After a tough season a year ago, Lewiston girls’ hockey coach Ron Dumont was excited to see an incoming group of freshmen turn out over the summer.

Nearly halfway through the season, he’s even happier with what he’s seen from that incoming crew as varsity athletes.

“We had such a tough schedule to start the season,” Dumont said, “and to see the way they responded to that, the way they had to jump right into the fray like that, it was great to see.”

Four defenders, one forward and one goalie started the season as freshmen for the Blue Devils. And they were thrown right into the fire.

“I knew they were skilled, but regardless of the level, sometimes you’re talking about 14- and 15-year-old girls playing against women, basically,” Dumont said. “My girls still have their braces on, some of them still growing, and no matter how skilled you are, it’s an adjustment. The strength, especially, is something you always have to adjust to.”

Leading the way among the Blue Devils’ freshmen has been goalie Paige Fontaine. Lewiston, despite a 4-5-1 record, has allowed only 16 goals against, an average of 1.6 per game.

“Even Paige, she’s faced a lot of shots coming up, but it’s different, things move faster at this level,” Dumont said.

The four freshmen defenders had help immediately, thanks to junior captain Lauren Lessard, who helped take the younger players under her wing. Lessard is the only Lewiston defender who isn’t a freshman.

Given the strong influx of first-year players, the Devils haven’t had as much of a problem keeping pucks out of their own net as they’ve had scoring them at the other end. But even that trend seems to slowly be reversing itself.

After scoring just one goal in four games — all losses, and three by a score of 1-0 — Lewiston seems to have found its offense. In the past two games, the Devils have put up 12 markers in a pair of wins. Saturday, the Devils face Winslow before a crucial rematch against top-seeded Greely, to which Lewiston lost in one of those 1-0 setbacks.

“I don’t want the girls to take Winslow lightly, they’ve played some good teams pretty tough lately,” Dumont said.

Leading the way

At any level, if you can find a player to score a goal per game, and get any kind of secondary scoring, you’re going to do just fine.

Edward Little happens to have two.

Drew Lupardo (seven goals in seven games) and Jared Pelletier (six in six) have carried the load on offense to date for the Red Eddies.

“They’ve really helped us out and carried us on offense,” EL coach Craig Latuscha said. “But to be successful, we’re going to have to play really solid on defense, and I think Travis (Landry) has really stepped into that role.”

Landry leads the Eddies’ defense in scoring, but also has logged a lot of time on the penalty kill and against other teams’ top lines.

“I think what will help will be how well we shore up our defense,” Latuscha said. “We have a lot of big games coming up against teams that are worth a lot of points, including games against Scarborough, Brunswick again, Gray-New Gloucester/Poland and MHW. We need our goaltending and defense to be solid.

Turning it over

Charting shots in a hockey game is tough enough for some people. But turnovers?

At Lewiston, that’s what really matters.

“We’re a team, we don’t chart shots — we chart them, maybe, just to see where we take our shots from — but we don’t chart the number of shots, we chart turnovers,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “We turn the puck over too much.”

The smaller the number of turnovers in any given game, the more likely your team is going to win, said Belleau.

“They’re going to happen at this level,” he said. “But it happens more when you don’t work, and when you’re not working, you’re turning the puck over.”