(PHOTO: Chris Roy)

In the battle of the top two teams in Eastern Class A, the number two seeded Blue Devils cruised to a 5-1 victory over the number one seeded Bangor High School Rams.

“It’s only reporters and the rest of the state that thinks it’s a fluke,” said Lewiston head coach Jamie Belleau of Lewiston’s nine-game unbeaten streak (8-0-1), which started with a 2-0 win against Bangor on Jan 6. “We don’t look at the streak as much as we were playing a good team tonight. We got to take of business every night.”

Bangor head coach Denis Collins said the Blue Devils were a much better team than the last time the two teams met in early January.

“We were expected to skate with them tonight, obviously we weren’t putting enough pressure on the puck,” Collins said. “They were much faster than we expected.”

“The first period took us out of the game.”

After Bangor appeared to get their skating legs under them, Lewiston was able to stop any momentum the Rams had as Kyle Lemelin ripped a shot past Chris Howatt’s glove hand to give the Blue Devils the 1-0 lead. The assist went to Matt Therrien at the 10:04 mark of the opening period.

“We have a good skating club,” Belleau added. “We execute the forecheck well and Bangor had a hard time breaking out of the zone when we had them in there.”

Things didn’t get better for the Rams as they quickly went down two men 4:13 remaining in the period. Lewiston (9-3-1) made them pay as Devon Beland found the back of the net at with a little over four minutes remaining in the period. The assist went to Brandon Tiner.

“Anytime you start the game and put a couple in, you have more confidence, you start to skate and work a little harder,” Belleau stated. “That what happened tonight.”

Kyle Lemelin notched his second goal of the game as he was hooked but was still was able to get the shot off at the 3:49 mark of the second period and Tiner picked up his second assist of the night.

“I literally took the shot and had no idea where it would go,” Kyle Lemelin said of his second goal of the contest.

Lewiston stretched the lead to 4-0 when Jake Bergeron had clear shooting lane and put the puck home at the 7:58 mark.

The Rams (10-2) finally got on the board when Connor Griffin was able to beat Brian Wigant with 6:28 remaining in the middle period.

“We thought we played well (the last time), but tonight I thought they were the better team,” Collins said of Lewiston. “They took advantage of every opportunity they had.”

Beland notched his second goal of the game to make it 5-1 as he shot the puck as he was falling to the ice right past Howatt’s left leg at the 4:37 mark. Assists went to Matt Melanson and Matt Therrien.

Bangor was 0-for-2 on the power play while Lewiston went 1-for-3.

“We have been taking a lot of pride trying to be disciplined for the last four years,” Belleau said. “That’s why we called a timeout at the end, to tell ourselves we had the game in-hand, and we have a big game on Saturday.”

Chris Howatt made 33 saves while Brian Wigant turned aside 23 shots.