LEWISTON – Moans and groans replaced hoots and hollers for many fans early in Tuesday night’s Lewiston Maineiacs’ game against the Acadie-Bathurst Titan.

With less than 10 minutes to play in the second period, the Titan, who have won just eight games this season, led the Maineiacs 3-1, and nothing Lewiston was doing seemed to go right.

Slowly, though, things started to turn.

Michal Korenko notched his second goal of the year at 11:37, and Alexandre Picard potted No. 20 just 24 seconds later, knotting the score at three.

In the third, Derek Bailey fired a pinball shot through three sets of legs and off of two of them past Acadie-Bathurst netminder Gabriel Bouthillette to put the home team up for good, and Picard added an insurance tally as Lewiston came all the way back to beat the Titan 5-3 in front of 1,884 at the Colisee.

“The biggest problem for us tonight was our goaltender,” said former Maineiac and current Titan coach Mario Durocher. “He didn’t do the job. Only the last goal scored was a good goal.”

“I wasn’t pleased at all with the first period,” said Maineiacs coach Clem Jodoin. “We had a bad start, just three shots on goal, but the beauty of it is we battled back from being down 3-1 and won the game by two goals. It could have been worse, if we had panicked.”

Nothing clicked for Lewiston in the first frame. Passes went awry, the players seemed to be skating in different directions and even the intangible bounces went the Titan’s way.

Acadie-Bathurst’s first goal, in fact, appeared to be kicked in off the foot of Jordan Clendenning after Clendenning made a move on Maineiacs’ netminder Jaroslav Halak. After the game, Halak confirmed the the puck did in fact go off of the Titan’s skate, but the goal stood nonetheless.

Four minutes later, the visitors made it 2-0 when Steven Goulet whacked the puck past Halak from the left post on a power play.

“We came out pretty strong in the first,” said Durocher. “That was a good start for our team. We are very young and we had a short bench tonight.”

Chad Denny lofted a quick wrister through traffic toward Bouthillette and scored at 8:37 of the opening frame to pull Lewiston within one, but former Maineiacs’ center Maxime Robert scored his first goal on Colisee ice since being let go in August to re-establish the Titan’s two-goal edge.

“It was good to play against Mario and Maxime,” said Picard after the game. “We played with Max and under Durocher for two years now. It is always good to see them again.”

Robert even got an ovation after his name was announced for scoring the goal.

In the second, after 10 minutes of shooting blanks, the Maineiacs finally connected on the goals by Korenko and Picard. The latter was particularly interesting because Picard was actually tripped on the play (no call was pending because the defenseman let go of his stick).

“He slashed me and then the stick got caught between my blade and my skate,” said Picard. “I fell forward but got up in time and got the puck through an opening under (Bouthillette’s) arm.”

Lewiston is now 14-16-6 on the season and has two games remaining before a short Christmas break. Halak, who stopped 23 of the 26 shots he faced on Tuesday, is leaving this week for the World Junior Championships in North Dakota, leaving 16-year-old rookie Jonathan Bernier behind to play on Friday and Sunday against Rouyn-Noranda and Gatineau, both at home.