Close – much closer than last weekend – but still nothing doing for the Lewiston Maineiacs.

The Halifax Mooseheads’ Guillaume Monast scored his first goal of the season on the power play at 8:53 of the third period to lift his team to a 3-2 win over the visiting Maineiacs in front of 6,157 at the Halifax Metro Centre on Friday.

The loss is the Maineiacs’ fifth consecutive setback after a season-opening win at home.

Halifax, meanwhile, sits at 4-1 on the young season.

In a trend that has yet to reverse itself since the team set out on the road a week and a half ago, the Mooseheads severely outshot the Maineiacs, getting ahead of Lewiston 39-24 in that category.

“It comes down to faceoffs again,” Maineiacs’ Head Coach and GM Ed Harding said. “They’re young kids and they’re taking draws against 19- and 20-year-olds, and I think that’s part of the problem, but we’ll address that.”

This time, though, unlike in the team’s three other road games, the Maineiacs were in the game through the third period.

“We’re positive right now,” Harding said. “Apparently, Halifax is supposed to be one of the best teams in the league, and they were missing the same amount of guys we were missing, so if that’s the case, you can see we played with them on the road.”

Tom Michalik had a scary moment in a rough-and-tumble third period after Halifax forward P.J. Corsi sent him tumbling head first into the boards behind goaltender Peter Delmas’ net. Michalik was slow to get up, but appeared to be O.K. Harding confirmed after the game that Michalik was fine.

Danick Paquette put Lewiston on the board at 11:34 of the opening period with a power play goal. The lead lasted less than three minutes, as Ryan Hillier equalized at 14:15.

In the second, Lewiston again went ahead, this time on a David Taylor tip-in, only to have Bryce Swan tie it up, setting up Monast’s third-period heroics.

The same two teams will battle again tonight at 6 p.m.