LEWISTON – It’s not often a team and a coach will admit to feeling good after a loss.

Count St. Dom’s loss to Kennebunk on Wednesday night among those exceptions.

Kennebunk received goals from Kevin Kennedy, Matt Tucceri and Andrew Lamont, and goaltender Mark Airoldi withstood a lopsided barrage in the third period to lead the Rams to a tight-checking and at times feisty 3-2 triumph over the Saints at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“We knew they’d been playing pretty well,” Kennebunk coach Don Hill said. “We saw them play Biddeford last week and they played them real tough.”

In a rough-and-tumble third period, St. Dom’s outshot the visiting Rams 17-3 and had multiple chances in close on Airoldi, but the junior goaltender withstood the pressure.

“They were swarming the whole third period,” Airoldi said. “We took some penalties, which really didn’t help, and they got the momentum.”

On one occasion, Saints’ forward Casey Parker beat Airoldi on a breakaway move coming across the low slot from the goaltender’s right to left. But Parker fanned on the shot into the open net.

“That was a great move,” admitted Airoldi. “He had me beat, and I got lucky that my defenseman might have knocked him off balance enough, and he missed.”

Parker’s chance came with about five minutes to play. From there, the Saints outshot Kennebunk 9-0 and controlled play in the Rams’ zone for most of that time.

“We did a lot of good things tonight,” St. Dom’s coach John Pleau said. “We still couldn’t bury the puck, but we did better on a lot of the other things we’ve needed to improve on, so for us that was good.”

Sheldon Roy put the Saints on the board at 5:04 of the first period with a perfect shot into the top right corner over Airoldi’s shoulder, but the Rams knotted the score at 10:42 on Tucceri’s tally.

In the second, St. Dom’s failed to score with a two-man advantage for 1:38. On an ensuing power play, Kennebunk took its first lead on Kennedy’s goal – a weak wrist shot from the left circle that slithered through St. Dom’s netminder Max Wiley’s pads.

“That could have generated some momentum for us,” Hill said, “but then they came right back and scored.”

Roy potted his second of the night 13 seconds later to again even the score.

But another 52 seconds after that, Lamont put the Rams ahead for good on a nice feed from Connor Finn in the left corner.

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