The Lewiston Maineiacs’ bus plodded along across Eastern Canada and Northern Maine Sunday night, carrying on board a weary group of hockey players for whom head coach Ed Harding was concerned following Saturday’s loss to Saint John. They were mentally weak, Harding said Saturday.

Before Sunday’s tilt in Bathurst, Harding switched things up. He split Stefano Giliati and Stefan Chaput for the first time in almost two years. He gave some players more ice time than they’d been getting. He took his 17-year-old goalie to task, and he put the onus on one of his veteran defensemen to help motivate the team.

None of that helped the team escape Bathurst with a win, mind you, but Harding was much more impressed with what he saw in his team Sunday than he was Saturday.

Jonathan Laberge and Brad Tesink scored goals in the first three minutes of the game, and Dany Masse notched his 15th of the season at 16:02 of the third to lead the Acadie-Bathurst Titan to a 3-2 win over the visiting Maineiacs at the K.C. Irving Regional Centre.

“We’re driving home now with no points,” Harding said from his seat on the team’s bus Sunday. “It’s disappointing. This was a tough one to take because we played really hard today. For 32 minutes (Saturday), we played really well at Saint John, too. We didn’t fit together as a team there, but today, we stuck together as a team. We had a lot of good talk on the bench, and the guys were sticking up for each other. There was a lot of positive feedback. Hopefully we can take that from this loss and move on from here.”

One of the better players on the ice for Lewiston Sunday was Kevin Marshall. Though Matt Bourdeau was originally credited with the Maineiacs’ first goal, the official scoresheet listed Marshall as the goal scorer. There was no doubt on the second Lewiston tally, though, as Marshall fired a power play goal past Bathurst keeper Antoine Tardif.

“He can be a tremendous asset to this team, not only as a leader, but through his actions on the bench,” Harding said. “There was no question he was one of the best players on the ice today.”

The two quick Bathurst goals put Lewiston (22-16-1-1) in a hole early, but the Maineiacs battled back. Marshall threw the puck into a pileup in front and somehow the puck got through and skipped past Tardif to pull Lewiston to within one at 2-1.

In the second, the Maineiacs tied it on a Marshall power play goal, and in the third, Lewiston had the upper hand for most of the frame.

But Masse caught defenseman Eric Gelinas without a stick at the end of a Lewiston man advantage and broke in on goalie Peter Delmas, snapping a shot past him for the game-winner.

Lewiston returns to action Thursday at the start of a three-games-in-four-days homestand against Gatineau.