LEWISTON – Nine-year-old Michael Coffren’s knees and ankles wobbled until he began to spiral on the Colisee ice.

He was saved by No. 16. Marc Bourgeois, the Lewiston Maineiacs right winger, steadied the boy, who smiled a thank you.

It’s the way the encounter – between the team of young hockey players and the kids, all with autism or other developmental disabilities – was meant to go.

For the kids, it was a chance to get out, exercise and experience a bit of the world with their teachers.

For the team, it was preparation for the day when they might be playing for the National Hockey League and asked to give a little to their community.

“It’s gone about 10 times better than I hoped,” said Jenifer Rioux of Wales, a teacher at the Margaret Murphy Center for Children.

Thursday’s event was her idea.

A fan who attends many of the games, Rioux made an inquiry to the team about using the ice. Instead, the team invited them to a morning practice.

The center brought about 20 kids from its schools in Lewiston and Auburn. And when the practice ended, the whole team donned game jerseys and joined the children on the ice.

Some children shuffled on the ice in their boots, smiling as players signed posters for them on each other’s backs. Other kids skated.

Dalton Hair, 11, skated with ease, part of the school’s aim of getting kids out and moving in the wintertime.

But the learning began even before the children reached the arena, said Tiffany Haskell-Lehigh, the assistant director of the center.

The children’s disabilities make it difficult for them to be in new situations. New skates and a new place, let alone their uniformed ice companions, make the experience a new challenge to be conquered, she said.

“We spend a lot of time working on social skills,” she said. “Here we have a new place and new people. They need to be able to follow rules.”

And if they wobble, someone picks them up.