AUBURN — It didn’t come easily, but the Lewiston Blue Devils have finally put together a winning streak in the 2011-12 season.

Off to a slower-than-normal start against a tough-as-nails schedule, the Blue Devils broke out in a big way with a two-goal triumph over previously-unbeaten Bangor over the weekend. As an encore, Lewiston skated into Ingersoll Arena on Wednesday and tacked on its third victory of the season, a 4-1 win over Gray-New Gloucester/Poland.

“We’ll take it,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “One at a time. This was one of those games where, you expect Gray-New Gloucester/Poland to give you everything they have, and we’re playing a lot of young kids. We have a lot of injuries, a lot of things going on right now. We did what we needed to do to get the job done.”

Calvin Shelley is a big reason why Lewiston’s margin of victory wasn’t greater. The Patriotic Knights’ keeper faced 27 shots and allowed only four goals, keeping his team in the contest beyond the two-period mark.

“That’s probably the best he’s played this year,” Gray-New Gloucester/Poland coach Aaron Rand said. “He competed and battled all three periods.”

Despite the disparity in shots (27-9 on the game in favor of Lewiston), the Blue Devils never seemed to shake the home squad. After taking a quick two-goal lead, Lewiston’s inability to score goals — a problem against top competition this season — again manifested itself. Despite the shots advantage, nothing was going in.

“They were clogging up the middle, and sometimes it’s hard, even when you have a lot of puck possession,” Belleau said. “They were clogging it up, we had a lot of shots deflected to the outside.”

“I thought our boys really competed hard at both ends of the ice all night, probably for the first time in about five games,” Rand said. “It was nice to see.”

Defensively, however, Lewiston was on point. The Devils allowed only one shot on goal in the first, three in the second and five in the third.

“We’re playing solid defense right now, and if we do that, protect the puck and work hard, we’re going to have a chance to win every game,” Belleau said.

“It was really hard to get that second player through their defense,” Rand said. “We got the one player through, but a lot of times there was no help there.”

The first period began as many of the Lewiston partisans had anticipated. Captain Desmond Gagne netted the game’s first goal just 1:11 into the contest to put the visitors on top 1-0 before most had settled into their seats.

A few breaths later, thanks to a blast from the left point by Patrick DeBlois, it was 2-0 in favor of Lewiston.

Evan Baggs made the most of the Patriotic Knights’ lone shot of the first frame. Capitalizing on a neutral zone turnover, the Knights raced into the Devils’ zone. Baggs collected a pass at the left circle and blasted the puck toward Wigant. Initially, the keeper made the stop, but two Gray-NG/Poland players and a Lewiston defender converged on the crease, and the puck bounced through Wigant and across the line.

Neither squad did much for the remainder of the frame, though Lewiston continued to apply pressure, and into the second period, the Devils did the same, with strikingly similar results to those of the first frame.

After another extended amount of time in the Gray-NG/Poland zone, Cam Marquis followed up his precision pass on the first Lewiston goal with a tip-in effort on a blast from Brett Vallee after DeBlois drew a crowd with a rush around the net. Marquis got the shaft of his stick on the Vallee offering — which was headed well wide — and redirected it past Shelley to give the Devils a 3-1 cushion.

“(Marquis) is another one of those young guys, he’s come a long way, just even in the past week,” Belleau said. “Those are the types of things we need to do. Depth is going to help us long-term. If everybody does their job, we get some goaltending, we play some good defense and minimize mistakes, we’ll be all set.”

Lewiston tacked on another in the third on a nifty give-and-go between Devon Beland and Kyle Lemelin on a shorthanded turnover at the Patriotic Knights’ blue line.

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