LEWISTON — Last year’s hero had plenty left for an encore.

C.J. Maksut netted a pair of goals in the first half of the first period and added an empty-netter in the game’s waning seconds, helping lead Thornton Academy to its second consecutive Class A hockey crown as the Trojans defeated local favorite St. Dominic Academy 5-1 in front of a sold-out crowd at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“I wanted to create some offense for the team, I felt like that’s my role,” Maksut said. “With three goals I was able to do that. It felt good to do that for the team.”

Maksut was the big man on campus a year ago for Thornton, scoring the winning goal for the the Trojans in the second overtime against favored Lewiston High School to lift them to their first Class A title. Even with that mantle, Maksut led all of Class A in scoring this season with nearly 60 points, and saved one of his better games of the year for his last one.

“It’s a great atmosphere all the time in the building, and we all just wanted to come out and play our game,” Maksut said. “I think we did that, all around. It’s great (to go out with two state titles), not just for myself, but for the team and for the community.”

Thornton Academy (20-1-1) becomes the fifth team in the past 14 years to repeat as Class A champion, and is the fifth champion in six years from the suddenly hockey-rich Biddeford-Saco area.

“The southern area of the state, to be able to have some legitimacy and compete, that’s been great,” Thornton coach Jamie Gagnon said. “The fact that we can now compete with other parts of the state is huge. The game tonight was a great example of that. No matter what the score says, this was a tough, tough game.”

St. Dom’s finishes the year with a 15-7-0 record having skated against perhaps the toughest slate of teams of any Class A school this winter.

“Nobody picked us to be here,” St. Dom’s coach Steve Ouellette said. “That’s part of the reason you play the schedule we played. It’s to try and be in these championship games. This year’s class of seniors, we went to four regional final games and to two state championship games. It’s been a great run.”

The toughest decision facing the Saints all year was again a roll of the dice for Ouellette as he tried to figure out which of his two solid junior goalkeepers to start. Ultimately he went with Austin Christopher, who won the team’s first two playoff games this season, including a 2-1 overtime thriller against Bangor.

“They both had pretty much similar stats all season, similar wins, and they both had big wins,” Ouellette said. “It’s one of those things, whichever way I go, it is what it is. Both deserved to play, unfortunately you can only pick one.”

Despite playing solid defense leading up to the final — they allowed 12 goals in 10 games prior to Saturday’s contest — the Saints had a hard time containing Thornton’s deep and talented forward group.

“All three lines of theirs are obviously good lines,” Ouellette said. “They skate well. We were there with them, it was an up and down game. The score’s a little deceiving.”

That depth, Gagnon said, has been a hallmark of this Trojan team from Day 1.

“We’ve stressed our depth throughout the year, and that’s what has allowed us to succeed,” Gagnon said. “Whether it’s on the score sheet or just quality minutes from those guys to help keep the other guys fresh, it’s been very important.”

Depth aside, the night — at least the first period — belonged to the Trojans’ top scorer. Maksut started thing off with a finish on a fortunate bounce as Andrew Carignan tried to pass the puck to the point. The puck hit a St. Dom’s defender and landed on Maksut’s stick, and the senior buried his chance for a 1-0 advantage just 2:02 into the contest.

“We wanted to get a quick start, and didn’t want them to get any momentum,” Maksut said.

Carignan got one of his own at the five-minute mark on a rebound from the left side of the cage to increase the TA lead to 2-0, and Maksut again hit the score sheet at 7:17 on a rush up the left side, precipitated by a perfect pass from Greg Lodge.

“We knew they’d come out hard, and we knew they could skate,” Gagnon said. “We didn’t match that early, and they got a bit of a jump. We just had to try to play safe defensively and then do our damage in transition.”

Lodge netted a goal at 6:25 of the second frame to push the lead 4-0, and try as they could, the Saints couldn’t crack the Thornton defense, or goalkeeper Joe Ferrante.

The Saints got their goal on their second power-play opportunity. Chris Finaly slid the puck to Will Desmarais at the right point. The junior blueliner sent a hard shot toward the cage and Troy Haefele redirected it past Ferrante into the top corner of the cage.

“I thought we had some momentum going, the guys were pumped back up,” Ouellette said. “The effort was there.”

Maksut capped the scoring — and his hat trick — with an empty netter at 14:47.

“(The net) looked huge,” Maksut said. “There’s a funny saying that it’s actually harder to score on an empty net because you feel so much pressure, but I saw a 2-on-1 and Lodge was off to the side. I didn’t want to get too nervous, but I just put it on net.”