LEWISTON — It took a full period for Lewiston to figure things out. It took 24 seconds to essentially put the game out of Edward Little’s reach.

Joey Fournier scored his first of the season and Jon McDonough netted his first of two on the night 24 seconds apart early in the second period as the Blue Devils picked apart their cross-river rivals from Edward Little 6-0 Saturday night in the teams’ season-opening boys’ hockey game at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“When you’re opening up against a team like EL the first game of the season, you’re looking to see if your skating legs are there, and I felt in the first period we were only average,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “That said, we had a lot of shots on net, we didn’t get overly frustrated and we took off in the second.”

Sam Cloutier also scored a pair and Ben Wigant added another for the Blue Devils, who spent much of the first period scratching their heads over how to beat Eddies’ keeper Alan Nelson.

Nelson, playing in his first varsity game, got the start Saturday in place of regular starter Rich Belanger, who suffered an injury in practice late in the week.

“Our goaltender played pretty well, we played pretty well in the first period, but a good hockey team takes advantage of the mistakes we made, and they did that,” EL coach Craig Latuscha said. “We didn’t take advantage of the opportunities we had. Their goaltender made a couple of good saves and that was the game. In goal now, we don’t have one starting goaltender anymore. We have three.” 

After a successful preseason with games against top Class A teams and even a prep school squad, the only question in Belleau’s mind to begin the season was where the goals would come from. He got part of his answer Saturday.

“We expect the guys that scored tonight to put the puck in the net,” Belleau said, “but the other things is, we took 50 shots on net and had several scoring opportunities. Last year, we didn’t generate this many scoring opportunities, so it’s nice to see a start like this.” 

Nelson got into the heads of the Lewiston skaters early. Fifty-seven seconds into the game, Cloutier escaped up the right-wing boards and broke in alone on the rookie keeper. He snapped a shot high to the glove side corner, and Nelson snared it with his trapper.

Later in the period, after the teams traded fruitless power play chances, Nelson again came up big on a partial breakaway, this time stuffing Fournier in tight. The EL backstop turned aside 11 shots in the opening frame all together.

“It was a little frustrating. We couldn’t put the puck in the net,” McDonough admitted, “but we all knew we outplayed them, we outshot them, so we knew it would come later on.”

On the other end, Lewiston keeper Cam Poussard turned six shots back, including a pair of prime chances by Mat Gordon.

In the second, it took just a 24-second swath of time for the Devils to take control of the contest. Fournier tipped a Cody Dussault shot past Nelson on Lewiston’s second power-play chance of the game to put his team on top at 3:40.

At 4:04, McDonough sniped the top right corner of the net over Nelson’s outstretched glove on a 2-on-1 rush.

“We were talking about it in the locker room that if we got one, they’d start coming quickly,” McDonough said.

McDonough added his second at 10:02 of the second when he tried to center the puck on his backhand from the left slot. His pass deflected in off an EL defender’s skate and through Nelson’s pads. Sam Cloutier made it 4-0 at 13:55 with a wrap-around chance from behind the right side of the cage.

Cloutier and Wigant scored late in the third to fill out the game sheet.

Both Edward Little’s Cody Russell and Lewiston’s Desmond Gagne lunge for the puck and end up on the ice during the second period of their game at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee Saturday night.

Jon McDonough’s shot sails easily past Edward Little’s goalie Alan Nelson during the second period Saturday night at the Colisee. It was the second goal of the game.

Lewiston’s Sam Cloutier and Edward Little’s Matt Gordon fight over the puck in the second period of their game Saturday night at the Colisee.

Edward Little’s Drew Lupardo attempts to retain control of the puck and keep it away from Lewiston Scott Ouellette in the second period of their game Saturday.