It may have had the shortest offseason among the Eastern Class A teams, but no team wanted to get back on the ice and put last season behind it more so than St. Dominic Academy. 

Eight months removed from a heartbreaking overtime loss to Falmouth in the state championship game, the Saints returned to the ice Monday at Norway Savings Bank Arena. 

That loss still stings for St. Dom’s returners, but it also serves as motivation. Expectations remain high for the Saints, who seek their first state title since 2000. 

“There’s a lot of guys that have been pretty excited to get out here,” St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette said. “It’s unfortunate that right now we have a few guys that are injured or are sick so we’re not at full strength. But there is a lot of excitement because we have an older team and a lot of guys that were in that big game tasted it and want to be back.” 

The Saints have nearly three weeks of practice before opening their season at home against Scarborough on Dec. 10. St. Dom’s will compete in the Earl Goodwin Invitational, a preseason tournament, on Nov. 29 in Biddeford. For now, the focus is on getting through the first few days of practice. 

“First couple of practices are about learning what we have as a team and being able to boost up some of the kids who aren’t as experienced as some of the other players,” St. Dom’s senior Matt Chasse said.

Ouellette said he’s looking to trim the roster down to about 40 players by the end of tryouts. The Saints will have plenty of experience as Ouellette projects his final roster to include nearly a dozen seniors. From that senior leadership stems expectations of a successful season, which is nothing new for St. Dom’s. 

“We go into every season with some pretty high expectations,” St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette said. “Our program has a long history. At the end of the day it’s one game at a time, but we always have an expectation to go far.” 

Two other teams hoping to be in the mix in the East, Lewiston and Edward Little, also dropped the puck on their seasons with the first day of practice. Both the Blue Devils and Red Eddies saw their seasons end at the hands of the Saints. St. Dom’s hammered Edward Little in the quarterfinals and snuck by higher-seeded Lewiston in the semifinals. 

The Red Eddies are looking to create the same magic on the ice that the girls’ soccer team did on the pitch. One similarity between the two programs is the head coach. Craig Latuscha handed in his soccer whistle for his hockey whistle after guiding the girls’ soccer team to a spot in the Class A state championship match. Latuscha believes that could have an affect on the boys’ hockey team.

“A lot of the boys were watching the girls throughout the playoffs and they kind of fed off them,” Latuscha said. “They thought about that and that really drove them to get to that point as well. It’s all about team bonding. If you can get a good team bond like the girls did, you never know. Any team on any day can beat anybody.” 

Latuscha is looking at a roster of about 28 players with a rather large freshman class. The Red Eddies have just four seniors this season. 

Edward Little finished 10-7-1 during the regular season last year and grabbed the No. 6 seed from the East, a big step from its 2012-13 campaign when it finished 4-12-2. 

With all his focus on the girls’ soccer team in the fall, Latuscha has relied heavily on his assistant coaches to get the team ready for the season. Now, he’s ready to see what his team can do. 

“For me it’s getting to know who’s on the ice, getting back into hockey condition,” Latuscha said. “Hockey shape is a little different than most other sports.” 

Across the bridge, Lewiston’s tryouts got under way at Androscoggin Bank Colisee. Before the Blue Devils start looking ahead to their season, they first are looking to trim their roster. Evaluation is the name of the game for coach Jaime Belleau this week. 

“Every coach has a different philosophy, but my philosophy is that these kids are trying out for a limited number of spots,” Belleau said. “Giving them an opportunity to play in a game environment during tryouts to me is the most useful form from a coaching perspective and most useful for them to show me and the other coaches what they bring to the table in a game environment.” 

Belleau said conditioning is part of the tryout process, but it isn’t the most important aspect. Tryouts provide Belleau and his coaching staff an opportunity to see who’s been staying in shape over the offseason, but the seventh-year coach knows that conditioning will come over time. 

“We have to understand that the season’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon,” Belleau said. “We have a lot of young kids in our program, but we have a lot of talented kids in our program. We just have to take it one day at a time and try to improve every day.” 

The Blue Devils are two years removed from a state championship game appearance and advanced to the state semifinal last season with a team that featured seven seniors. 

“We want to get to the next level,” Belleau said. “The goal when playing at Lewiston High School is to win a state championship.”

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