AUBURN – Waterville coach Norm Gagne was asked his reaction when he heard the news that his Panthers would have to face Edward Little with the Red Eddies coming off their first loss of the season.

“When we heard, we knew they were going to be a little upset,” Gagne said. “That’s not a good thing for us.”

It wasn’t a good thing at all for the Panthers. EL bounced back from Saturday’s loss to Bangor with a dominating 7-1 win in a Martin Luther King Day matinee at Ingersoll Arena.

Seven different players scored for EL. Kyle Smith led the charge with a goal and three assists. Colby Gilbert also had three assists. Matt Nadeau and Matt Couturier each collected a goal and an assist.

“We obviously wanted to have a good effort today,” said EL coach Jamie Belleau. “We had a good game against Bangor, but we wanted to see a certain level of intensity today. We broke out of our defensive end well and got the puck into our offensive end quickly.”

Kevin Pontbriand got the Eddies on the board 2:06 into the contest, cleaning up a rebound off a Nadeau shot and flipping it into a wide open right side of the net.

Smith made it 2-0 at 12:50, backhanding the puck past the inside post from the side of the net and to the left of goalie Joseph Fonollosa.

The Eddies (10-1) doubled their lead quickly in the second period, as Nadeau and Dave Roberge scored 38 seconds apart to make it 4-0. Bill Parker and Couturier added markers to give them a 6-0 edge at the end of the period.

“We got into a few penalty situations early and you can’t play these guys shorthanded,” said Gagne, whose team sent three men to the box in the first period. “That’s too many against a good team.”

The Purple Panthers (3-7) were the first team to capitalize on the man advantage, however, as Matt McGowan got them on the board on a power play 2:56 into the third.

The Eddies (1-for-6 on the power play) finally got a power-play goal of their own when Joel Pepin scored on a 5-on-3 late in the third.

“The last couple of games, we’ve been fortunate enough to have some balance in our scoring,” Belleau said. “We’ve gotten scoring from all of our lines, and that’s going to be important to us later in the season.”