Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland goalie Maranda Guimond makes a save and then covered up the rebound on St. Dom’s/Winthrop/Gray-New Gloucester’s Giselle Ouellette during a game at Norway Savings Bank Arena in Auburn in January. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal Buy this Photo
Maranda Guimond’s calm has meant confidence for Dana Berube in each of his three years as coach of the Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland girls hockey team.
Guimond, who goes by “Manny” around the Red Hornets program, showed that calmness in goal even before Berube took the reins of the program prior to her sophomore season (Berube was an assistant her freshman year).
Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland goalie Manny Guimond holds the trophy for winning the Becky Schaffer Award at the senior all-star game in February. The award is given to the top senior girls hockey player in Maine. Submitted photo
“There’s never been a game since I’ve been the head coach that I haven’t gone in, and regardless of who we’re playing — Lewiston that was 19-0 or playing whoever we were playing — I always had a lot of confidence, because when you got a goalie like that your girls can make some errors and she’s there to cover for it, and she’s done that a tremendous amount of time,” Berube said.
Guimond was her usual brick wall again this season, and the other coaches in the state noticed, naming her to the All-State team, and selecting her as the KVAC Player of the Year and the winner of the Becky Schaffer Award that is given to Maine’s most outstanding senior player.
Now add Sun Journal All-Region Girls Hockey Player of the Year to that haul.
“I think it’s really, really cool (to get recognized by the coaches),” Guimond said. “It means a lot, honestly.”
“It was really satisfying to see Manny get the votes and get the Schaffer Award,” Berube said.
Guimond pitched seven shutouts this season and had a 1.94 goals against average, all while, Berube said, facing a “tremendous amount of shots” each game.
Guimond said getting those shutouts is “not easy at all.”
“And with some of the teams that I play, I’m surprised I got a shutout on some of them. Like St. Dom’s, I was really surprised,” she said. “But, obviously, it’s a team effort, too, it’s not just me.”
Guimond’s performance in the 1-0 victory over the Saints late in the season might not have even been her most impressive clean sheet. Instead, Berube points out the 0-0 tie against Scarborough, which that only lost to state champion Lewiston during the regular season and state runner-up Cape Elizabeth/Waynflete/South Portland in the South regional final.
“We were basically playing less than 10 skaters, and Manny was the backbone, again, to keep us in it,” Berube said.
Then there’s the early-season 2-2 draw against the Capers in which Guimond stopped 47 of 49 shots.
Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland goalie Maranda Guimond makes a save during a game against St. Dom’s/Winthrop/Gray-New Gloucester in Auburn in January. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal Buy this Photo
“I think my comment to (Cape head coach Bob Mills) after the game was, ‘We had no business getting any points out of that,'” Berube said, “but that just speaks to Manny and how she’s able to settle.”
The playoff run — the Red Hornets’ longest of Guimond’s four years — saw her play some of the best hockey of her high school career.
First, it was facing an early shot onslaught from Mt. Ararat/Lisbon in the regional quarterfinals, which was the final shutout of Guimond’s career.
“It wasn’t really in a nervous position because we had Manny and I had confidence in the girls,” Berube said. “But, again, she makes some saves that I just don’t think (there are) too many girls that I’ve seen, in the last six years that I’ve been involved with girls high school hockey, that come up with those saves.”
Then Guimond made 13 of 14 saves in the second period of the semifinal win over St. Dom’s/Winthrop/Gray-New Gloucester. Berube said that effort allowed the Red Hornets to make their third-period comeback.
The ending to her career wasn’t the storybook type, though she did get to play in a regional final for the first time. Guimond admitted she was nervous going into the matchup with Lewiston at Troubh Ice Arena in Portland, but Berube never sensed that.
“I know that regional final game is not the way that she wanted it to go,” Berube said, “but Lewiston is a tremendous team. But I’ll tell you, she was the only girl in our warmup where — every one of our players I could tell was gripping it a little bit, and Manny came over after warmups, came to get her water, and it could have been the (preseason) round robin just the way she was interacting with her coaches, and her composure and her readiness for the game.”
Guimond said she thinks she did everything she could in that 5-0 loss, stopping 25 of 30 shots against the state’s highest-scoring team, but letting in five goals was heartbreaking.
Getting over those goals earlier in her career came with the help of Red Hornets assistant Kris Bennett, who works with the goalies. Bennett, a former two-time state champion at Edward Little, had a “tremendous relationship” with Guimond, according to Berube, and helped bring her to the next level.
Her final season, she was top-level.
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