LEWISTON – Chris Culligan was on the doorstep, the beneficiary of a Robert Slaney pass, and alone against Jonathan Bernier.

He flipped a backhand toward the top right corner of the net.

Bernier said no.

Ten minutes later, in the waning minutes of the third period, Joey Haddad fired a wrister from the lower left circle. He watched Bernier snare that one, too.

Not this time.

With the will and the desperation of a team with its back against the wall, the Lewiston Maineiacs weathered an early storm, took their first lead of the playoffs and held on for a 2-1 win in Game 3 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series against Cape Breton in front of 1,816 at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“This is how it is in the playoffs,” Cape Breton coach Pasca Vincent said. “We knew (Bernier) was going to be tough to beat in the series, and he’s playing like we thought he would.”

Bernier finished with 36 saves, giving him 76 saves on 80 shots in the least two games.

“It just comes so quick,” Bernier said of his pair of saves. “I just try to be patient on those.”

But it almost went for naught again, as Eagles’ rookie netminder Olivier Roy again matched Bernier save for save, stopping several point-blank chances as Lewiston tried to build on its early lead.

“I’m going to talk to my scouts to see how we missed this kid,” Lewiston coach Ed Harding said. “They took him in the third round, I think. He’s played well, very well.”

Now, it’s back to the drawing board for the Eagles, who after starting the series 4-for-9 on the power play, have connected just twice in their last 15 attempts.

“We’ve had a lot of time to practice it,” defenseman Kevin Marshall said with a laugh. “We don’t want to practice it any more than we have to, though. We need to stay out of the box even more.”

“We’ll look at it and make some adjustments, I think,” Vincent said. “The power play is shots and screens, and we’ll take a look at it tonight.”

Lewiston fought off another rough start Tuesday, taking three early penalties and again putting the Eagles on a 5-on-3 in the first period.

“We played hard, but we played stupid, again,” Harding said. “We’re just making it too difficult on ourselves. Cape Breton is a heck of a hockey team, and if we do that again, we’re going to be in big trouble (Wednesday) night.”

This time, Lewiston responded to the kill with a goal from Marshall, who stood his ground at the left post as Danick Paquette fed him the puck from behind the cage.

The Maineiacs extended their lead to 2-0 with 1:42 to play in the opening frame when Paquette found Stefano Giliati and Stefan Chaput crashing the net. Giliati got the first whack at it. Roy poked it out, right to Chaput, who slid it into the net.

“I saw everything from there,” Paquette said. “I took my time, waited until the other guys went down to the net and only needed to make the pass to Giliati.”

Cape Breton did strike on its power play in the second as Dean Ouellet tipped a perfect slap pass from Culligan through traffic past Bernier just 1:18 into the middle frame.

The teams face off in Game 4 Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Colisee. Game 5, now necessary, is scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m.

“With two more games here, we need to work on winning them both,” Marshall said. “If we could go back to Cape Breton with a 3-2 lead, that would be big for us.”