LEWISTON — The Lewiston girls’ hockey team refutes any talk of revenge after suffering a pair of lopsided losses to rival St. Dom’s last season.

They have their own, current problems to work through, they say.

Not only did the Blue Devils work well on those problems Thursday — and apparently solved a few of them — but they also got to do so at the Saints’ expense.

As rivalries go, that was pretty sweet.

Ashley Chase scored a pair of goals in the first period and Mikaela St. Laurent added another in the opening frame as the Blue Devils bolted out to an early three-goal lead and never looked back, posting a 6-1 victory over the Saints at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“It’s a cross-town rivalry, and regardless of what happened the year before, we want to win the game,” Lewiston coach Ron Dumont said. “There’s a lot of people here, and if you have any kind of pride in your school at all, you want to be the winner coming out of this game.”

Nicole Keaney played a spectacular game for the Saints in net, stopping 57 of the 63 shots she faced in the defeat and controlled many of the rebounds to limit Lewiston’s second- and third-chance shots.

“We only have three defensemen, and two of them are converted forwards,” St. Dom’s assistant coach Paul Gosselin said. “A lot of the goals that have been scored against us have been odd-man rushes, and Nicole has done really well. She came up big tonight, made some nice stops.”

“She did very well,” Dumont said. “Anytime you put that many shots on goal, you have to commend her for all those stops. I wish we’d been a bit more judicious on how we moved the puck around or where we put it, but you can’t take away that she stopped that many shots.”

Things started well for St. Dom’s, too.

Kayla McLellan took the opening faceoff for the Saints and raced in on Lewiston keeper Paige Fontaine, catching the freshman high on the blocker side. It was the first shot of the game, and the only shot for the Saints over the first 10 minutes of play.

The Blue Devils, meanwhile, rattled off the next 14 shots, and had three goals to show for it, including two from Chase and one from St. Laurent, players that haven’t been on the score sheet much this season.

“We’ve had trouble generating offense, and when we were getting offense, it was coming from the defense,” Dumont said. “Now the forwards are getting involved, they got five out of the six and some loose pucks in front of the net,”

McLellan cut the Saints’ deficit to two at 4:35 of the second after being hauled down from behind and earning a penalty shot. On her chance, she deked to the left, came back to the right and lofted the puck high glove on Fontaine.

Lewiston replied later in the frame with two more, with Sam Cote and Lauryn Cote getting on the scoreboard on tipped shots in front of the cage.

“On most of the goals, (Keaney) couldn’t see them, and there’s nothing you can do about those,” Gosselin said.

Mikaela Brown added another late in the third for the Devils’ sixth goal of the night.

The game was delayed for more than 30 minutes with about four minutes to play in the second after St. Dom’s skater Emily Poulin got tangled up in a crown in front of her own cage helping out on defense and fell awkwardly to the ice. Athletic therapists and the schools’ athletic directors tended to her until paramedics arrived and wheeled her from the ice on a stretcher.