LEWISTON — Sophomore forward Kyle Morin sported a blue hard hat atop his head after he led Lewiston to a 6-5 overtime victory over St. Dom’s.
The cap, with “Devils” painted in white along the side, is the postgame reward for Lewiston’s hardest worker. But it also was symbolic of Morin and the Devils’ blue-collar comeback win.
Morin completed his hat trick 56 seconds into the extra session, punching home a shot by Jean-Luc Dostie to cap a tense back-and-forth battle between the rivals at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.
“It was great work down low by my teammates, Griffin Wade and Luc ,” Morin said. “That puck came across the crease and I saw that opportunity and I put it home.”
“It was a smart play by the freshman (Dostie), taking it on the offensive blue line, then chipping it around that ‘D’ and being strong enough to keep it on his stick because he had to fight through that check and then take that shot,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “We were able to pinch our ‘D’ in and good things happen when you put the puck on net.”
Lewiston rallied from an early two-goal deficit, then regrouped after the Saints tied the game on Cam Stewart’s goal with 1:14 remaining.
“We knew it was going to be tough from the start and we just had to work from the beginning,” Morin said. “We’ve been coming out slow and we knew right away we needed to take it to them. It didn’t go our way at first but we came back. We knew this was a game we needed and obviously that rivalry pushed us all the way through.”
Kyle Ullrich, Evan Gosselin and Kyle Lemelin also scored for the Blue Devils (4-1). Caleb Labrie notched two goals and two assists for the Saints (2-2).
Lewiston controlled the puck early, but the Saints came out the more physical team and jumped out to a 1-0 lead on their first shot on goal from Brad Berube at 8:38. Labrie made it 2-0 four minutes later after scoring his first goal on a breakaway.
Ullrich got Lewiston on the board at 12:00 of the first by finishing off a four-on-one.
Early in the second period, the Saints briefly took a 3-1 lead, lost it, then got it back. Nineteen seconds after their third goal celebration of the night was waived off because the puck was kicked into the net, Labrie and Berube set up Pratt at 4:57 for their second two-goal cushion at 4:57.
“One of our goals is to be a pretty physical team out there and finish our checks,” St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette said. “But once we got our legs going and used our speed, we started getting opportunities. Then it really came down to whichever team would make a mistake and the other team would capitalize.”
The Blue Devils clawed back on Morin’s first goal at 8:05 of the second and Lemelin’s tying power-play goal at 13:31.
Labrie answered with his second goal and the Saints’ first with the man advantage, chipping home a rebound at 4:59 of the third. But the Devils took advantage of their next power play to tie it again at 4-4 when Gosselin lifted his stick waist-high to tip Ethan Melvin’s shot past Saints goalie Caleb Dostie (26 saves).
“It was just a scramble in front of the net,” Gosselin said. “I was just doing anything I could to put it on net and it just kind of popped up and I got kind of lucky. I had a weird angle and it went in.”
Morin’s second goal gave Lewiston its first lead with 6:14 remaining, but St. Dom’s knotted it up again when Stewart beat Lewiston netminder Nick Hawk (19 saves) with a slap shot from about eight feet above the left faceoff circle.
St. Dom’s was 1-for-4 on the power play, Lewiston 2-for-4. The Devils outshot the Saints, 32-24.
“The win is great, but even better than that is the way we had to do it,” Belleau said. “For them to fight back in our building against a very, very good St. Dom’s team that’s really hungry and very talented, we can build off that.”
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