LEWISTON — Lewiston’s top scoring senior made his presence known on senior night
Evan Cox had two goals to lead the Blue Devils past the Biddeford Tigers 5-2 in both team’s regular season finale Wednesday, giving him 12 goals and six assists on the season.
Cox deflected the attention.
“It was mostly a team effort,” Cox said. “That’s why we won, we played all together as a team. It’s good to get our guys back to a full roster, that really helped.”
Alex Robert added to his totals with two goals and an assist to give him 15 goals and 28 assists on the season. Jack Leblond also had a goal and an assist.
It took nearly four minutes for the Blue Devils to get their first shot on goal, but they made it count. Jack Leblond was behind the goal line near the end boards where he saw Cox cutting in from the left wing directly to the net. Leblond made the pass and Cox found the back of the cage.
“That kind of relieved some of the pressure,” Cox said . “We started to pound the kid a little more. We tried to get as many shots we could to crash the net and rebound.”
Lewiston used its speed on two breakaway attempts, though neither proved fruitful. The first came shorthanded after a missed pass by Biddeford sent the puck into the defensive zone. Sam Frechette challenged to get the puck, but was one stride behind it. Tigers goalie Owen Sullivan came out and challenged it, and misplayed it, but his defensemen cleared it from danger.
The second breakaway saw Robert go in all alone, but Sullivan stopped him on the blocker side.
“We are a good skating group with a lot of opportunities,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “We’ve got to tighten up a little more defensively, still tighten up things in the neutral zone. All in all, Biddeford is a team coming into this game, they beat Falmouth and they beat some good teams.”
Leblond put Lewiston up 2-0 with 1:45 remaining in the first period on a 4-on-3 power- play marker as he jammed home the puck home with Owen Cox and Ryan Bossie notching the helpers.
The Tigers came out strong in the second period as they controlled the tempo early. Tyler Laflamme was patient around the crease on the power play, waited for Lewiston net minder Conrad Albert make the first move and fired the puck in the left side of the cage for the Tigers’ first goal of the game. Nick Reissfelder and Colin Lavigne assisted on the goal.
“I thought we hung with (them) at times, and other times we made too many mistakes to win,” Biddeford coach Jason Tremblay said.
The Blue Devils woke up in the middle of the period. Robert snuck behind the Biddeford defense at the offensive blue line where he received a pass from defenseman Ryan Bossie. He carried the puck down the right wall and sent a cross-ice fed to Evan Cox who was streaking to the left circle dot where he was wide open. Sullivan wasn’t able to go side-to-side fast enough and Cox put it in the net at the 8:08 mark.
Eighteen seconds later Robert scored an unassisted marker to give the Blue Devils a 4-1 lead.
“It really brought the momentum up and there was a lot of positive energy on the bench,” Robert said. “The positive energy helped out all round with having a great game today. It was a team effort. It was probably one of our best games this season.”
Colin Petit scored for Biddeford with 1:10 remaining and Robert scored 19 seconds later for his second goal of the contest.
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