LEWISTON – Brewer freshman Jacob Chapman thought he’d tied the game.

He circled the net with the puck on his backhand, right to left, and thought he’d stuffed it past Lewiston keeper Cam Poussard.

Nope.

“I got that with my stick at first,” Poussard said. “Then, I have no idea where it was, and I got pushed into the net.”

Two minutes and 19 seconds later, Brewer senior captain Ryan Nadeau beat Poussard on the blocker side. His shot hit the left post and trickled back through Poussard’s legs and into the crease, where it lay motionless amid a barrage of hacking sticks before the sprawling keeper covered it with his glove.

No dice there, either.

Poussard stopped 23 of 24 shots – and benefitted from a bit of luck – and a pair of sophomores scored a goal each to lead No. 3 Lewiston to a 2-1 win over No. 2 Brewer in the teams’ Eastern Class A semifinal at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee on Saturday.

Sam Cloutier and Ryan Lemelin scored for Lewiston, which again failed to score three in a game, despite coming out on top.

“We’ve been struggling to put pucks in the net all year, but … when you have a good goaltender and good defense, you have a chance to win every game,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “We have a good goaltender and we have good defense, and by defense I mean all five guys on the ice.”

“They don’t score a lot of goals, even though they don’t give up many,” Brewer coach Bill Schwarz said of Lewiston. “We thought we could get three goals today, the way we’ve been playing, and it just didn’t happen.”

Friday’s game was the eighth in 20 this season where Lewiston didn’t reach the three-goal plateau. In four others, the Blue Devils (13-6-1) scored exactly three.

In the first period, Lewiston, playing as the road tem in its own building, established a quick 1-0 lead on a power play goal from Cloutier. Admittedly, the goal was a bit soft.

“I don’t think there was a screen or anything,” Schwarz said. “The guy threw it on net from the blue line and it went underneath his legs. He didnt get his paddle on it in time. That’s a goal he stops 99 percent of the time.”

Lemelin’s goal, the Devils’ second of the opening frame, was a snipe to the top right corner of the cage, short side over White’s left shoulder.

“I saw it, but it was just a small spot,” Lemelin said. “I still don’t know how I got it there.”

“They didn’t need to worry about offense once they got the two goals,” Schwarz said.

Brewer got one back at 9:23 of the second as Ryan Nadeau found the puck on the right side of the crease and fired it past Poussard.

But that’s as close as the Witches (15-4-1) got. Poussard shut it down from there.

“After that first goal (Brewer scored), obviously I was a bit nervous,” Poussard said. “I told them the whole game, get that one goal back and we’ll be fine. We didn’t get the goal back, buit luckily we were able to keep the puck in their zone enough.”

The one downer for Lewiston in the game came with 8.5 seconds remaining on the game clock. Robbie Leeman went down in the corner, and three Brewer players piled on as the whistle blew. Defenseman Devin McLellan jumped on top, trying to police the situation. McLellan received a major penalty and game disqualification, meaning the senior will miss next Tuesday’s Eastern Class A final against Waterville.

“Their defensemen came off their blue line, they’re not allowed to do that,” Belleau said. “One of my players (McLellan) went into the pile, pulling players off, and our guy’s the only guy who gets a DQ? That’s extremely unfortunate.”

Waterville ousts Bangor

In the first Eastern A semifinal Saturday, Waterville fell behind by three goals in the first period, but came back to win in thrilling fashion.

Eric Aldrich swiped the puck from Bangor’s Phil Frost at the Bangor blue line, went in alone and scored past Bangor keeper Zach Hamilton on a backhand deke to lift the Purple Panthers to a 4-3 win over the Rams, advancing to next Tuesday’s Eastern Maine final against Lewiston.

Aldrich finished the game with two goals and two assists and a hand in all four of his team’s goals, while Nick DeBlois had a goal and a helper in the victory. After allowing three goals on 13 shots in the first, Waterville keeper Nolan MacDonnell stopped all 15 pucks he saw in the second and third.

Bangor’s goals all came in the first, on shots by Alan Reese, Nick George and Joey Seccareccia. Hamilton stopped 34 of 38 in the loss.

The three goals allowed by Waterville were the most the Panthers had given up since a 9-3 win on Jan. 3 over Lawrence. The only other time Waterville had allowed three goals was in the team’s lone loss, a 3-2 setback to Falmouth on Dec. 13.

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