LEWISTON — Lewiston and Bangor are no strangers when it comes to meeting each other in late February and early March. Tonight will be the fourth time the two teams have faced each other when the playoffs shift to 190 Birch Street.

This will be the second time the teams face each other in the regional final for the right to play for the state championship tonight at 6 p.m. at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee. The other came in 2013, just before any current player on either team was in high school. The Blue Devils won that contest 5-1 before losing to Falmouth 4-0 in the state title contest.

The two teams faced each other in 2016 in the regional semifinals where Alex Rivet had two goals for the Blue Devils in a 6-3 victory. The other time the teams met in the regional semifinals was in 2015, when the Blue Devils squeaked by with a 1-0 victory.

For Bangor coach Quinn Paradis he enjoys making the 108 mile trek down to the Colisee.

“We’ve seen both teams twice, nothing out of the ordinary,” Quinn Paradis said of Lewiston and St. Dom’s after the 3-1 victory over Cony/Hall-Dale/Monmouth on Saturday. “Lewiston is a powerhouse, you never know what’s going to happen that why you play hockey games. There are upsets in hockey and it goes both ways. We have been the higher seed and we have been upset down here a couple of times. It’s a fun place to play, it’s a tough place to play, but at the end we love traveling down and playing here.”

Now looking at the present, the two teams took different paths to get the regional final. The Blue Devils enter Tuesday’s contest with a 18-1 record as the top seed as they outscored the competition 136-26. That included a 11-0 and 8-0 victories over the Rams.

Lewiston couldn’t keep its 7.3 goals per game average heading into the regional semifinals as they defeated St. Dom’s 4-1.

Coach James Belleau said he wasn’t concerned about the lack of scoring on Saturday.

“We hit a couple posts, (Kyle Welsh) made some key saves, we missed on a couple one timers, a couple of open nets,” Belleau said of the first period against St. Dom’s. “We had opportunities. If we weren’t getting quality opportunities, I would be a little concerned. We need to find a way to put those in the net, but if you are getting the opportunities, sooner or later we are going bury some.”

Bangor, meanwhile, had to grind its way through the regular season and one playoff game as the second seed with a 12-7-0 record scoring 68 goals and allowing 55 goals.

“The win is really nice,” Paradis said of beating Cony/Hall-Dale/Monmouth in the regional semifinals. “It wasn’t about the win today, (it was) the wins that got us here today in the two spot. We had a tough stretch for a while where we lost four or five games in a row to all good teams. Other than the Lewiston games we were in all the games. Losing by one, losing by two doesn’t count as a win. It shows we can play with them. Like I said, we beat the teams in the regular season that we needed to, to get to the spot we needed to be.”

The four game stretch Paradis is talking about happened over the Christmas break and the first part of the new year where they loss to St. Dom’s, Lewiston, Portland/Deering and Falmouth from Dec.27-Jan 11. They went 7-3 after that stretch to close out the regular season. The three games they lost were to Lewiston and Falmouth again while dropping a decision to rival Brewer.

If The Rams have any chance to pull off an upset, goaltender Derek Fournier will need to be on top of his game like he was on Saturday where he made 24 saves.

“Derek stood on his head,” Paradis said. “That was probably the difference-maker in the game was our goaltender. It proves he’s a senior and got us there to these games every year. This is the first time he wins in the semifinals for us. You really have to look at him and say he carried us in those low moments and got us through it.”

For the Blue Devils, they faced a primer on Saturday if Fournier is on his same game that got him drafted by the Saint John Sea Dogs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and by the L/A Fighting Spirit of the North American 3 Hockey League this past summer. The Blue Devils faced Kyle Welsh of St. Dom’s who stopped 51 of Lewiston’s 55 shots on Saturday.

This was after Lewiston defeated the Saints 9-1 and 10-0 in the regular season.

“We will be ready for everything,” Belleau said. “He’s a quality goaltender, we will focus on things that we focus on. We don’t want to get away from our game plan and hopefully we will get a few by him.”

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