ROUYN-NORANDA, Quebec — When Maineiacs statistician Jim Anderschat made the trip to western Quebec this weekend, he wasn’t originally going to be doing much work other than keeping a few stats.

That changed in Saturday, though, thanks to a clock debacle on Friday night.

With exactly 5:41 left on the clock (this according to the video tape of the game), play was stopped for an altercation between two players.

While officials tried to sort out the on-ice shenanigans, the timekeeper restarted the clock, allowing 16 seconds of Maineiacs power play time to tick off. The Lewiston bench erupted, but the referee never put any time back on the clock.

On Saturday, at Maineiacs coach Mario Durocher’s request, Anderschat took a seat in the stands directly behind the penalty bench area with a stopwatch, and clocked the game by hand.

The officials were notified that he would be there, and the whole incident happened with the league’s head of officiating, Sylvain Bibeau, in the building.

While he never noticed the clock moving on Friday, he later acknowledged the incident upon review of the tape.

Light workout

After outplaying and outshotting the Huskies on Friday night, the Maineiacs took it easy on Saturday morning, practicing for just 25 minutes. The team went through two or three drills, mostly aimed at transition and forecheck.

The Huskies, meanwhile, had a full workout, and worked for nearly 20 minutes on trying to weather the Maineiacs’ forecheck.

Fecteau effective

Denis Fecteau, who has played most of the season in Junior AAA at Ste. Eustache, was called up for the third time this season by the Lewiston Maineiacs to fill the void left by missing forwards Vladislav Balaz and Gabriel Balasescu.

Playing on the fourth line with Olivier Legault and Murphy, Fecteau nearly had a goal on Friday and played solid in the corners.

Switching lines

While the lines in practice were set on Thursday, the lines used in the game on Friday, and again on Saturday, were very flexible.

Many times during the game on Friday, and particularly on the power play, Durocher reunited his three top rookies (Marc-Andre Cliche, Pierre-Luc Faubert and Mathieu Aubin).

That line combination played well down the stretch of the regular season.

Also on the power play, Durocher moved Alex Bourret back to the point on Saturday and put Richard Stehlik down low to try and create traffic in front of goaltender Mathieu Poitras. Stehlik played on the front line with Karl Fournier and Alexandre Picard.


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