LEWISTON – There was a time when the best hockey team in the state wasn’t filled with the biggest players, or the strongest, or even those with the best shots.

But man, could those skaters fly.

And they almost always wore the black and white, shield-covered jerseys of St. Dom’s.

The Saints have 24 state championships to their credit, many of which were won with small, shifty players who’d dart around the ice, and past many of the bigger, slower skaters on opposing teams.

Meet the 2008-09 version, built very much from that same mold. Quick players trump bigger, taller skaters on this squad, particularly on the front end.

And there are a lot of them.

Six different St. Dom’s skaters have recorded 20 or more points this season, and another four have more than 10. Eight of those 10 are among the three-lines-deep forward corps that all season has kept opponents guessing, and allowed the Saints to score an average of 5.50 goals per game, one of the top averages in Western Class A, regardless of tier.

“Part of it is experience,” St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette said. “If our seniors haven’t been playing all four years, they’ve been playing three for sure, and they’ve all logged a lot of ice time. Our seniors up front all know what it takes, and how to get it done.”

No. 4 St. Dom’s (14-6-0) will face No. 3 Falmouth (14-6-0) on Tuesday in the Western Class A final at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee, having gone through defending Class A champion Biddeford on Saturday, and nemesis Scarborough in the quarterfinal round scoring a combined 12 goals.

The Yachtsmen have their own solid, top-end talent in Travis Roy Award semifinalist Mike Chase, along with Dan Hanley and Seth Fortier. All three forwards are among the league leaders. But just one more player – Dixon Pike – has hit the 20-point mark this season.

Still, Falmouth has given the Saints all they can handle this season. The Yachtsmen have defeated St. Dom’s twice – 5-2 in Lewiston in the teams’ second game of the season, and 4-3 in Falmouth on Jan. 31.

And, in each of the last two years, the Yachtsmen have knocked the Saints from the playoffs.

“We get one more crack at them as seniors,” St. Dom’s second-leading scorer C.J. Bergeron said after his team’s win over Biddeford on Saturday. “Hopefully this time we can come out on top.”

To get that done, the Saints will turn to three complete lines, a rarity in this age of parity (and junior hockey).

Some of the Saints’ pairings make a bit of sense – like putting brothers Casey (senior) and Alex (sophomore) Parker together.

“We didn’t put them together until two-thirds of the way through the season,” Ouellette said. “It’s working now, though.”

Or slotting Ben Randall in where the team needs him for any given game.

“Randall is pretty deceptive, and he hasn’t gotten a lot of fanfare,” Ouellette said. “But he moves the puck really well, he blends in well and he helps make the guys around him that much better.”

For the most part, though, Ouellette keeps his lines static. And he keeps them rolling, making it tough on opposing defenses to key in on one particular group.

“They tend to play their top line more, to try to keep up,” Ouellette said. “We’ve seen that in each of the last two playoff games we’ve played. We’re still able to throw our so-called third line out against any other second line and be confident that they’ll get the job done, so what you see is a lot of other teams get tired trying to keep up.”

Falmouth and St. Dom’s will face off Tuesday in the second game of a regional final doubleheader. Lewiston and Waterville will square off in the Eastern Class A title game at 6 p.m., and the Saints and Yachtsmen will follow.