LEWISTON – Two minutes.
That’s all it took Sunday for the Lewiston Maineiacs to go from seemingly untouchable to mere mortals.
In two minutes, the Maineiacs squandered their biggest lead of the game, and found themselves down by a goal.
In two minutes, the Maineiacs went from ‘win,’ to ‘loss.’
Dany Masse, Vincent Couture and Marc-Antoine Desnoyers scored goals for Acadie-Bathurst at 9:13, 9:48 and 10:57 of the second period, respectively, to lift the visiting Titan to a 5-3 win over the Maineiacs in front of a smallish Sunday crowd of 2,131 at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.
The gush of second-period goals actually started in the Maineiacs’ favor. After an airtight first period, in which Lewiston allowed just seven shots on net, the home squad enjoyed a five-minute power play after a hitting-from- behind major to the Titan’s Guillaume Mailloux.
Lewiston scored twice, and sped out to a 3-1 lead.
But the Titan didn’t quit.
“The guys showed character and we were able to come back after that,” Bathurst coach Denis Francoeur said. “We have a lot of depth in scoring. The attack comes from anywhere, and you saw that on the sheet tonight.”
Masse popped his goal in at 9:13, and then Couture watched his float over a helpless Peter Delmas (28 saves) after hitting a Lewiston defender and floating into the air.
Desnoyers capped the binge with a slapper off the right post with the Titan on their own power play.
“That kind of stuck a knife in our momentum,” Tutalo said. “They had a couple of lucky bounces, the play went their way a little bit.”
In the third, the Maineiacs appeared to run out of gas. Transitions from their defensive zone into center ice became tougher, and even dumping the puck in became tough.
“I don’t know why,” Harding said. “The forwards looked a little bit tired, too. We had trouble getting the puck in. It doesn’t get any easier, either.”
Bathurst captain Jordan Clendenning fired the puck into an empty net with nine seconds left in the game to cap the scoring.
Charles-Antoine Messier potted the game’s first goal at 5:29 of the first after a defensive breakdown left him alone low in the slot. Masse laced a pass through a pair of skates to Messier, who beat Delmas to put the Titan ahead, 1-0.
The Maineiacs, just 1-for-8 on the power play in the first game of the season, capitalized on their first opportunity Sunday. Tom Michalik kept the puck in at the left point and slid the puck down the boards to Tutalo. Sealed off, Tutalo whistled a pass to Stefano Giliati in the right circle. Giliati gathered the puck and fired a wrist shot off the top right corner of the net. The puck clanged off the right post, ricocheted to the left post and popped out of the cage.
Despite the red light remaining dark, referee Brad Mills signaled a goal. A video review could not disprove Mills’ call, and the goal counted.
“I’d like to bottle the first period,” Harding said. “We started like we finished the other night, we gave only five shots and we did a good job of clogging things up. I think if we can study the first period and carry that out over an entire game, we’re going to be O.K.”
The Maineiacs leave Tuesday on a five-game road swing through Atlantic Canada, starting Wednesday night at 6 p.m. at the Charlottetown Civic Centre against the PEI Rocket.
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