an assistant coach with the University of Maine.

“A lot of people didn’t think we had a really good team,” said Dylan George. “The only people that thought that were our team and our coach, but we believed in ourselves and kept pushing hard every game.”

George, who was a big factor in the Rams’ resurgence this season, was stymied all night by the Lewiston defense.

“He was kind of hidden in the trees early on in the season,” said Taylor, “but they seem to have his number. He’s emerged as a top player and they shadowed him pretty well.”

Mike McPike had the Rams’ best chance to open the scoring in the first period, hitting the post from the right circle on a shot that snuck through Lewiston goaltender Brian Nason’s pads.

Lebrun had two great chances on breakaways against Seeley, too, the first coming less than a minute after McPike rang the post. Seeley stuffed them both.

“The first time he went back and forth,” said Seeley. “When he came back across, he showed that he was going to come back the other way. I just stayed with him the whole way. The last one, I thought he was going to try and go around me, so I played him the way I was supposed to play him, and he tried five-hole again.”

“He’s the reason we went into overtime,” Taylor said of Seeley. “He played a great game for us.”

Neither team mustered much offense in the middle period, and neither capitalized on extended power-play time.

All of the scoring in regulation time came early in the third. Lewiston senior Brandon Girardin tucked a rebound on the left side of the goal past Seeley at 4:15 of the third period to briefly put the Blue Devils (14-6-2) ahead, but Christian Dionne responded 29 seconds later to knot the score at one.

“That was huge,” said Taylor. “These guys knew they could skate with any team out there, and to get that one right back, it kept us in the game, kept everybody up.”