DRUMMONDVILLE, Quebec – Tired, sluggish and just plain out of gas, a severely depleted Lewiston Maineiacs lineup limped off the ice Friday night having just watched their slim chances of home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs evaporate.
Derick Brassard and Guillaume Latendresse each scored on the power play and Philippe Roberge stopped all 32 shots he faced as Drummondville shut out the Maineiacs 3-0.
“Hey, you have to look at who we had on the ice,” said Maineiacs coach Clem Jodoin. “We are missing eight regular guys out there. We have to be realistic. The kids, they battled hard all 60 minutes with just half of a team.”
The team’s visions of home-ice advantage have quickly turned into nightmares of a No. 11 seed, just two places above the last playoff position.
After a 7-1 debacle in Rimouski on Wednesday, the Lewiston coaching staff figured it would need a two-game sweep to finish the season with a chance for home-ice advantage. Drummondville quashed that idea with their well-executed win over the Maineiacs at the Marcel Dionne Center in front of a sold-out crowd.
“They have their full lineup,” said Jodoin. “That’s all I can say. Their last game at home with a full lineup.”
The loss to Drummondville, combined with wins by Gatineau and Cape Breton on Friday, leaves Lewiston in the No. 11 spot with a game left against Victoriaville on Sunday.
The best Lewiston can now hope for is 72 points and a No. 10 finish overall. The Maineiacs trail Cape Breton (74 points) by four, Gatineau (73) by three and Drummondville by one (71).
Lewiston turned some heads in the first, getting the first eight shots of the game against Roberge, but could not sneak one by him. Roberge, the backup on the Rouyn-Noranda team that ousted the Maineiacs in the playoffs last season, stopped 12 shots in the opening frame.
“We were in the game the whole time, and we had our chances,” said Jodoin. “We had the chances.”
The penalty kill units,strong all season for the Maineiacs, continued having trouble Friday.
Drummondville knocked its first shot of the game past Maineiacs’ netminder Jaroslav Halak at 5:02, with Chad Denny serving an interference penalty. On the play, Derick Brassard slid the puck through Halak’s legs after getting a quick pass from the left side on a two-on-one with Guillaume Latendresse.
In the second, another power play goal, this time on a Sebastien Piche penalty, put the Voltigeurs ahead 2-0. With Maineiacs forward Alexandre Picard buried in the Drummondville net after a scoring chance, the Voltigeurs drove down the ice and this time it was Louis-Philippe Martin feeding Latendresse from left to right. Latendresse barely got his stick on the puck, but tipped it enough to watch it flutter over Halak’s right shoulder into the top left corner of the net.
In the third, with a bench that seemed to get shorter with every shift, the Maineiacs could not muster enough energy to beat Roberge, and Alexandre Demers took a feed from Latendresse with 30 seconds left to seal the win with an empty-netter.
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