Lewiston begins a seven-game homestand tonight against PEI.
LEWISTON – It’s good to be home.
Maineiacs’ assistant coach Ed Harding was a little more relaxed on Wednesday as he sat back in the coaches’ office at the Central Maine Civic Center. There was a calm in his voice.
“Twenty-four days,” said Harding. “We’re home for the next 24 days, and we’ve all been counting.”
After playing 16 of their first 25 games on the road, the Maineiacs return home this weekend for the first two of seven consecutive home games in a three-week stretch.
“It’s been a long beginning to the season,” said Harding, who was commenting in place of head coach Mario Durocher. “The fans around the area are great, and the hope is that we can play well for them during this home stretch.”
Durocher is coaching the QMJHL All-Star team against the Russian Select team in Halifax on Thursday and had already left to prepare for the game. Maineiacs forward Alexandre Picard is on the team and is also currently in Halifax.
As for the Maineiacs’ games this weekend, the team is taking the shorter week in stride. After a day off on Tuesday, preparations began on Wednesday for Friday’s game against the Prince Edward Island Rocket, a team the Maineiacs have become familiar with the past couple of seasons.
“They have a solid team,” said Harding. “They have a group of really good players up there and they are a tough team to beat.”
Last season, Sherbrooke ousted Montreal from the playoffs in a seven-game slugfest, but earlier this season, P.E.I., the former Montreal team, got the better of Lewiston 4-1 in Charlottetown.
“We got down in that game 2-0 really early,” said Harding. “If we go down by one, we’re usually O.K, but a two-goal deficit for this team is tough. We played them pretty even the rest of the way through.”
Michal Lambert leads the Rocket with 17 goals and 24 assists for 41 points in 23 games this season, while Cory Urquhart has 16 and 23 for 39 points. That offensive punch alone will test the Maineiacs’ goaltending duo of Brandon Verge and Matt Davis. In all, P.E.I. has 11 players in double digits in points this season, compared to eight on the Maineiacs’ active roster.
On Saturday, Lewiston will face a team in disarray, the Chicoutimi Saguenéens. Chicoutimi is dealing with a new coaching staff after the last staff was fired last week following a bench-clearing brawl in Baie-Comeau. Ironically, the former General Manager in Baie-Comeau is now behind the Chicoutimi bench. One of the Saguenéens better players, Maxime Boisclair, is serving a 15-game suspension, while the coach, who was suspended for two games, is no longer with the team, according to the team’s website.
On the ice, Chicoutimi has defeated Lewiston twice this season by the same score, 5-3. One of those games came in the second game of the season, while the second was in the middle of October. Both of those games were in Chicoutimi.
“That game, while it’s not really fair to say one game is more important than the next, is a divisional game,” said Harding. “Those points tend to count a bit more.”
Faceoff for both games is at 7:00 p.m. at the Central Maine Civic Center.
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