LEWISTON — Edward Little coach Craig Latuscha emerged from his team’s locker room Saturday at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

He answered the requisite questions following a 6-0 loss to Lewiston, mingled with some parents and spoke with his assistant coaches. Then he turned quickly with a purpose.

“How did St. Dom’s do?” Latuscha asked. “Anyone hear about their game?”

Rewind a few hours. Lewiston High School coach Jamie Belleau’s voice on the phone turned to mild trepidation when the subject of his first game of the season surfaced.

“It always scares me to play a game against EL like this to open the season,” Belleau said.

The favored Blue Devils and Eddies battled to a scoreless tie in the first period before Lewiston pulled away, backing up Belleau’s concerns.

Latuscha’s concern with another game immediately following his own team’s six-goal loss, and Belleau’s fear of his squad’s cross-river rival highlight one of the more unique situations in Maine high school hockey: a three-team rivalry that, despite divisional and talent-level discrepancies over the years, has remained one of the fiercest in the region.

“I remember when I was playing (at Lewiston), and even talking to people who played before me, you always knew that in games against St. Dom’s or Edward Little, you were going to get hit and hit hard,” Belleau said. “You knew the kids were going to play hard, and that was the case well before there was any talk of any titles.”

Title town

Until recently, St. Dom’s and Lewiston occupied the same side of the Androscoggin River, their campuses merely a half mile apart, with the Colisee, also once known as the Central Maine Youth Center and Central Maine Civic Center, fit snugly in between. Since the Maine Principal’s Association began keeping records of state hockey championships, Lewiston and St. Dom’s have combined to win 44 of them.

In fact, until Edward Little broke through in 2003 for the first title in that school’s history, only four teams had ever earned a Class A state championship in Maine (Waterville and North Yarmouth Academy were the other two).

“You can still run into people you played against in one of the rivalry games 20 or 30 years ago, and you still remember those games,” St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette, who once also played for the school, said. “And you both remember how great you were, and how you both scored the winning goals in the games, and how you could have made it to the NHL. It’s one of those things that just always brings up memories.”

“If we lost a Lewiston-St. Dom’s JV game on a Saturday night, we’d be up the next day on Sunday and we’d all go over to the Bates pond and we’d do it over again,” Belleau said. “There would be guys from St. Dom’s and guys from Lewiston, and we’d play just like it was a real game. Someone would fall four feet into the ice, we’d all stop and help him out, out of respect, but then we’d move the game four, five, six feet to the right and keep playing. We’d play it out for six hours at a time.” 

At that time, EL also shared space in the Lewiston rink, in a locker room across the hall from the Saints.

It was indicative, too, of the place the Eddies held in the tri-team rivalry: They shared space, and they always made some noise, but were rarely a factor when it mattered.

“They’ve played the role of spoiler well in the past,” Ouellette said. “I remember they played spoiler more then on one occasion. they’d get into shootouts with Lewiston, games that would end up 9-8. I think that it impacted Lewiston more than St. Dom’s, though.”

But that all changed in 2003.

Rise of the Eddies

Edward Little finally broke through. The Eddies fought through Lewiston to make it to the state final game, and then dispatched St. Dom’s in the final to earn the first state championship in school history, after nearly 50 years.

“That was a great story line,” Ouellette said. “It was good for hockey in general in the area.”

Belleau was the head coach of that squad. Latuscha was an assistant.

“When kids stay with the program … that’s what helped us win those state championships, and that’s what we need to happen again to get back to that level, where all three of these teams are on the same level again,” Latuscha said. “EL has lost a lot of players in the past to St. Dom’s or Hebron or NYA, but those kids who stayed with the program, they helped us win those championships. You get the kids to believe in the program, the team is better, the crowds get bigger, especially for the big games, and everyone gets more excited.”

The Eddies appear to be headed in that direction again. The team lost only five players to graduation over the last two years, and have had only one student-athlete transfer out, while three have transferred in.

“The way I look at it, that’s a huge positive,” Latuscha said. “That’s three new players to the program who are not freshmen, and that says something about what we’re trying to do.”

EL is also looking ahead — way ahead. The Eddies participate every week with the Auburn Youth Hockey’s learn to skate program, helping to generate interest among the youngest players in the area with the hope that they will someday be the backbone of the varsity program.

Divisional switcheroo

The proliferation of hockey in many non-traditional Maine hockey towns has provided a boom in participation rates in the sport. It has also relegated the Twin Cities to the northern end of the hockey spectrum in Class A. Bangor, Oakland, Skowhegan, Waterville and Augusta are the only cities and towns that maintain a non-cooperative Class A program. Given the population shift, and the new teams to the south, St. Dom’s this season was moved from Western Class A to Eastern Class A, joining EL and Lewiston in that division.

The shift makes geographic and economic sense. Some purists would argue that since Lewiston and St. Dom’s can no longer meet in a state championship game, the shift is a bad one. The coaches disagree. 

“It would still be nice to have that possibility, sure, but it hasn’t happened in so long, even when it could,” Ouellette said. “There’s much more depth and parity in the league now than there used to be.

“Now we have the possibility of knocking each other out again,” Ouellette continued. “We can still each go deep in the playoffs and have that chance to knock each other out to get to states. We had that scenario once before, and in the short term, it may be good for the rivalry, and get more people excited about and interested in our matchups.”

“Obviously it would have been nice for the L-A area to have Lewiston and St. Dom’s in the state final, but it was just a matter of time,” Belleau said. “With the growth of hockey state-wide, and the expansion of the sport into non-traditional areas, with three schools in the same area, it had to happen.

“It adds a bit more pressure to the rivalry now, I think,” Belleau added. “Now, all three teams are fighting basically for the same goal, to make it to the state final, and it adds a bit more meaning to the regular-season games, and, if we do meet in the playoffs, it means that much more.”

With the season now under way, the first meeting in the three-team rivalry went in Lewiston’s favor, and despite the score, the teams played much more evenly than last year. St. Dom’s win over Bangor cemented the Saints’ status as a team to beat this season. Given another year or two, all three squads will likely again be relevant when speaking of regional and state titles — just like old times.

“When you look at the EL-St. Dom’s-Lewiston rivalry, at least every two or three years it gets really intense and all three teams are at a peak,” Belleau said. “Every year, each team gains and loses key players, and I know EL’s been hit hard with losses, but they’re not that far from getting back there. And even we at Lewiston are still fairly young and I know St. Dom’s is going to be good again. It’s going to be a lot of fun over the next few years, and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen.”

An area team-by-team hockey breakdown (including players to watch for each squad)

Gray-New Gloucester/Poland

With the strength of the top end of Eastern A, the Knights are taking a realistic approach to this season: There are three or four playoff spots available to about six teams. And they want to be in the conversation for those positions.
Kolby Arnold will be the offensive spark for this co-op team, while Sam Meyer will anchor the blue line. Look for an interesting battle for time in net this season, as freshman Calvin Shelley, whose brother played at the University of Maine, looks to sneak in some time from junior Matt Ouellette.

Hall-Dale/Winthrop/Maranacook

The squad lost a a wealth of scoring talent with the graduation of Jake Levesque and Cory Palmer, who were Nos. 1 and 3 on the scoring depth chart last season. But all is not lost. Eric Ogren, the team’s No. 2 scoring threat a year ago returns, along with fellow seniors Jared Bornstein and Mike Knowlton, and junior Rob Clark leads a good crew of depth players who will help keep the team competitive.
Connor Lacasse, Tyler Bryant and Jason Laporte were the team’s top three defensemen last season, and Lacasse is the elder statesman of the trip as a junior this year. They logged a lot of minutes last year and should again this year.
Senior Cody Patterson, who played last year, is among four goalies with a chance to play varsity minutes this time around, along with transfer Jon Dale (Cony) and Mitch Bessette, who’s coming off an injury.

St. Dom’s

A switch from Western A to Eastern A is a switch in name only. One of the top programs in Maine year in and year out, the Saints will again be among those vying for a berth in the state final. The only downside to the shift is that the possibility of a St. Dom’s/Lewiston state final has now been eliminated.
As a team, the Saints are deep, especially up front, and picking at goalie will be tough, with seven players looking for time between the pipes this season.
On the front end, pnly two seniors dot the lineup, but players like trevar Haefele, Cody Rodrigue, Alex Parker, Cam Brown, Brian Mathieu and transfer Isaac Reed (Edward Little) will be plenty. On defense, Don Larivee and Dylan Rodrigue will log a lot of minutes, with Shawn O’Connell and Ryan Lussier stepping in from last year’s JV squad. Expect the saints to be among the top three in Eastern A.

Edward Little

The youth movement continues for the Red Eddies. Mat Gordon is finally a senior, and the team with more freshmen last year than any other class combined now has freshmen and sophomores. The Eddies are building, but could be a playoff factor this season if the team’s youth can step forward.
Roch Belanger, a junior, will have to be solid in the net for the squad, and junior Dylan nadeau and sophomore transfer Jared Pelletier are going to have to add some offense. Travids Landry should lead the defense. With only four seniors, this is a big year for the large crop of sophomores on the team.

Lewiston

A perennial powerhouse, the Blue Devils are going to be right back in the thick of things this season. A young but very strong group up front has a lot of varsity experience. Look for a talented group of juniors, led by Sam Cloutier, Ben Wigant and Ryan Lemelin, to be the focal point of the front line.
Defensively, swing man Joey Fournier and Nick Mathon will be tough to beat on the back end, helped tremendously by another pair of juniors, Cody Dussault and Scott Ouellette.
Cam Poussard, one of the top goalies in Maine, will tend the net again this season, his third at the varsity level as a junior.

Leavitt

This will be the youngest this team has been in a while, not to say that some of the key seniors and juniors won’t be instrumental. The Hornets’ football team was recently crowned Class B state champions, and six players from that squad will be on the ice with the Hornets this winter, so early practice time has been limited. The strength of experience this season for this squad is on defense, with Eric Theiss, Nick Urquhart and Ian Durgin. Forwards Kevin Theiss, Cooper Legee and Josh Chouinard will be leaned on heavily, and Cody Violette should be more steady oin net as he adapts there. Freshmen Tyler Hutchinson, Jacod Gladu and Devin McMahan and sophomore Corey Mulherin will be thrown into the fire early.