Chevrus goalie Trinity Atwater plucks the puck out of the air before Lewiston’s Gemma Landry can get a shot off during Saturday’s championship girls’ hockey game at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
LEWISTON — Lewiston got what it wanted: Pucks to the net.
The Blue Devils peppered Cheverus/Kennebunk/Old Orchard Beach goalie Trinity Atwater with 32 shots on Saturday, but the sophomore made 31 saves in the Stags’ 2-1 win in the girls’ hockey state championship game.
While there’s a bitter taste of not completing a perfect season, Lewiston coach Ron Dumont thought his players ran the game plan to perfection. But unlike the previous 20 games this season, lady luck just wasn’t on the Blue Devils’ (20-1) side Saturday.
“Beginning of the game and you would come up to me and said, ‘You will have 32 shots, Coach, and they have 12.’ I am thinking I am doing good,” Dumont said.
Stags coach Scott Rousseau was ready for the bombardment of shots Atwater was going to face.
“When we went through our game-planning on Thursday night, we knew we were going to get outshot,” Rousseau said. “We gave up on that option, that we were going to get outshot, and we were OK with being outshot. We just needed to make sure that we were going to hold the middle of the ice and give Trinity chances to make saves.”
Rousseau said he liked that the Stags were able to keep the Blue Devils’ shots coming from the top of the circles, where Atwater can see the shots coming and more easily make the saves. She also did her job by slowing the game down through creating whistles, which Rousseau wanted because it gave the players extra time to catch their breath.
As happened often this season, Dumont said, the Blue Devils got out of the gate slow to start the game. The Blue Devils had no shots on goal by the time the Stags took the lead 3:23 into the game.
From there, Lewiston dominated the rest of the period, outshooting the Stags 12-0.
The second period was more of the same, as Lewiston fired another 12 shots on goal compared to the Stags’ six. In the third, the Blue Devils held the Stags (18-2-1) to two shots while they put another eight on Atwater.
Lewiston aimed high and tried to get loose rebounds as they feverishly tried to tie the game.
“They were leaving some (rebounds) over there, we just couldn’t get to them,” Dumont said. “We tried everything that we could, and it’s one of those things we were talking about as coaches after. You always review, ‘Could I have done something better? Should we have changed this?’ But I didn’t see anything we needed to change.”
It wasn’t only Atwater who was stopping shots and clearing pucks out of danger before Lewiston skaters could get to them. The Stags’ stars were putting their bodies on the line at the end.
Abby Lamontagne, who scored both Cheverus/Kennebunk/OOB goals, got in front of Grace Dumond’s last-ditch attempt from the blue line in the dying seconds to preserve the victory.
“We knew coming into this game, they have girls with cannons,” Lamontagne said.
Defenseman Zoe Mazur also made two key blocks in the final two minutes.
The Stags ran a blocking drill in preparation for Saturday’s game.
“We practice that. Abby brought a case of tennis balls,” Rousseau said. “We all practiced blocking shots. We knew there was going to be a moment that the best slap shot (Grace Dumond) in the state was going to have the puck and someone was going to have to make a play and take one for the team.”
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