LEWISTON — The top-seeded Falmouth Yachtsmen had an early one-goal lead, but No. 4 Portland/Deering kept hanging around through a pair of periods.

In the final frame, Falmouth put the Bulldogs away, scoring twice quickly to cement a 5-2 win at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“You have to respect the teams,” Falmouth coach Deron Barton said. “You can’t take them lightly, they deserve respect. Like I said I like how these kids play. They have a bright future in Portland/Deering and I am really glad to see that.”

With a 3-2 lead to start the third, Theo Hembre scored his second straight goal 80 seconds into the stanza. On their first power play of the game, Marcus Cady found Alex Grade at the top of the blue line. Grade shot went through traffic and found a hole to give Falmouth a 5-2 lead.

Bulldogs coach Jeff Beaney knew they weren’t going to win a high-scoring affair.

“If I am fighting Muhammad Ali — we are in this building — you aren’t going to out-point him,” Beaney said. “You are going to have to knock him out. We didn’t get the knockout blow basically. We won five games last year, I was a new coach and we did a lot new things and these kids bought into it. They played a lot of class all the way to the end. They didn’t get frustrated.and they kept trying to get that next goal.”

The Bulldogs made most of their opportunities. After being outshot 5-0 in the first four-and-a-half minutes, they had their first opportunity of game shortly thereafter. Mikias Silva found Jacob Luce and the sophomore forward found the back of the net at the 4:38 mark.

The Yachtsmen got Bulldogs goalie Sam Segal moving as Brendan Hickey put a nice fake on him slid the puck to the back door to a waiting Robbie Armitage, and Falmouth drew even at the 10:23 mark.

Hickey put the Yachtsmen on top as he stared down Segel coming down the right side and went top shelf at the 13:40 mark.

“He has been our catalyst since he came back from his injury,” Barton said. “He’s a force out there and he’s a great dynamic player and he’s definitely one of our big leaders right now.”

It appeared the game would be 2-1 going into the locker room, but Reece Armitage took a slashing call with 39 seconds remaining in the period. The Bulldogs took advantage, scoring on the man advantage with seven-tenths of a second left as Mason Martell found the back of the cage. Dominic Tocci and Luce picked up the assists.

“We won our first playoff game with one-tenth of a second left and most people thought we were waiting for overtime,” Beaney said. “It’s their nature, we are going to attack when we can and play to the buzzer.”

It was a pretty quiet second period until Theo Hembre entered the offensive zone for the Yachtsmen and nonchalantly fired the puck toward Segal. Segal went to glove it and misjudged it as it hit the cross bar to light the lamp. The goal came at the 12:51 mark.

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