LEWISTON – Hockey lives. Not that it was ever dying in Maine, mind you.

The ratio of nouveau-riche communities to spankin’ new arenas constructed since 1990 is 3-to-1, at the highest. Multi-level, alphabet-soup junior programs have stretched their tentacles across the state’s southern corridor.

Where 20 to 25 schools sharpened their blades in sanctioned, high school competitions a generation ago, there are now (counting cooperative, hyphenated monstrosities) more than 50. And the girls, rightfully, now have a place to play that isn’t subject to leftover ice time and loose, club rules.

Good stuff, all. The price of progress is passion, however, and that has left something decidedly missing in this new hockey landscape.

And so it was with eagerness and the thought of perhaps reclaiming our rightful title, if not a piece of our very youth, that 3,600 of us jockeyed for a parking space and a seat Saturday night at Androscoggin Bank Colisee, where Waterville and St. Dominic stood blade-to-blade for the Class A championship.

We learned that not all sellouts are created equal. Suddenly all is right with the world again. It’s as if Wayne Gretzky never left Edmonton. Or FOX never employed that infernal comet puck. Or nobody got Stephen Baldwin and Gary Busey in the same room and whispered the words ‘Slap Shot 2.’ “

No offense to Edward Little, Cheverus and Biddeford, the two-and-through programs who kept the big trophy to themselves the last six years, but seeing their names on that list is a little like trying to digest the Tampa Bay Lightning/Carolina Hurricanes/Anaheim Ducks trifecta of Stanley Cup sippers this decade.

The National Hockey League has its Original Six. Maine Principals’ Association hockey has its Tribunal.

Waterville joined Lewiston as a 20-time state champion with a 3-2 victory over St. Dom’s that ended with a hellacious third period push by the Saints and a wall of sound from both sides of the refurbished dump to rival the last Rob Zombie show here.

Add in St. Dom’s two dozen titles, and in a history that dates back to 1927 and spans 75 championship banners, three schools have won an absurd 85 percent of them.

When that drudgery unfolds mud season after mud season, it gets exhausting. When it goes away for most of a two-term presidential administration, suddenly it’s charming when we see it once more.

“It’s the rivalry. It’s Waterville-St. Dom’s,” said Waterville coach Dennis Martin. “It doesn’t get any bigger than that except for my blood pressure right now.”

Biddeford and Cheverus helped Lewiston jam this arena the last four Marches. To compare the aura of those state finals to this one is no comparison at all. Try weighing a poetry reading with a primal scream session.

Immediate family and bandwagon passengers naturally accompany overnight sensations. There’s so such animal as the latter in Waterville, St. Dom’s or Lewiston’s fandom.

Generations wield an emotional investment that no Madoff taketh away. They’ve had decades to work up a disdain for the other two that is welded to their DNA. York and Cumberland County opponents simply don’t force Devils’ advocates, Cats’ chortlers or Saints’ worshippers to sift through the same emotional baggage.

“It was exactly the way we thought it wouild be,” said St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette, who guided the Saints back to their first title game since 2000 in his initial year as boss. “A lot of fans and a lot of enthusiasm on both sides.”

‘Twas a time when St. Dom’s didn’t merely dominate high school hockey. The Saints were high school hockey.

Strike Dixfield’s own Miracle on the Pond in 1958 from the record and St. Dom’s might have celebrated an obscene 15 consecutive titles from its first in 1947 through ’61.

The puck has bounced the Saints’ way only five times since 1978. Teams that weren’t a gleam in a booster club’s eye back then entered the Ouellette regime with winning streaks over the parochial school that alumni couldn’t easily digest.

Six seniors – the tireless, marvelously well-rounded Richard Paradis, Ben Randall, C.J. Bergeron, Casey Parker, Joe Klemanski and Spencer Teixeira – returned this program to its rightful spot at the center of Maine’s hockey universe, population center be condemned.

“At the beginning of this year we hadn’t beaten Scarborough, Biddeford and Falmouth in at least three years,” Ouellette said. “I know you can add Kennebunk to that list. To get here we exorcised what had been our demons for a while.”

The same ghouls have been afoot an hour north on the interstate, where the Purple Panthers hadn’t sniffed a state final since their 2001 win over Portland.

Enrollment has continued a steady slide. There’s been talk for years of the youth program not churning anywhere near the skilled bodies of the Barry Clukey era or the Hart Family years. Scuttlebutt said that Waterville might not petition up from Class B next year, even if it won Saturday, should it slide beneath the MPA threshold.

Look into the exuberant eyes of Panthers captain Shawn Lee and all the chatter begins to sound like Charlie Brown’s homeroom teacher.

“The seniors and juniors on this team are the exact same guys as my squirt team the last year Waterville won a state championship,” Lee said. “We came right here after our game that day to watch Waterville beat Portland. We remembered everything about that scene, and that’s what we wanted for us.”

Not saying it was the greatest state final in recent memory. Lewiston-Cheverus, triple-overtime, 2002, is still tattooed with that distinction.

Not saying it’s going to happen every year going forward. Biddeford and Kennebunk reloaded fabulously this winter. Youth programs south of here are stacked.

But for one evening, there was an old-school electricity we haven’t seen since Paradis and Lee were fourth-graders. Most of us didn’t realize how badly high school hockey needed it until we saw it in the flesh.

“We’ve had good teams all four years,” Lee said. “We just haven’t finished in the playoffs. Finally, senior year, to finish in the playoffs is awesome.”

He means for the school represented by the big, white ‘W’ across his sweater. But you may include St. Dom’s and an entire sport under that umbrella, if you wish.

Awesome game. Awesome night. Awesome tradition.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His e-mail is [email protected].