LEWISTON – Wednesday morning, less than 12 hours before loading up the bus and driving off into the snow toward Sydney, Nova Scotia, a pair of Lewiston Maineiacs circled the ice, one on each end.

Chris Tutalo and Lucas Labelle lined up pucks, stickhandled through go-kart tires and clanged shots off the posts.

One hour earlier, practice was over.

Yet Tutalo, Labelle, and a pensive Ed Harding remained on the ice at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“If there’s anything left in the tank, this is where it has to come out,” Tutalo said. “We have to start off with pride. We have to go into every game feeling threatened that someone is trying to strip our title away from us.”

There are 15 other teams looking to swipe the President’s Cup Trophy from the defending champion Maineiacs, starting Friday night with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles.

“In a seven-game playoff, I think we can beat anybody in the league,” goaltender Jonathan Bernier said.

It’s a sentiment shared throughout the Maineiacs’ locker room, despite a fifth-place finish in the Eastern Division. Lewiston still won 37 games, second-most in the team’s five-year history.

Cape Breton finished tied in points with No. 3 Acadie-Bathurst, but the Titan, after a fantastic finish, earned the tiebreaker with more wins.

The Screaming Eagles won 40 games, scoring 242 goals while allowing 230. In contracts, Lewiston scored 222, but allowed 212, the lowest total in the Eastern Division.

“We have a team that likes to be intense and in-your-face,” Cape Breton coach Pascal Vincent said. “The more they do it, the more they enjoy the game, and they have always been good matchups against Lewiston.”

From the beginning of the season, Lewiston has trumpeted an in-your-face type of game. Cape Breton began with piles of youth after a big run to the league semifinals last season.

“Guts and being fearless has no age,” Vincent said. “You can be fearless at 16 years old and not have any at 40 years old. These kids, they play with no fear. We have to control them most of the time. We adjusted our game and our system with those guys because of the way they play.”

The Eagles’ strength is their power play. They are second in the league in both attempts (456) and percentage (21.3), and lead in power-play goals with 99. Forty-one percent of Cape Breton’s goals came on the power play.

To a man, the Maineiacs are well aware of that.

“We have to stay out of the penalty box,” forward Chris Tutalo said. “We can’t get chippy with this team. We have to play our game. … We can’t get sucked into their style of hockey.”

“For us, even if we have a good PK record, the key for us is going to be stay out of the box,” Bernier said.

“We’re all going to sacrifice ourselves, we’re all going to go after it 100 percent,” leading scorer Stefano Giliati said. “We know what to do, we’ve shut down their power play before, so we have to go out and do it now.”

The two teams split in virtually every way. Cape Breton earned three wins against Lewiston, twice going into extra time. Lewiston owns three victories over the Eagles, too, and they’ve each scored 20 goals.

But the disparity is in the number of penalties. Lewiston afforded the Eagles 41 chances with an extra skater, while the Maineiacs enjoyed just 16 power plays against Cape Breton. Lewiston has a better percentage head-to-head (25.0), but the Eagles have more power play goals (7).

While Lewiston will feature veteran backstop Bernier, he’ll square off against 16-year-old rookie Olivier Roy.

“He’s a young guy, but he’s had a great season, and he’s proven that he can get the job done,” Giliati said. “We know 16-year-olds can be fragile in the playoffs, so it’s going to be one of our goals, for sure, to get on him early.”

“Early” starts at 6 p.m. Friday, with a pair of games in Cape Breton. The Maineiacs will return to home ice Tuesday, March 25, and Wednesday, March 26, for Games 3 and 4.

“It’s about who wants it the most,” Vincent said. “(Lewiston) has a bunch of guys who went through it all last year, and they had a good season, and that can’t be a bad thing for them, but the bottom line is that this year is a new year, and it’s about who wants it more.”