LEWISTON – The silence in the Lewiston Maineiacs’ locker room following Wednesday night’s game against Chicoutimi was staggering. The door to the weight room drifted open and a few players were sitting, lifting weights or doing cool-down exercises, but not a single person spoke.
Finally, a few players came through the door from the main locker room, but spoke in hushed tones and about subjects other than hockey.
The effort, despite being severely shorthanded due to illness and injury, was there, but so was Chicoutimi’s top line of David Desharnais, Maxime Boisclair and Francis Lemieux.
Boisclair had a hat trick, his seventh, eighth and ninth goals against the Maineiacs this season, and Desharnais added a goal and three assists to help the Sagueneens to a 4-3 win over Lewiston in front of 3,113 at the Colisee.
“It was a bizarre game,” said Chicoutimi coach Richard Martel. “It started well (for us), but then in the second we stopped, and we missed the net a lot. Lewiston started to come back.”
Lewiston spotted the Sags a 3-0 lead in the first period, including two power-play goals.
“The first thing I told (my team) after the first period in the locker room is that (Chicoutimi) may win the game, but they have to deserve it if they do,” said Maineiacs coach Clem Jodoin. “We did compete to the end, and that was a good thing.”
With the score already 4-3, Lewiston had two golden chances to tie it late.
While killing off one of 10 Chicoutimi power plays, Ryan Murphy poked a cross-ice pass between two defensemen through the neutral zone and took off after it. Sags netminder Alexandre Vincent (27 saves) also raced after it, leaving his crease far behind. Murphy outplayed Vincent, but two backchecking defensemen tied Murphy up in the right circle long enough to make him miss the open net.
Pierre-Luc Champagne (two assists) fired a slapper with less than two minutes left that rang off the junction of the right post and the crossbar, deflecting back into the right corner.
“Those were two great chances,” said Jodoin. “We had them in the third, we had the chances, but we also took two bad penalties.”
The Maineiacs also lost yet another player to injury. Already missing defensemen Chad Denny and Jonathan Cameron due to illness, Derek Bailey joined defenseman Michal Korenko and forwards Marc-Andre Cliche and Sheldon Wenzel on the injured list when he took a hard hit in the left corner and crumbled to the ice. He will undergo tests today to pinpoint the exact problem.
Desharnais snapped a shot over Maineiacs netminder Jaroslav Halak’s glove at 13:14 of the opening frame to give the visiting team a 1-0 lead, and Boisclair followed at 15:27 with a power-play tally to make it 2-0. With 41 seconds left in the opening frame, Boisclair again converted on a power play to push the lead to 3-0.
“Boisclair is the kingpin of this team on the power play and against Lewiston,” said Martel. “He is in the right place for those goals.”
Lewiston retaliated in the second with two goals of its own, the first on a slapper by Brandon Roach and the second on a tip-in by Alexandre Picard with the team on a 5-on-3 power play.
In the third, Boisclair notched his third on the Sags’ first power play of the period, but Jonathan Paiement snuck a slapper past Vincent, squeezing the puck through his arm and his body at 11:43, to again pull the home team to within one.
Lewiston travels to Shawinigan on Friday to face the West-leading Cataractes before returning to the Colisee to face Moncton on Sunday.
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