For a team that plays up to 20 countable league games in a three-month season (an average of less than two games per week), playing four games in four days sounds like a tall order.

“Originally it wasn’t our plan to play four games in a row like that,” said Lewiston High School coach Tim Smith. “With the tight schedule we have this year, though, and given that Brewer has to come all the way to us to play a regular-season game, we didn’t want to schedule that on a school night. We don’t have another game after these four until the following Saturday, so that gives us plenty of time to recover.”

Lewiston will play three of those games in the fourth-annual Maine High School Hockey Invitational, which this year includes 31 teams from across Maine and the Northeast and is spread over three arenas (Biddeford Ice Arena, Portland Ice Arena and Travis Roy Arena in Yarmouth) in southern Maine.

The experience, said Smith, not the winning or losing, is the important part.

“This will give us a chance to try some different combinations against some quality teams that we wouldn’t otherwise face,” said Smith. “Everyone will be healthy as of (today). We split in our two games last year and decided this year that it was worth it to play in three games.”

Lewiston is regarded as one of the favorites in Eastern Class A this season, and has started its league schedule with four straight wins, and any competition the Blue Devils face this week will not be from Maine, and should allow the local skaters the opportunity to see and get a feel for different styles of hockey from around the region.

The third game in that four-game stretch for Lewiston will be a countable league game against Brewer High School, a team many people feel will also be a top contender in eastern Class A, and a team that won’t be skating in a holiday tournament in the two days prior to the team’s meeting at the Colisee in Lewiston.

“It’s hard for Brewer and Bangor to play against us down here and hard for us to travel up there,” said Smith. “The cost is almost ridiculous and we’ve tried to be as accommodating as possible. We moved another game around so that we could play Bangor in the afternoon on Martin Luther King Day, so they didn’t have to come down on a school night, either. With the distance involved, we really had no choice.”

As for Edward Little, which is participating for the third year in a row, the Red Eddies have decided to play just two tournament games at the invitational, in addition to their own countable game Wednesday against Skowhegan at Ingersoll Arena in Auburn.

“We had the option to add that third game like we did last year but decided not to,” said EL coach Jamie Belleau. “That would have been too much, I think.”

This is the first year that teams have had to work around countable games during the Maine High School Hockey Invitational thanks to a later-than-normal start to the Maine Principal’s Association season. In the past, there were no countable games for Lewiston nor for Edward Little during school vacation week.

“We are still going to come to play, ready as always,” said Belleau. “Traditionally, (the teams EL will play) are strong, and they should be some good competition. I think Gary pretty much knows how the high school hockey scene in Maine works, and he has done a good job in the past of creating some good matchups for us.”

Eleven of the 17 Maine teams in the tournament are Class A schools, five are from Class B and the 17th team, North Yarmouth Academy, is a former member of the MPA and is playing its first year as a prep school.

Out-of-state teams appearing in the tournament include Belmont, Chelmsford, Everett, Tewksbury and Triton Regional of Massachusetts, Berlin of New Hampshire, Burrillville, Cumberland and Moses Brown of Rhode Island, South Burlington and Stowe of Vermont, Hoosac of New York, St. Peter’s Prep of New Jersey and Saint Joseph’s of Ontario, Canada.

The tournament runs today through Friday.