By Justin Pelletier,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Those who left the Colisee with two minutes remaining in Friday night’s Lewiston Maineiacs game against the Halifax Mooseheads with the home team trailing by two goals will likely suffer a form of sticker shock this morning, thanks to Mathieu Aubin.

Aubin scored goals 30 seconds apart with less than a minute remaining in regulation to knot the score and send the two teams into overtime, only to see the visitors score four goals in the shootout following the extra session as the Maineiacs fell 6-5 in front of what was left of the crowd of 2,701.

The Maineiacs outshot Halifax 52-30, but Jeremy Duchesne held tough against the onslaught, particularly through the middle part of the third period and in overtime.

“We really believe that Duchesne is a top-notch goalie, and he has to be,” said Halifax coach Al MacAdam. “For the most part, he has to be better than the other team every night to allow us to win.”

Late in the third, it took two perfectly executed offensive-zone faceoff plays by Marc-Andre Cliche and Aubin for the Maineiacs to knot the score.

“The thing I liked about that is that the whole team didn’t give up,” said Aubin. “We still worked hard and we had the two good faceoffs by Cliche at the end where I scored. It’s fun to see your work pay off. Sure it’s just one point, but we can build on that and on the effort we had all game long.”

“We had the right people on the ice at the right time,” said MacAdam. “I feel that despite the tying goal, once we went into overtime, our team played well.”

Aubin finished with a hat trick on the night, while Cliche added two assists.

For Halifax, the win is welcome after suffering an embarrassing 8-0 loss Wednesday night against Cape Breton.

“We certainly wanted our team to rebound after losing to Cape Breton the other night and I thought we did,” said MacAdam. “I thought we did, and I think it was more important for us to get two points out of that game than to just get one.”

Both teams scored on their first three shots in the shootout, with Aubin, Jonathan Paiement and Eric Castonguay scoring for the Maineiacs. After Frederick Cabana potted the Mooseheads’ fourth consecutive shooutout goal, Cliche missed the equalizer to give Halifax the win. In the Maineiacs’ locker room, the loss wasn’t being looked at in such black and white terms.

“The thing is, now that the game had changed, you can’t count that shootout as a team loss,” said Maineiacs assistant coach Jeff Guay. “Yes, it’s a loss but it’s not a team loss, and I’m sure they’re even saying that, coaches at the NHL level. It’s a long season and you’re going to have a lot of shootout losses now. I mean, yes, it’s technically a loss, but we’re not upset tonight.”

Lewiston (6-8-0-4) never led in the game, and was down by two goals twice in a penalty-riddled game during which all five Halifax goals came with an extra attacker.

“We have no defensemen that played regular last season,” said MacAdam. “A big part of a power play is the defenseman. I thought our power play had good control tonight.”

“About three of those goals were back-door,” said Guay. “We tried to make some adjustments to that. We have to work on that, unfortunately.”

Halifax (11-8-0-0) scored on its first power play 3:18 into the game when David Brine, who ended the night with a hat trick, slipped a low shot past Lewiston netminder Jonathan Bernier from the right circle.

Stefan Chaput knotted the game at one with a second-effort rebound goal at 8:51, only to watch as James Pouliot gave Halifax the lead back less than two minutes later.

Brine got his second goal midway through the second frame to put Halifax ahead 3-1, and Aubin notched his first of the night three minutes later to again pull Lewiston within one.

Derek Bailey evened the game again at 2:04 of the third, but Brine completed his hat trick and Andrew Bodnarchuk also scored to put the Mooseheads up by two, setting the stage for Aubin’s late-game heroics.