LEWISTON – Hey, nineteen.

We can’t work together. We can’t score at all.

OK, forgive me for revamping a Steely Dan tune that stopped getting airplay on anything but oldies stations long before the current Lewiston Maineiacs were born. It’s stuck there like brain sludge.

I’m only so inspired because the Maineiacs are busy rewriting a different sort of record, we’d have to assume, with one of the most waiflike offensive efforts ever showcased in a playoff hockey series.

Nineteen times, the Maineiacs have spent time on the power play in this first-round Quebec Major Junior Hockey League playoff series against the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles.

The 2006-07 President’s Cup champions would have treated those 5-on-4s and 5-on-3s like a Christmas gift certificate burning a hole in their pocket, cashing them in for a cornucopia of highlight film-caliber goals.

This distant cousin of that team can’t even sniff the crease. With four fruitless man-advantages Wednesday night, Lewiston is now mired in the kind of hitless streak that eventually will get Brandon Moss shipped back to Pawtucket.

Seriously, those of you whose hockey passion and institutional memory surpass mine, think hard: Have you ever seen a good team, at any level, Sunday squirt league to Stanley Cup playoffs, go 0-for-19 on the power play?

It’s so difficult to do that it can’t be a coincidence.

By comparison, five different ‘Q’ teams – Cape Breton, Halifax, Saint John, St. John’s and Gatineau – scored at least five power-play goals through two games in their current playoff series.

Blind squirrels occasionally stumble across a nut. Alex Rodriguez delivers the obligatory seeing-eye single when the Yankees are down 7-1 in the eighth inning of a deciding American League Division Series game. And the Maineiacs can’t even sneak one past Olivier Roy by accident? Sheesh.

It’s so depressing right now that when Ed Harding yanked his team’s redeeming quality, Jonathan Bernier, out of desperation while trailing by two with over two minutes left, you just knew the Maineiacs’ chances of scoring 6-on-5 rivaled those of a Republican superdelegate casting his lot at the convention with Ron Paul.

Not this year. Not with this team, whose sense of urgency in the third period of another “must” game suggested that someone spiked its energy drink with Ritalin.

Down 2-1 despite allowing a total of even-strength shots that Mordecai “Three-Fingered” Brown could count on one hand, Lewiston was mercilessly beaten to every loose puck in the final 20 minutes.

Cape Breton should have been the team on its heels, gritting its teeth and feeling its throat tighten. Instead, it outshot the supposedly desperate opponent 15-6 in the home stretch.

The final salvo was an empty-netter by captain Dean Ouellet, cementing a 4-1 victory and securing a three-games-to-one cushion that makes it virtually impossible for Lewiston to win this series.

Frankly, even if Bernier stood on his head, his teammates spit nickels and dumb luck had made it 3-1 the other way around, I’d still be nervous.

Any series between two teams so evenly matched in the standings over a 70-game regular season usually comes down to the It Factor.

“It” clearly wears black-and-gold.

A ragtag bunch of rookies and trade acquisitions, with not a single player on its roster provisionally inked by a National Hockey League team, Cape Breton is the team playing with confidence and flaunting a Master’s degree in communication.

With the exception of Tuesday’s first period and a woeful first shift Wednesday, the Eagles have dominated this series with alarming ease.

Lewiston, flush with future Bruins, Kings, Lightning, Hurricanes, Flyers, et al, flunk that same eyeball test. The Maineiacs’ most potent offense in Game 4 were the two or three roundhouses that Danick Paquette landed upon the half-crewcut, half-mullet of helmetless Jeremy Gouchie in a first-period donnybrook.

There are physical ties to last year’s championship team, but presently they look more like frayed strands. Don’t call them defending champions. That would imply energy, intensity, even some semblance of hope.

Unless the owners of that year-old bling do some successful soul-searching in the next 48 hours, they’ll be ex-champions, unable to shake that song of regret out of their heads.

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