LEWISTON — Who better to offer up advice on how to beat a goalie than another goalie?

Officials awarded Lewiston a penalty shot with 3:46 remaining in regulation Saturday with the team’s Eastern Class A semifinal contest with Waterville knotted at one.

Colt Steele, Lewiston’s leading scorer, skated over to Blue Devils’ keeper Cam Poussard and asked his advice.

“Coach looked at me and said, ‘You want to take this shot?'” Steele said. “I went down and talked to Cam for a little bit. He’d been watching the goalies a little bit. He said the best shot would be a fake shot and go around him.”

Steele followed his goalie’s advice.

Lewiston lived to play another day.

Steele faked the forehand shot, glided to the right and tucked the puck past Waterville keeper Cody Thibodeau, putting the Devils on top by one. Sam Cloutier added another on the power play in the game’s final minute to seal for Lewiston a 3-1 victory over Waterville and a berth in the Eastern Class A regional final Tuesday against St. Dom’s.

“He read me real well,” Steele said. “I mean, I thought he had it. I went around and I looked back and I saw the puck slide in and I was just like, ‘Thank you.’ It was unreal.”

The reason the Devils had the chance to shoot a penalty shot in the first place was because a Panthers defender covered the puck in the crease in lieu of Thibodeau.

“The ref said he covered the puck. It’s his discretion,” Waterville coach Dennis Martin said. “To play the game we played tonight, to have the game decided on a penalty shot, that’s tough. But a rule is a rule, I guess, and we have to live by it.”

After falling to Lewiston 11-0 and 5-1 in the regular season, and 5-1 in the KVAC championship game, the Panthers knew they had to do something differently Saturday if they hoped to slow Lewiston down.

That something different was an all out trap.

“We knew we had to battle, we knew we had to get the first one,” Martin said. “We put a little trap in. We didn’t have a lot of chances, but we kept them at bay.”

Lewiston had a hard time solving Waterville’s trap.

“When playing against a team that runs a trap, it’s all about execution, it’s all about the first pass,” Lewiston coach Jamie Belleau said. “It can get frustrating, and no matter how many times you tell them what their options are, they have to execute.”

The Panthers struck first, sending their crowd into a frenzy and shocking the large Lewiston contingent on the other side. Kyle Bishop, hard on the forecheck, popped the puck loose into the middle, where a waiting and wide open Tim Locke buried the shot blocker side on Poussard to put his team on top by one.

“If you would have asked me what one of the worst things that could have happened to us, it would have been that they get an early goal,” Belleau said. “It was a fluke play, but it happens. You always try to draw something positive from a negative, and maybe a little bit of adversity in this game will help us prepare for the next one.”

That was one of only three Waterville shots in the first frame. Despite a 10-3 advantage in Lewiston’s favor, the Devils couldn’t solve Thibodeau.

“He played a great game,” Martin said.

“He really kept them in the game,” Belleau said.

In the second, it was more of the same, and even more dramatic. Lewiston’s defense clamped down hard on the Waterville attack, allowing just one shot — an easy save by Poussard — to reach the cage.

The Blue Devils finally broke through on offense in the second, too, beating Thibodeau just four seconds into a penalty on a Kyle Lemelin faceoff win, a Brandon Tiner shot and ultimately a tip-in by Jon McDonough, who sent the puck through Thibodeau’s pillows and across the line. That penalty was also for a delay of game, when a Waterville defender covered the puck near the cage, this time outside of the blue paint.

Lewiston continued the pressure, holding a 13-1 advantage in shots in the second period. But nothing found its way through.