Lewiston knocks stuffing out of Baie-Comeau
LEWISTON – After the second period, Lewiston Maineiacs coach Mario Durocher was a bit worried.
“I always hate to see us outshoot a team by 23-5 or something like that and only be up 3-2,” said Durocher. “It’s a scary situation sometimes.”
Richard Stehlik ended his coach’s worries 1:14 into the third period, blasting a shot from the left point after a Mathieu Aubin faceoff win to put the Maineiacs ahead 4-2. Lewiston went on to a 6-2 Thanksgiving Day win over Baie-Comeau in front of 1,984 fans at the Central Maine Civic Center.
“It was an important two points against an important team,” said Durocher. “I was a little nervous outshooting them and only being ahead by one, but that fourth goal really seemed to put them out of control.”
One casualty of the chippy play in the third period was Alexandre Picard, the team’s leading scorer. Picard, skating back to his zone through center ice, caught an elbow from a passing Baie-Comeau player while the play continued in the Maineiacs’ zone and crumpled into a heap.
After staying down for nearly five minutes, two players helped Picard to the dressing room. He appeared alert following the game and said he was fine, but Durocher had other ideas.
“It looks like it’s probably a concussion,” said Durocher. “We’ll have to see it again on the tape to see what really happened, but I don’t think that he’ll be able to play on Sunday.”
Picard did score his 22nd goal of the season, the eventual game-winner, at 8:23 of the second period to give the Maineiacs their first lead of the game, before taking the hit midway through the third.
“There were a lot of strange calls out there tonight,” said Baie-Comeau coach Martin Laperriere. “It’s not a dance floor out there. The refs need to do a better job at knowing who is out there and what to call in which situations. It seems petty to talk about the refs, and really, we lost the game ourselves, but it was still a poorly reffed game.”
After Stehlik pushed the lead to two, Vladislav Balaz upped the ante to three with a power-play tally at 4:19 of the third and Pierre-Luc Faubert notched his sixth goal of the year with a man advantage at 15:01.
Baie-Comeau started the scoring at 13:07 of the first, on its first quality shot on Lewiston netminder Brandon Verge, but Lewiston rebounded with a score of its own at 15:40, thanks to a nice short-side wrister from Gabriel Balasescu.
Baie-Comeau again forged ahead with a goal 28 seconds into the second. Sheldon Wenzel erased that deficit at 5:43 with a rebound goal from the left side of the net, knotting the score at two.
“I think we played a very good game for the most part,” said Durocher. “There was a stretch in the last 10 minutes of the first period where I don’t think we played very well, but after that, we played well.”
“I don’t know how that team has just 11 wins,” added Laperrire. “They play defense well, they run a good game plan and they are well-coached. There is a reason they beat us this year.”
jpelletier@sunjournal.com
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