PARIS — Lewiston was blessed with balanced goal-scoring and solid goaltending in its 9-0 boys lacrosse victory over Oxford Hills on Wednesday at Gouin Athletic Complex.
Kyle Graves and Liam Hutchinson each tallied two goals and an assist, while Brock Rancourt stopped all nine shots he faced for the shutout for the Blue Devils (2-2).
“This is the best chemistry team that I have been on for attack-line, mids and defense,” Graves said. “We really have good chemistry together. A lot of these guys, we all go to class together and we are all hanging out.”
It was Rancourt’s first career shutout. He only needed to make two saves in the first quarter, but many of Oxford Hills’ chances went wide of the net.
“I feel like you need to see some shots early on to see what the competition looks like,” Rancourt said. “(Derrick) Brooks was a hell of a shooter — I definitely needed some shots from him… Seeing shots early on definitely helps a lot.”
Oxford Hills (1-2) coach Hunter Rowell said the Vikings couldn’t get much going offensively after going down early.
“I think we panicked a little bit,” Rowell said. “Again, defense is the MVP of this game. Our Achilles today was consistently offensively and not playing offense as well as we could. We have the opportunity to do well offensively, but we threw the ball away a lot.”
Rowell also called the defense the MVP in the season-opening loss to Gardiner.
Graves opened the scoring just 41 seconds into the game for Lewiston. He caught a pass from Jayden Sands and fired the ball past Oxford Hills goalie Troy Edmunds.
Graves recorded his second point of the quarter when he assisted on Aidan St. George’s goal.
Graves said the team learned a lesson in a 9-8 loss to Bangor last week.
“We had a game earlier in the season that we came out flat-footed, and I think we really learned from that,” Graves said. “We didn’t want to come out flat-footed and we put the pedal to the metal and got a couple of scores up.”
Midway through the first quarter, Cody Dionne stretched Lewiston’s lead to 3-0. Hutchinson’s shot from long-distance beat Edmunds 10:20 into the opening quarter to make it 4-0.
“Those are our three starting attack,” Lewiston coach Ben Fournier said of Graves, St. George and Hutchinson. “They do very well for us and they are very unselfish. If the (defense) starts to shade their side, they will spread the ball.”
Edmunds kept Oxford Hills in the game in the second quarter, stopping seven of the eight shots he faced. The only one that got by him was a Daven Langelier marker.
Edmunds made 16 saves in the loss for the Vikings.
“He was playing out of his mind again,” Rowell said of Edmunds. “We put him in a really high esteem here, and he was able to do a lot.”
Graves scored his second tally of the contest two minutes into the third quarter. Hutchinson notched his second goal when St. George made a pass to him at the circle.
Eli Bigelow scored at the end of the third quarter and Colton Daniels gave the Blue Devils a 9-0 early in the fourth quarter to cap the scoring.
After Daniels’ goal, Lewiston just wanted to keep ball possession.
“We wanted to make sure we controlled the ball,” Fournier said. “We wanted to give our goalie the shutout — he definitely earned it. The guys were pretty psyched about that. That really lent itself to controlling the ball later minutes in the game.”
Rancourt said in the final moments, when Lewiston had the ball in the offensive zone, it finally hit him that he was getting the shutout.
“When there was about 10 seconds and (my teammates) were screaming on the sidelines,” Rancourt said.
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