LEWISTON – The Bangor Rams don’t have many good memories of playing at the Colisee.

One year ago, the Rams showed up to play against St. Dom’s on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and were blown off the ice, 13-1. In the playoffs, despite a hat trick from Nick Payson, the Rams fell to Lewiston in overtime, and Lewiston was the only program in the state that Bangor had not defeated once in its history.

On Monday, the Rams’ luck changed.

Payson scored twice and set up another as Bangor wrested control of Class A East from Lewiston on Monday with a 4-1 win over the Blue Devils at the Colisee. Both schools have now lost two games on the season, but Bangor now has the edge in the standings with a win over Lewiston.

“We finally beat them,” said Bangor coach Dan Kerluke. “They were the only team in Class A that we had not beaten in all of our years playing in Class A hockey, and to do it here, in this building was just a great win for our team.”

Lewiston, which has struggled to stay out of the penalty box this year, did well against Bangor, taking just three penalties in three periods, but it was Bangor’s top line of Payson, Dylan George and T.J. Vanidestine that did the most damage.

“He ran three lines and was able to do that all game,” said Lewiston coach Tim Smith. “That helped them a lot. I’m disappointed that we lost but we battled, and we battled hard against the top team in the east.”

And the frenetic pace started early.

Payson put the Rams ahead 1-0 just 20 seconds into the game when Payson curled into the right circle and wristed the puck to the far side, beating Lewiston netminder Nick Langlais low to the blocker side with passes from George and Vanidestine.

“We needed a boost early,” said Payson. “When you get something early in this building, it gives everyone a boost. We know (Langlais) goes down a lot, so I waited a bit to see where he’d go and then shot it.”

Bangor threatened to make a rout of it at 4:26 of the opening frame when Ben Estabrook lobbed a knuckling puck into the zone on a quick tap-pass from Payson. The puck fluttered high in the air and appeared to be going high over the net until Langlais tried to catch it. The puck bounced straight down off of the netminder’s glove and into the net.

Lewiston righted its ship in the second when Adam Wilding swept the puck past Bangor goalie Aaron Buzzell at 1:36 to cut the lead in half, but Bangor hung on from there.

“Our players utilized the system we were running more in the middle of the game,” said Smith. “We made some finer adjustments to stop their top line, and it worked.”

“We were sitting back a little bit,” said Kerluke. “This year we have three lines that we can roll, but we weren’t being aggressive. In the third, we got back to the game plan.”

Early in the third, Bangor again put some distance between itself and Lewiston when Matt Boehmer poked home a puck that just squeezed through Langlais’ pads on a quick shot by Estabrook.

Payson struck once more at 11:35 of the final frame to ice the game for the Rams.