The game was originally supposed to be played at Walton Field in Auburn, but was moved to the turf in Lewiston for a better playing surface.

The two rivals spent the first half of the opening quarter getting acquainted with each other, splitting four shots on goal evenly but none went in. Then the goals started coming for the Blue Devils (2-0).

Darius Phillips started the scoring in the seventh minute, then Roman Dennis made it 2-0 less than two minutes later. Alex Rivet added two more to make it 4-0 Lewiston after one quarter.

“We just settled into our systems, and ran what we’ve been practicing,” Lewiston coach Ben Fournier said. “I think both teams just had to get the pre-game jitters out a little bit. Just work the ball around and get comfortable with it. Once we did that our team really started flowing.”

Jayden Wilson opened the second-quarter scoring for Lewiston to make it 5-0. Meanwhile, the Red Eddies (0-2) struggled to find the target on their shots. Eli McBride changed that with EL’s first goal 3:30 into the second.

That started a back-and-forth of six goals in just over five minutes, making it a 7-3 game with three minutes to play in the first half.

Lewiston then stretched its lead to 10-3 with a three-goal spree. Nick Tilley, Wilson and Mo Khalid all found the back of the net.

The Red Eddies grabbed some measure of momentum going into halftime, with Spencer Frahn feeding McBride for a goal with 0.8 seconds left.

Edward Little coach Drew Barton said he was sad to see halftime come after McBride’s goal, with the intermission cooling down any momentum gained. But he stressed to his team to try and keep that momentum up to start the second half.

“We told them win the third quarter and we’ll see if it’s good enough in the fourth,” Barton said.

Fournier, on the other hand, warned his team about letting up on the Red Eddies.

“We stressed that Edward Little, they were going to keep fighting, they were going to keep coming at us,” Fournier said. “They weren’t just going to roll over and hand us the game after the first half.”

Goals didn’t come at as rapid of a clip in the third quarter as they did in the second for Lewiston, but the Blue Devils still did the majority of the damage in the period. Garrett Poussard opened the second-half scoring, then Isaac Cote answered for EL less than two minutes later.

Wilson and Jacob McBride added Blue Devil goals by the seventh minute, with Lewiston taking that 13-5 lead into the fourth quarter.

McBride’s goal was a back-breaker for the Red Eddies. Running counter-clockwise around the back of the net, McBride was met at the left post by two EL defenders, but the loose ball off McBride’s stick somehow rolled into the net.

“It was a bad omen. It was one of those days,” Barton said. “Perfectly timed slide by Justin Theriault and the ball ends up in the back of the net.”

That was a low point for EL goalie Brandon Asselin, who could only watch the unfavorable roll past his goal line. He rebounded in to end the quarter, stopping four consecutive shots, including two with the Red Eddies a man down.

“Ultimately the scoreboard … seems to dictate how the goalie played, and that’s not really indicative today,” Barton, a former goalie himself, said. “(Brandon) made a lot of point-blank saves. He stayed big. He did everything we could have asked of him.”

The Blue Devils got the better of Asselin some more in the fourth quarter. McBride scored first, and after long-stick midfielder Liam Benson scored a man-down goal for the Red Eddies, Lewiston got two more scores from Rivet and one each from Phillips and Dennis to end the game.

“We really wanted this game. It’s a rivalry game,” Rivet said. “It was like we have to win this game.”

The Blue Devils assisted on 14 of their 18 goals, playing the kind of spread-the-wealth offense Fournier is looking for this season.

“We don’t want to focus on one player. We want to move the ball around, we want to share the ball,” Fournier said. “And to have 14 assists like that, it shows they’re looking for their teammates and we’re not relying solely on one guy to put the ball in the net.”

Griffin Wade notched a team-high four assists, while Wilson had three and Dennis and Rivet each tallied two.

Rivet praised Wade, a senior captain, for his ability to distribute in an offense that has scored 34 goals in two games.

“His head is up all the time. All the time,” Rivet said. “He might not be our goal-scorer, but he always has his head up.”

The Blue Devils now get a break before traveling to Brunswick next Wednesday. The defending Class A champion Dragons beat EL to open the season.

That two-game gauntlet to start the season wasn’t lost on Barton.

“We played Brunswick and Lewiston, two of the historically better teams in this area. We’re going to be better from it. I know it doesn’t really show on the scoreboard today,” Barton said. “It’s hard to see the positives right now, but it’s going to pay off.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com