LEWISTON – Friday night’s game against Victoriaville was supposed to be easy. The Maineiacs barely escaped, winning 5-4.

Sunday’s game against Acadie-Bathurst also appears easy, if you go by the teams’ records.

Here we go again.

“They are actually a much better team than Victoriaville,” Maineiacs coach Mario Durocher said. “They play very well defensively and they like to trap through the neutral zone.”

The Titan will be playing their third game in three nights on the road. They currently are 14th overall in the 16-team league.

Bathurst, a solid team on defense that is struggling to get into the top 13 and into the playoffs, has defeated Lewiston twice this season.

“The way we look at it is that we are in one place right now, and our objective is to look ahead to those teams,” Durocher said. “Bathurst is behind us, and we want them to stay that way.”

The key to beating Bathurst, according to Durocher, is to take goaltender Adam Russo off of his game. Russo, 20, was one of the top goaltenders last season and has the ability to single-handedly steal games.

“He is only about 5-foot-8,” Durocher said. “He plays out of the net a lot, and is solid when he challenges shooters. We need to use our speed in the offensive zone and keep him back in the net. That gives us more net to shoot at.”

One concern for Durocher heading into Sunday’s game is the Maineiacs’ play in the last seven minutes of Friday’s win over Victoriaville.

“I hope that was a wakeup call,” Durocher said. “When we look ahead to the playoffs, we need to be able to win games like that at 5-2 without anything else going in the net. The beginning of the third period was perfect, but the end was terrible.”

The Maineiacs, currently enjoying a five-game winning streak, have won seven of their last nine games. That run has moved them into ninth place in the league. Lewiston has also played fewer games than everyone else in the league, just 45. Chicoutimi, currently five points up on Lewiston in eighth place, has played 47 games, while division-leading Rimouski has 52 points and has played 48 games. The division winner automatically gets one of the three top seeds in the league tournament and a first-round bye. Seeds four through eight get home ice advantage in at least the first round.

jpelletier@sunjournal.com

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