A lone Moncton Wildcat stayed seated on the bench following his game against the Lewiston Maineiacs on Tuesday night. The rest of the team filed into the locker room, stunned that none of its four shooters could solve Lewiston netminder Jonathan Bernier.

He sat there, his two hands clutching his stick in prayer-like stature, his head and shoulders slumped forward. The arena went dark as the rink announcer rattled off the game’s three stars.

As the lights came back on, the Moncton player finally looked up. He shook his head in disbelief at the scoreboard one more time. It already had been turned off, erasing the numbers telling everyone the streak – Moncton’s 14-game winning streak – was over. But he knew what had once been illuminated there. Slowly, he retreated into the locker room.

On the other side of the hallway in the the coaches’ locker room, a visibly stunned coach Ted Nolan babbled about Bernier being the best 17-year-old goaltender in the league by a wide margin. He expressed his hatred of the trap, never mentioning, of course, his team’s inability to break it.

Three times in eight games, the Maineiacs have defeated the Wildcats this season. Considering Moncton has lost only 13 games, that is downright impressive.

I don’t know if there are words grandiose enough to describe what happened at the Colisee on Tuesday night. Probably no metaphors would do it justice, either.

While 2,002 people officially were there to see the Lewiston upend Moncton – the best team in the Canadian Hockey League – on the fourth shot of a shootout, there likely will be 5,000 people who will swear to having been there in years to come.

This is the kind of win that turns around seasons. This is the kind of win that should remind fans, especially those that weren’t there, that every game is worth going to. This is the kind of win that tells people who may not have been fans before that the Maineiacs are worth going to see every game.

But will it?

Only if the players, coaches and fans allow it.

The coaches, no doubt, have already put this one behind them. Baie-Comeau hits town Friday for its second and final encounter with the Maineiacs, and Clem Jodoin, Ed Harding and Jeff Guay are already planning for that game.

Maineiacs players need to calm down. They understand how big Tuesday’s win was, but they need to make sure that they now realize what it takes on a nightly basis to be competitive. They need to funnel the explosive energy from Tuesday night into their own gas tanks and burn that fuel for the rest of the season.

They have 18 games to reach their goal of third place in the Eastern Division. Games like Tuesday’s only happen once or twice each year, but with any luck and a little help from the players, perhaps the passion will live on for the rest of the season.

Justin Pelletier is a staff writer. He can be reached at [email protected].