By Justin Pelletier,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – It would have been easy for the Lewiston Maineiacs to fall off a bit Friday night in their first game since upending first place Moncton.

Indeed, maybe they did just a bit.

Lewiston scored twice in the first period, twice in the second and iced the game with an empty-net goal in the third, holding off an inexperienced but pesky Baie-Comeau team, 5-3, in front of 3,050 at the Colisee.

“It was important after the win Tuesday not to lose this game,” said defenseman Jonathan Paiement. “It was a big two points.”

The win puts Lewiston ahead of Halifax for fourth place. The Mooseheads took one point in a shootout loss to Val d’Or.

The win came despite two periods of relatively sloppy hockey, during which the Maineiacs’ forwards had a hard time finding each other down low. The defense coughed up the puck and failed to look at their targets while passing, and goaltender Travis Fullerton, who has been an effective backstop in relief all season, struggled to find the puck.

“We weren’t too good in the first or the second, but I think we played a little bit smarter in the third,” said Maineiacs assistant coach Jeff Guay. “We were moving the puck and we weren’t even looking. It was like our heads were down and the blinders were on. We weren’t chipping the puck off the boards, either.”

Fullerton made 26 saves, though, and finished strong.

“He’s played pretty good for us when called upon and I don’t think he was the only one out there that was shaky early,” said Guay.

Patrons looking for a rekindling of what was once the Maineiacs’ biggest rivalry didn’t go home disappointed, either. The rivalry, born on December 23, 2003 in a game since dubbed “O come, all ye hateful” by television voice Rob Kennedy, has all but died since this year’s realignment relegated the two teams to different conferences and just two games per year.

Also, Baie-Comeau is a much younger squad now. Friday, the Drakkar dressed just two 20-year-old skaters, and no 19-year-olds.

The lack of experience didn’t mean the Drakkar were going to lay down and die, though.

“We’re young and in the learning process for the next two years,” said Baie-Comeau coach Eric Dubois. “We had a slow start, I think it was a lack of experience. We tried to do too much and we kept giving turnovers away to the Maineiacs and they go their tempo.”

Jonathan Paquet took advantage of a rebound off starting goaltender Michael Dupont just 2:55 into the game, putting the Maineiacs ahead 1-0.

“I know a lot of the players on the other side,” said Paquet. “It was motivation to play well, and scoring a goal always gives you momentum for the rest of the game.”

Brandon Roach turned the puck over at the red line, though, and the Drakkar converted the gaffe into a goal by Olivier Donais at 8:38 to knot the score.

Paiement made it 2-1 with a pretty short-side wrister on the power play at 14:51 on a give-and-go with Stefan Chaput.

“It was right on my stick, I had no choice but to shoot that,” said Paiement.

Baie-Comeau again answered, this time on a feeble shot from the high slot by Guillaume Chicoine.

“We were very opportunistic in the first period,” said Dubois. “We had five or six shots, but we had two goals. Good teams have a tendency to do that.”

Lewiston opened up a two-goal cushion in the second thanks to Mathieu Aubin’s 36th of the season at 1:09, followed by a Stefano Giliati marker at 6:18.

“We didn’t play well in the second period, we let them come back a little bit,” said Paiement, “but in the third, everybody played better. We dumped the puck like we’re supposed to.”

Joakim Jensen scored the Drakkar’s final goal at 10:32, and Lewiston hung on from there. In the third, the Maineiacs dominated play territorially, and Giliati iced the game at 19:07 with his second of the game into an empty net.

Lewiston leaves this morning and will play two more games this weekend, at Victoriaville tonight and at Gatineau on Sunday.