LEWISTON – Maineiacs coach Clem Jodoin promised a tough, physical, playoff-like game in the days leading up to Sunday’s tilt against Cape Breton.
The edge for home-ice advantage also hung in the balance, with the two teams tied with 70 points, four games from the end of the season.
Cape Breton now has the upper hand – barely.
Jean-Claude Sawyer scored the Screaming Eagles’ second power-play goal of the night at 9:39 of the second period, and netminder Martin Houle withstood the Maineiacs’ furious comeback attempt down the stretch as Cape Breton edged Lewiston 2-1 in front of 2,902 fans at the Colisee.
“He was the difference,” said Cape Breton coach Pascal Vincent. “Martin was dominant. He was, well, Martin Houle the way we know he can play. He found a way to see the puck and to stop it.”
In the waning minute of play, Houle also got a little bit of help.
With the Maineiacs’ top line buzzing and their netminder Jaroslav Halak pulled for an extra skater, the puck came off of Alexandre Picard’s stick to the front of the net. It bounced off of two skaters to Alex Bourret, who poked the puck toward Houle. The sprawling netminder made that save, but the puck came to Mathieu Aubin in the right circle. As Aubin gathered the puck, Cape Breton center Guillaume Demers, still marked up with Picard behind the net, wedged his stick into the netting of the goal cage and yanked it off its mooring. The referee, seeing the net move, blew his whistle to stop play, unaware that it was Demers who moved the net. Aubin’s shot tickled the mesh, but after the whistle had blown.
“That right there, that cost us home-ice advantage,” said Jodoin after viewing the replay five or six times. “Look at that, that is so obvious.”
A faceoff inside the Eagles’ zone proved fruitless, and Cape Breton hit the post on an empty-net try, ending the game.
“Both goalies played extremely well tonight,” said Jodoin. “We played well enough to win the game. The boys tried tonight, they played hard. It’s tough to lose a game like that. If (Cape Breton) had come in here and outshot and outplayed us, that would be one thing, but they didn’t.”
Lewiston outshot the visitors 37-24, but Houle, and two posts, stymied the Maineiacs.
The Eagles got on the board first, on a power play at 19:13 of the opening frame when Vladimir Kubus poked home a rebound on a Sawyer shot. Sawyer’s goal with the extra skater in the second made it 2-0 before Picard got one of his own, his 40th of the season, at 19:08, also with a man advantage.
On that play, every Lewiston player on the ice touched the puck in succession, with Bourret feeding Jonathan Paiement at the right point, who fed it to Brandon Roach at the left. Roach’s shot hit Houle, but the rebound came to Aubin, who fired it across the crease to Picard, who stuffed it home.
Lewiston travels Rimouski on Wednesday and to Drummondville on Friday before returning home Sunday for the regular-season finale against Victoriaville.
Comments are no longer available on this story