The Lewiston Maineiacs said hello to an old friend in a demonstrative way on Sunday night in Chicoutimi.

The Maineiacs scored five goals on 31 shots against their former netminder Brandon Verge to upend the Sagueneens 6-3 in a preseason tilt.

The win is Lewiston’s third victory in five preseason contests this season, and served as a coming out party for 17-year-old veteran Marc-Andre Cliche, who found his scoring touch with two goals and two assists.

“We played very well tonight,” said coach Ed Harding. “We had a few players in particular – Cliche, (Mathieu) Aubin and (Eric) Castonguay all had solid games for us tonight.”

Cliche led the way in a lightning-fast first period that saw the Maineiacs open up on Verge right away. First, he fed the rookie Castonguay, the team’s points leader this preseason, for a goal just 3:35 into the game, and then he tallied his first goal less than one minute later on a feed from Aubin, the Maineiacs’ second goal in five shots on their former teammate.

“Most of the younger guys really didn’t know who Verge was, but we certainly talked about how to beat him,” said Harding. “The first one went in early, glove-side high. It was good in general to get on the board early.”

Getting the win in net for the Maineiacs was Jonathan Bernier, who played the first two periods and allowed just two goals on 20 shots in his longest outing so far.

“The two that went by him, he was screened,” said Harding. “He played very well tonight.”

On the other side, Chicoutimi knoted the game up early in the second period on two power-play goals, both off the stick of Nicolas Marcotte, a seasoned veteran.

“We’ve told the kids we are not going to fault them for something we haven’t worked on yet,” said Harding. “We haven’t done anything with the special units yet, and we are still rotating players through.”

The Maineiacs, however, exploded for three goals in the final five minutes of the middle frame to essentially ice the game.

In the third, things got rough as Mathieu Aubin, Maxime Mathieu and Olivier Legault all got into pushing matches. Legault was assessed a major penalty, a match penalty and was ejected from the game with five minutes left in the game for apparently catching a Sagueneens player in the face with a stick. Aubin was tossed for getting into a second fight at the same time that Legault was battling his man. Legault was tossed not only for the stick infraction, which Harding believes will be reviewed by the league, but also for being in his second fight of the game, which is an automatic disqualification.

“Aside from that incident, it was a relatively clean game,” said Harding.

The teams traded goals in the final minutes to complete the scoring, with Castonguay adding another to his total with a short-handed, empty-net goal at the 19:55 mark.

The Maineiacs next game is on the road on Thursday in Moncton.