LEWISTON — Ted Hart doesn’t quite remember how he got the puck behind the cage, but he wasn’t about to care.

“The puck was in the corner, and I think it just popped out behind the net,” Hart said. “I just tucked it in with my backhand.”

The Greely sophomore capped a furious stretch of the first period with that goal, the Rangers’ third in 62 seconds, and added an insurance marker late in the third to lead Greely to a 6-2 victory over Messalonskee and its second Class B state hockey championship in four seasons.

Hart is the third of three brothers to earn a state crown with Greely, joining Kevin and Brian, who both played on the Rangers’ 2009 squad.

“Ever since they won in ’09, I’ve wanted to get here, and now that I’m here, it’s special,” Hart said. “I just remember them lifting the trophy at the end of the game, and I knew I wanted to do that too. Now we’ve all done it.”

Hart’s two goals and an assist led the Rangers’ offense, and freshman keeper Kyle Kramlich withstood plenty of pressure between the pipes, ultimately making 14 saves on 16 Eagles shots.

“He had a great playoff run,” Greely coach Barry Mothes said. “He’s a brave gamer. He started the season that way. I know a lot of people were probably licking their chops. ‘He’s a freshman, and he’s not physically that big, let us at him.’ But he started the season with a great attitude, he worked with our goaltending coach, he’s just been working really hard.”

The Eagles, meanwhile, relied heavily on what got them to the title game: superb goaltending and timely offensive attack. Keeper Nate DelGiudice provided the former, with a spectacular 29-save effort that kept the score tight for much of the contest.

“He’s been really peaking for us at the right time of the season, and he’s played great for me for four years,” Messalonskee coach Mike Latendresse said. “It’s too bad to see him go now.”

Overall, the Eagles cap a 18-4 season, the best in that school’s history.

“We were not going to stop, that’s what this team has been all about,” Latendresse said. “I’m really proud of our guys. They played a really good game.”

After the Rangers’ first-period run of three goals, it was Messalonskee’s timely offense that caused Greely fits. The Eagles got one goal back on the power play in the second frame, and came close two more on a pair of breakaways, one from Sam Dexter that skittered wide and another that hit the pipe high glove behind Kramlich.

“If those go in, it’s 3-2, maybe a 3-3 game,” Latendresse said. “But the team just never gave up.”

The Rangers lit the spark early. After an opening five minutes during which the teams felt each other out, Greely ratcheted up the pressure. The West B champs broke through at 11:56 of the first on a shorthanded tally from senior Pete Stauber. Fifty seconds later, Ben Hackett redirected a slap pass from Mitch Donovan just outside the crease, and 12 seconds after that it was Hart’s wrap-around that pushed the Greely advantage to 3-0.

In the second, Messalonskee recovered.

It took more than five minutes for the Eagles to register a shot on goal in the second period, but once they started buzzing, they didn’t stop. They parlayed some of that momentum into a goal at the 9:22 mark. On the power play, the puck circulated back to Travis St. Pierre at the point. He shifted to his right and let a snap shot go through building traffic in front of Kramlich. The puck found its way through and into the cage.

At the other end, DelGiudice was nothing short of spectacular to ensure the Rangers didn’t build on their lead. The senior keeper stuffed a three-shots sequence, getting to the third Greely try by lunging from a seemingly prone position on his backside to keep the puck from crossing the line.

Greely did think it had beaten DelGiudice once, and the players on the ice started to celebrate, but the red light remained unlit, and officials on the ice waved their arms to signal no goal.

“He’s just a very, very good goaltender,” Mothes said. “We knew that goals weren’t going to come easy today.”

The Eagles got another power play chance to close out the second, and Kramlich stuffed a good chance from Dexter with a fundamentally sound stick-paddle save along the ice.

Messalonskee continued the pressure in the third, but after a pair of misses down low and on the power play, Greely added another on Hart’s second with 3:28 to play.

“(Since he’s come back (from injury), the last three regular-season games and these three playoff games, he’s had two or three points per game,” Mothes said. “He’s just been a dangerous, dangerous forward. We needed him to play as well as he did.”

The Rangers tacked on a pair of empty-netters around a Dexter tally in the game’s final minutes to complete the scoring.