LEWISTON — All it took to spark Lewiston on Monday was a penalty — against the Blue Devils.

On the faceoff immediately following a penalty to defender Lauren Lessard, Erica Lemieux won the puck to herself, split the Biddeford defenders at the blue line and raced in alone on the Tigers’ cage. A quick look to one side of the cage froze keeper Emily Brassley, and Lemieux roofed the puck glove side, staking the Blue Devils to a one-goal lead they would not relinquish in a 5-0 victory over Biddeford at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“It’s good to get a win, it gets us back to 6-6-1 and gives us a little bit of momentum,” Lewiston coach Ron Dumont said.

The teams played the game in the shadow of the 2009 state championship banner hanging from the rink’s rafters, a banner the Devils earned at the Tigers’ expense. Three years removed from that win, and paced by a solid group of freshmen rounding into varsity form as the season has progressed, Lewiston is back in the thick of the playoff conversation.

“It’s been a while since we won in this building against them, and it might have been since that game,” Dumont said.

The Tigers, meanwhile, are in a battle of their own to make the playoffs. At 3-11-1, they need some late-season wins and some help to return to the postseason.

“(Scoring) has been our problem all year,” Biddeford coach Marie Potvin said. “We don’t crash the net well, we’ve had trouble putting the puck in the net. We have trouble anticipating, where to be, when to be.”

If Biddeford hopes to make a surge, its offense will have to generate more chances. The Tigers spent little time in the Lewiston zone, and the Lewiston defense allowed only four shots on goal, giving Blue Devils’ goalie Paige Fontaine the easiest job of the day.

Offensively, meanwhile, the Blue Devils struggled early. Despite a 21-2 advantage in shots over the first two periods, Lewiston only got one puck past Brassley.

“She kept us in it the first two periods,” Potvin said.

“In charting shots, the first two periods, they were all from the perimeter,” Dumont said. “In the second it was tightening up, but in the third, it was just all in close. That’s what we need to do.”

The concentration of shots in the third paid off. Erin Hubbard dumped the puck in on net from just inside the blue line and it skipped through Brassley to doule Lewiston’s lead. Sam Cote made it 3-0 less than three minutes later on a rebound in front, Lemieux added her second shorthanded tally of the night at 10:30 and Natalie Rousseau capped the scoring with a score at 12:30.

“We had so few shots in the first two periods,” Potvin said. “We talked about it between periods, but we came out, we didn’t attack the first shot on net, we didn’t drop to protect the puck, the second goal went in, and we went flat.”