AUBURN — Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland found its firepower, and found it early. That it was against one its biggest rivals on home ice was just icing on the cake.

The Red Hornets put five goals in during the first period on their way to a 10-0 victory over Lewiston/Monmouth/Oak Hill in a girls’ hockey game at Norway Savings Bank Arena on Saturday.

The game was on the opposite end of the spectrum from a 3-2 Red Hornets win in Lewiston earlier in the season.

“It seemed liked everything was working,” Red Hornets coach Shon Collins said. “For one thing, we started finishing. We’ve had a lot of games where we have good chances and we can’t seem to find the back of the net, and tonight we were finishing.”

The Red Hornets (10-4-1), known more for their shut-down defense than their shooting-spree offense, got the scoring going in their first few shifts. Taylor Callier scored from Saige Arseneault and Brianna Doucette just 1:31 into the game. Mariah Vaillancourt tallied a goal of her own just over a minute later.

“Last time we played them, they gave us a very tough game. They battled the entire game,” Collins said. “And I know that they’re a hard-working team. Our goal was to kind of jump on them early, maybe take them out of the game if we could.”

The Blue Devils (6-9-1) struggled to clear the puck out of their own end early on against a suffocating Red Hornet swarm, but they were able to keep the puck out of the net for another five minutes.

“We didn’t come ready to play, from the beginning,” Blue Devils coach Ron Dumont said. “I think they had it in their mind that it was 3-2 last time, so this is a team that we can compete with by just showing up. No, that isn’t true. They’re a good team.”

Kaylee Younk got the scoring going again with an unassisted goal eight minutes into the first frame. Doucette and Vaillancourt again notched goals in the final five minutes of the first to make it 5-0 at the first intermission.

The Blue Devils had their best scoring chance of the night late in the period, when they put three shots in a row at Red Hornets goalie Manny Guimond.

Arseneault, who had three assists in the first period, was on the scoring end of a Vaillancourt pass just over five minutes into the second.

Cassidy Bussiere scored on an assist from Delany Morneau with five minutes left in the second to make it 7-0.

“(There was) puck movement all over the ice, and I saw people skating with their heads up and looking for passes, and where they could move it,” Collins said.

“We need to get to their players quickly, whether we get the puck or not, but make them move the puck when they don’t want to,” Dumont said.

The Red Hornets put 19 shots each on goal in the first and second periods, while the defense allowed just four shots to make it to Guimond through the first 30 minutes, including just one in the second period.

“It looked like they were on the power play for two periods,” Dumont said.

The hosts reached their season-high in goals before the third period was even three minutes old. Arseneault scored her second goal 57 seconds into the final frame, while Ally MacKenzie tallied her first 2:26 in and Vaillancourt completed a hat trick 15 seconds later.

Guimond made a 2-on-1 save against Jessica Clavet with eight minutes left, then poked away a rebound opportunity to preserve her shutout.

Blue Devils goalie Meagan Gosselin faced 49 shots, stopping 39 of them.

“I think we’re still searching for identity, or coming together as far as working as a team. These instances expose it, and exposes it really nastily, unfortunately, on the scoreboard,” Dumont said. “It’s embarrassing. I hope they take it that way, but from it they learn something from it.”

“After that tough loss to Greely (on Thursday), I think we wanted to come out and prove a point of how good we can be, and I think we did tonight,” Collins said.

wkramlich@sunjournal.com