LEWISTON — The defending Class A boys’ hockey state champions were back on the ice Monday, the same sheet of ice where they had raised the trophy eight months earlier.
Monday marked the first day of preseason practices for boys’ hockey teams, and the Lewiston Blue Devils were at square one, just like all of the other teams in the state. Except Lewiston won its final game last year, and it was the biggest game of the season.
Now the Blue Devils are just working toward their first game of this season.
“Our message is not to be complacent. And our message is to get better each and every practice,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “This happens to be our first practice, and so I thought for a first day it was a good skate. I thought the kids were focused, I thought they worked hard, I thought they responded well to each other, worked well together. I thought it was a good first day.”
Belleau said he didn’t sense any complacency during the first practice of the season, but it’s going to be something he and his team need to defend against all season, all the while defending the championship that last year’s team earned.
“Going into every season it’s the same goal,” senior Jeromey Rancourt said. “What happened last year is what happened last year. I mean, we came out on top, which is great, but it’s a new year. You can’t take last year and put it to this year.”
All the Blue Devils can take from last year is that bottled up energy that they retained from finishing off last season.
“The emotions were high getting on the ice today,” junior Joe Bisson said. “I think it’s more we want to get back on the ice because we were anxious. Any team that wins a championship wants to get back on the ice and just improve and want to work hard for each other.”
Belleau stressed Monday that nobody’s spot on the team was guaranteed, and that every player will have to earn his spot. Even the most talented Lewiston players know that there are a handful of other skilled players who want their jobs.
“Fight for your spot, fight for your time when you can get it on the ice,” Rancourt said. “If you’re doing your part, you can help other people just as well. You’re making yourself look good, too.”
The combination of the excitement of the new season and the knowledge that every roster spot is open added up to an up-tempo, high-intensity practice at Androscoggin Bank Colisee.
“We expect players to work harder in practice, or as hard in practice, as they do in a game,” Belleau said. “We expect up-tempo, we expect hard work.”
And it’s those last two words that Bisson said were the ones Belleau stressed the most during his pre-practice message to the players in the dressing room.
“He’s expecting a lot from us since last year, and he’s expecting us to work hard and want to work hard,” Bisson said.
Much of the core of last year’s championship team is back this year, or at least back for tryouts. If those same players prove worthy of a roster spot — through hard work — then Belleau can raise the expectations of what should be an experienced team.
Those expectations include another run at a championship, and this time it will be even more difficult, as the Blue Devils will be both hunters chasing a championship, and the hunted trying to defend one, according to Bisson.
“It gives us an edge,” Bisson said. “We want to defend our state championship.”
Rancourt added that “nothing’s going to be handed to us this year.
“You’re always hunting,” he said. “Never satisfied.”
The Blue Devils begin their regular season Dec. 10 against Cheverus, and host Scarborough — their new Colisee co-tenant — in a matchup of last year’s state finalists on Dec. 21.
wkramlich@sunjournal.com
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