LEWISTON – Alive.

Obituaries, you see, begin with long paragraphs and are absolutely crawling with commas, encompassing everything wonderful somebody did in a life cut too short, making them sound as if they invented the cure for migraine headaches even if they spent a majority of their vertical days inflicting them.

This spot was reserved for the Lewiston Maineiacs’ eulogy this morning, and a bottle of Excedrin set aside for their fans, because the home team was dead.

I thought so. You thought so, as evidenced by the majority of Androscoggin Bank Colisee seats bereft of fannies Tuesday evening. (1,816? One thousand eight hundred six-freaking-teen? Are you kidding me? We’re better than that, people.)

Well, you can take the priest off speed dial, because nobody’s whispering the last rites until at least the weekend.

Thank Jonathan Bernier, who made 36 saves and gave the kind of piggyback ride you’d expect from a goalie who’s going to spend the next 15 years in The Show.

Thank Kevin Marshall and Stefan Chaput, who scored the two goals. Thank Danick Paquette, who handed them the silverware.

And above all, thank God, Gretzky, Gordie, and Jude, the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, for a scoreboard that gave the Maineiacs two pairs, aces high.

Lewiston’s 2-1 win left Cape Breton with a 2-1 series lead that was unequivocally essential if the home team was going to gave a chance in Labrador of stealing this series.

“I think we can play a little better,” said Stefano Giliati, “but tonight was a huge step.”

Huge, as in the difference between falling off the high wire and standing on a concrete slab.

Forget the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1977 New York Islanders, the only three major league sports franchises to win a best-of-seven after falling in a 3-0 pothole.

Here in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, where frugal management teams think 14-hour, moose-dodging, all-night drives through the slush are a swell idea, the thought of anybody rallying from three-to-oh-no is laughable.

Had two of those third-period wristers from the slot eluded Bernier’s blessed glove, allowing Cape Breton to steal Game 3, Wednesday’s 7 p.m formality reeked of a mail-in game.

Now, it’s a play-in game. Win again tonight, and the Maineiacs essentially would host the opening frame in a best-of-three with Friday’s Game 5.

“For sure (it’s big) on paper, but it is mentally, too. I think if we went 3-0, for us it would have been tough to come back,” said Bernier. “But 2-1, if we come out strong (tonight), the series is going to be tied. We’ve just got to be ready.”

Lewiston didn’t solve all the world’s problems in 60 minutes of fair-to-middlin’ hockey.

David Perron, Simon Courcelles, Chad Denny, Marc-Andre Cliche and Pierre-Luc Faubert aren’t walking through that door, folks.

The next Maineiac to score on the power play breaks a tie with you and me for most in the ‘Q’ postseason. (0-for-14, if you’re keeping score.)

Head-scratching penalties still abound.

And no playoff series becomes truly compelling until the home team loses a game. The Maineiacs must hold serve to harbor so much as a Hail Mary if and when they return to the Maritimes.

But you can upgrade their condition from critical to serious-but-stable, and to a playoff peach-fuzzed man, they know how important that distinction is.

“We knew we had to bounce back. We talked before the game that the first period was the most important period of the year,” said Giliati, who notched the second assist on Chaput’s goal to make it 2-0 with 1:42 remaining in the opening stanza. “To have a good balance and take the lead was important. We hadn’t taken the lead in the whole series.”

Two-one and three-two games are likely to become the rule as we delve deeper into this divisional series.

Counting the end of the regular season, tonight marks the sixth consecutive time Cape Breton and Lewiston have skated onto a sheet of ice and seen the other team’s ugly mug. Tendencies and weaknesses have been exposed for the world to see.

Lewiston would take 1-0 or 12-11, though, as long as the big number resides on the west side of the scoreboard.

Unlike real life, where the survivor of a near-death experience develops a new appreciation for the scent of the flowers, hockey teams on the verge of elimination develop a keener distaste for the details.

“Playoffs, you’ve got to turn that page, either if you lose or win,” Bernier said. “That’s what we need to do.”

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].