LEWISTON – It’s my civic, journalistic, dare I say moral duty to help expunge obnoxious verbiage from the Queen’s English.

Do us both a favor, then, and don’t ever punctuate a lame comparison with per se. Please, don’t tell me you’re on-call 24/7 when it requires fewer syllables to say “around the clock.” And for heaven’s sake, never, ever underscore an almost-cogent point with air quotes.

With these elevated standards in mind, let’s order a 10,000-gallon vat of whiteout and brush a generous coat over any future use of the expression “meaningless game,” OK?

This shouldn’t be a big problem. I have the authority, anyhow, because doubtless this absurd, oxymoronic term was invented by a daily newspaper hack. And you can bet that his most athletic accomplishment of the two decades preceding that nonsensical contribution to the sports lexicon was curling a longneck while reminiscing about his two infield singles in Little League.

Sunday’s regular-season finale at the Colisee had a big, fat M.G. stamped all over it, if only because our talk radio-infected culture has trained us to reason that way.

Neither the Lewiston Maineiacs nor Victoriaville Tigres harbored any hope of escaping home-ice disadvantage in the opening round of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League playoffs. Lewiston’s injury list is so substantial that the Maineiacs can’t shuffle 16-year-old, taxi-squad reinforcements past the border patrol quickly enough.

Most of us shuffled those details in our brain and expected a Palm Sunday matinee dripping with all the intensity of a gang of wheezing geezers playing a Friday night game of shinny, right?

To paraphrase the late Johnny Carson’s timeless character Carnac the Magnificent: Wrong again, Zamboni breath.

Go ahead and tell Chad Denny his hat trick in a 7-1 Lewiston victory was meaningless. Just make sure you get out of the way of one of his 94 mph slap shots, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Guess nobody e-mailed Denny the memo. A 17-year-old defenseman, Denny fashioned five goals in the first 69 games of his second season in Lewiston.

Starting at right wing Sunday out of inventive necessity, Denny scored one in every stanza. He was a third-period post away from four goals. The post is still ringing. Ryan Jenner’s ears probably are still ringing, too, after Denny checked him silly in mid-season form in front of the Victoriaville bench.

The Maineiacs didn’t hold back their primary goaltender, Montreal Canadiens draftee Jaroslav Halak. He responded with 32 saves, many of them in acrobatic, how-in-Newfoundland-did-he-do-that fashion.

It’s a funny thing about crazy kids like 17-year-olds Denny, Eric Castonguay (goal) and Ryan Murphy (two assists) and 16-year-old recent call-up Stefan Chaput (goal, two assists). They aren’t savvy or cynical enough to skate at half-speed or treat any game as a glorified exhibition.

They’re playing to be noticed and dying to make it all the way to a professional league that presumably will play a full schedule again someday. There, the pay is infinitely better, but no, they don’t play any meaningless games.

World class athletes, prospective superstars and weekend warriors who owe their soul to Ben-Gay share something that most studio analysts and jaded columnists can’t comprehend. It’s called pride. It prevails in every sport, at every level.

The starting quarterback may don a headset in Week 17. Your small-market baseball team of choice might expand to a 40-man roster in September. And yes, your entry in The Q might draw its starting lineup out of a hat and hit the ice with the attitude that, Mon Dieu, let’s not get anybody else hurt.

Still, anywhere in the world there’s a scoreboard, two teams wearing light and dark uniforms and the hint of an audience (how does Sunday’s near-capacity congregation of 3,550 grab you?), there’s a game in progress.

Somebody wins or somebody loses. Alright, this is hockey, so maybe it ends in a tie. But it isn’t, can’t be and won’t be, meaningless.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].