By Justin Pelletier,Staff Writer

LEWISTON — The Lewiston Maineiacs tried to keep it simple, tried to stay out of the box, and tried to take a 3-0 series lead into Game 4 tonight.

Alex Bourret led the way with five points and Jaroslav Halak made 34 saves, including several highlight-reel stops in the third period, and the Maineiacs upended Shawinigan 6-3 in a rough-and-tumble game in front of 2,381 at the Colisee.

“We never change the three factors,” said Maineiacs coach Clem Jodoin. “Discipline, power play and the system. It’s still the same thing that you are going to hear from me from the beginning from the end.”

The series had seen a total of 22 power plays prior to Tuesday’s game, 11 each for Shawinigan and Lewiston. Tuesday, the Maineiacs had 11 chances with an extra attacker, while Shawinigan had a whopping 16. Lewiston did score four times in 11 chances, though, while the Maineiacs’ penalty kill, near the top of the league all season, stopped all but three Shawinigan chances.

“We started out the game with two 5-on-3’s against us, you know,” said Jodoin. “That was tough to do.”

“It was a very physical game,” said Maineiacs defenseman Chad Denny. “It got kind of dirty near the end, though.”

In the final period, the teams were called for 30 total penalties, and the teams played little time at 5-on-5.

In the early-going, though, the Maineiacs not only controled the game physically, but on the scoreboard, too.

Mathieu Aubin continued to make his presence felt on the power play when he took a drop pass from Bourret at the right point and drove to the right circle. There, he launched a slap shot to the high glove said and beat Shawinigan netminder Julien Ellis to give the home team a 1-0 lead.

Bourret got his first of the game just more than a minute later when he picked off a slow pass from Shawinigan defenseman Nicolas Desilets in the Cataractes zone, shimmied to his left to shake the confused defender and roofed the puck, again high to the glove side, to give Lewiston a 2-0 edge.

“He set the tone,” said Jodoin of Bourret. “For me it was a sign of leadership. I talked to him last night and we looked at the Victoriaville-Quebec game. It’s not that Victoriaville is that much better, but they capitalized on their chances with the power play. Quebec took eight stupid penalties and Victo capitalized on them.”

That early 2-0 lead forced coach Denis Francoeur to pull Ellis, who had played in 59 regular season games and in both playoff games.

“That I don’t worry about,” said Jodoin. “I worry about coaching my team and let them worry about theirs. We are always doing scouting on the goalies, so we knew where to shoot.”

A string of Maineiacs penalties threatened to allow Shawinigan back into the game, and at 8:43 the Cataractes tallied a goal to cut the lead in half. On that power play tally, which came on a 5-on-3, Pierre-Marc Guilbault tipped a Benoit Mondou shot past Halak.

Lewiston went back ahead by two on another power play goal when Jonathan Paiement, fresh from the penalty box, picked up a loose puck at center ice, sped into the Shawinigan zone and dropped the puck between his legs to Bourret. Bourret snapped his shot through Paiement’s screen that beat MacFarlane to the stick side.

“We had a decent power play for the rest of the year,” said Jodoin. “We were never that bad, but we just didn’t always capitalize on it.”

In the second, the teams traded goals, with Lewiston’s Ryan Murphy and Brandon Roach bookending a Jean-Phillipe Paquet goal to give Lewiston a 5-2 edge into the final frame.

There, Halak shone, stopping 15 Cataractes shots.

“Jaroslav Halak in the third made some great, great saves to keep us in the lead,” said Jodoin. “Even with a lead of two or three goals, it could have gone the other way in that period. It doesn’t take that much in junior hockey to change things.”

Even with the win and the 3-0 series lead, Jodoin knows there’s still work to be done.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” said Jodoin. “We have won three games, but the key is to win four. We did take a step forward, but we need more.”

Game 4 of the best-of-7 series is tonight at 7 at the Colisee.