Maine Hockey Journal

Points at a premium for Brunswick with loss to Lewiston

Lewiston, ME – For the Brunswick High School Dragons (6-7-1) it’s crunch time. With the seasoning dwindling down, getting heel points to lock-up that seventh and final seed for the Eastern Class A playoffs are becoming fewer and far between.

For a young Dragon squad, facing a senior lading Lewiston Blue Devils (11-0-1) squad was too much to handle as they fell 10-0 at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“We got four (games) to go and we got to take one game at a time,” said Brunswick Head Coach Mike Routhier. “We play our rival Mt. Ararat on Thursday and all the games we have left are equitable.”

“We will see how the chips fall.”

Playing Lewiston will help Brunswick in the long run.

“We put games like this on the schedule like this on purpose,” Routhier stated.

Both coaches wanted to keep their game plan simple.

“We wanted to keep the pucks the perimeter, on the big ice, and hope for the best,” Routhier said. “For us, our big thing is our stick strength on pucks and getting pucks out. A lot of their goals were off turnovers.”

“We just told them to keep it simple, they got to skate, move their feet,” said Lewiston Head Coach Jamie Belleau. “They got to move the puck and can’t turn the puck over.”

It was another strong early start for the Blue Devils when Colt Steele’s shot squirted through Issac Karkos’ pads and Eric Morin was there to put home the puck at the 1:14 mark of the opening frame. Patrick DeBlois was credited with the secondary assist.

“One of the nice things about tonight is we got scoring from everybody,” Belleau mentioned. “Every singled player we dressed tonight. There were a lot players in the mix in terms of points. That speaks to the depth we have.”

Jon McDonough gave Lewiston the 2-0 lead at the 5:23 mark as he picked up the puck in front of the net and had all day to snap the puck into the wide open cage. Ryan Lemelin assisted on the goal. Just past the eight minute mark, Devin Bilodeau stretched the lead to 3-0. DeBlois picked up his second assist of the period.

“Anytime you got talented freshman, you want to ease them into the lineup at the varsity level, in particular with the group of kids we have,” said Belleau of DuBlois. “We were trying to keep as many younger kids involved and certainly we were taking it slowly, making it a step-by-process.”

The two Lemelin’s connected on the fourth goal. Ryan who is a senior recorded his second point of the night with a goal and Kyle who’s a freshman recorded the assist with 2:46 left in the period.

Morin picked up his second goal of the game in the middle of the second period.

Shortly thereafter Karkos was replaced in Brunswick’s net by Jason Blier.

“If it was a one or two goal game, we would have kept (Karkos) in,” mentioned Routhier. “We wanted to give both goalies a shot at it.”

Scott Ouellette stretched the lead to 6-0 with as breakaway goal where he swept the puck around Blier with 3:07 to play in the second period. The Blue Devils added the extra point as Devon Cusson extended the lead with 18 seconds remaining in the period.

Sam Cloutier got his first goal of the game 1:32 into the final period

Cam Poussard made three saves in two periods of play for the Blue Devils. Jacob Lapierre turned aside four shots in the period for the Blue Devils. Issac Karkos made 19 saves for the Dragons while Jason Blier stopped 14 shots.

Desmond Gagne set-up Matt Therrien in the slot to make 9-0 at the 4:35 mark followed by Steele, who added the 10th goal at the 5:34 mark with Cloutier picking up the assist.

Both teams went 0-for-1 on the power play.

“We expressed that after the game too,” Routhier said of the lack of penalties. “We played with pride and they good team.”

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply