LEWISTON - In this year of mixed reviews for unbeaten high school heavyweights, it would have been easy for a visitor to drop in from exile in Siberia and fail to correctly identify the slugger and the sparring partner Saturday night at Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

Twenty-three straight encore wins after it finally earned a place in the Class A history book, Biddeford High School played with the barely measurable pulse rate of a team that was given all the chance of Ron Paul in the Texas primary.

What, us worry? With everything to lose? In your arena? Phooey.

Biddeford shook off the persistent, underdog Lewiston Blue Devils, 4-1, with a late, simultaneous flourish and fade that made it Zamboni-water clear whom the pressure was on.

Wrongly.

The streak that triggered sweaty palms and butterflies on this evening wasn't the one in the black-and-orange column, but the one on the blue-and-white ledger.

This makes six consecutive seasons of state championship famine for the Devils. At a school that basically never goes seven years without one, in a city heavily populated by older fans who don't understand why it isn't as easy to win a title as it was when there were eight teams in the entire bloody state, that time frame might as well be the Paleozoic Era.

No shame in losing to Biddo. The better team nine-times-out-of-10 in a neutral arena survived this game. But I'll bet the home half of the overflow crowd is unconvinced that the better team at 6 p.m. on March 8 won it.

OK, so I see their point. Lewiston outshot, at times outhustled, and often outplayed Biddeford. The Devils simply were undone by the little mistakes that a tense, frustrated team commits, and the Tigers are a foe that will transform your molehills into mountains.

Biddeford scored on the power play. Biddeford struck short-handed. And Biddeford stuffed home a pair of 4-on-4 goals in the final two-and-a-half minutes after the Devils' spirit was broken.

That was all. And that was more than enough.

Boasting the best player on the ice by a bundle in Brian Dumoulin (he had a stick - no, make that a magic wand - in all four goals) and the experience of breaking the state championship glass ceiling here a year ago, Biddeford played with disarming calm.

Three 5-on-3 opportunities went awry for the Devils. Again, one came at the bitter end, after a thousand fair-weather locals left their only high school hockey game of the winter three minutes early.

Two were legit, though. And when the Blue Devils weren't fanning or fouling off agonizing opportunities at the goalmouth, Biddeford goalie Tony Dube was stealing the show like the Travis Roy Award winner he should be.

Dube saw plenty of reasons to panic, facing a baker's dozen shots at close range with the scoreboard reading 1-1 and 2-1 in the second period. He didn't.

Relative youngsters such as Tyler Audie and Derek Reny had an engraved invitation to lose their mind after multiple, early invitations to the penalty box. Not a chance.

Funny, this is what Lewiston, St. Dom's and Waterville used to do. One of the Big Three - for 60 years, with apologies to that Dixfield bunch Justin Pelletier and Bob McPhee so eloquently profiled last week, the Only Three - would tease some interloper for a period or two before dragging a blade through that team's dream.

Well, guess what, folks? The population and the power have shifted south, perhaps forever. And the skate is on the other foot.

Until the Maine Principals' Association reclassifies and redistricts high school hockey on the Twelfth of Never, we can look forward to schools from Cumberland and York counties hoisting that trophy over their collective head and adding crooked numbers to their growing championship banners.

Lewiston need not feel the specter of every ghost in this venerable rink or carry a torch for every school north of Exit 48. Shame on any of us who might have put that unspoken pressure on them.

These Blue Devil seniors - Matt Letourneau, Jon Roy, Jordan Bourgoin, Casey Poussard, Justin Nadeau, Andrew Marden and Alex Lafreniere - were 4-0 in Eastern Maine championship games in their career.

In this new hockey economy that too few of us are willing to accept, that's a hell of an accomplishment.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is koakes@sunjournal.com.