Editor’s note: Obviously, the biggest sports story of 2020 in the Sun Journal’s coverage area was the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. For our year in review, we decided instead to count down the other top stories of the year.

Before the pandemic consumed everyone’s minds there was another “P” word that spread throughout the Lewiston hockey community: Perfection.

When the calendar flipped to January 2020, the Blue Devil boys and girls promptly improved their respective regular-season records to 5-0 and 9-0 on New Year’s Day. By the time the girls team finished off its state championship run just after Valentine’s Day the Blue Devils were 20-0-1, while the boys capped off a 21-0 campaign with their own state title three weeks later.

The girls weren’t deterred by a regular-season-ending tie with Scarborough. It focused the Blue Devils for their postseason run, which they completed successfully after falling in the state final with an undefeated record the year before.

The boys, on the other hand, needed no wake-up call on their way to a state title of their own. A regional-final loss to rival St. Dom’s the year before, where 54 shots on goal weren’t enough, was motivation enough throughout the Blue Devils’ championship season.

The Blue Devil girls found their success in a suffocating defense, which only allowed seven goals all year, including three in one game against eventual state-final foe Cape Elizabeth/Waynflete/South Portland. A deep, balanced offensive attack made sure goals were always in supply. It took until overtime to find even one in the state championship, but the defense and senior goalie Camree St. Hilaire did their thing against a Capers team that scored a combined four goals against the Blue Devils in two regular-season meetings.

The Blue Devil boys won every game by at least two goals on their way to the state championship game, which was a 2-1, double-overtime victory over Scarborough.

The boys’ 24th state title — their fourth in five years — capped off Class A hockey’s first unblemished championship run since 2008. The girls captured their record-tying third state title since girls hockey championships began being handed out by the Maine Principals’ Association in 2009, when Lewiston was the inaugural champion.

Because of the parallels of the two teams’ title runs, and the closeness between the two programs, after the boys posed with their championship-winning banner following their title win, they were joined by their counterparts from the girls team on the Androscoggin Bank Colisee ice for a group picture. Not only was it a pair of Blue Devil champion teams, but a coming-together of family and friends to celebrate the dual accomplishments.

Lewiston boys hockey senior captain Ryan Pomerleau, who later in the year became the Blue Devils’ record-breaking fourth Travis Roy Award winner, said he was glad that the teams got to complete both of their title runs and share the group-photo moment with fans in the stands before the pandemic seemingly shut down the whole world weeks later.

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