LEWISTON – The Lewiston Maineiacs’ up-and-down journey continues.

Two nights after an impressive, three-goal victory over one of the top teams in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, the Maineiacs made critical, tactical errors that cost them a chance to stay close with Telus West-leading Rouyn-Noranda.

Of course, Maxime Macenauer’s second hat trick of the season against Lewiston didn’t help the Maineiacs’ cause, either.

The opportunistic Huskies converted four turnovers into goals and skated away from the Androscoggin Bank Colisee on Friday with a 5-1 win over Lewiston in front of 2,198 on teddy toss night.

“It’s a consistency thing,” Maineiacs’ coach Ed Harding said. “We played a marvelous game the other night, and you have to be able to come back and do that twice in a row.”

Huskies’ (18-10-3-2) goaltender Antoine Lafleur recovered from a shaky start to post the victory, his eighth of the season, and Macenauer’s three goals led the offense.

“Our forwards, we can have one line hot one night, another night, it will be another line,” Rouyn-Noranda coach Andre Tourigny said. “(As for Lafleur), we didn’t help him a lot at the start, and Lewiston put a lot of drives toward him, and they crashed the net. That’s never easy for a goalie to start the game.”

On the other end, Lewiston keeper Peter Delmas allowed some shaky goals late after a few tough shots early.

“The difference is, on Wednesday, we won all of our battles, and we won the game,” Harding said. “We lost some key battles and gave them too many odd-man chances (Friday).”

The stuffed toys rained down from the seats early Friday as Billy Lacasse staked the Maineiacs to a quick 1-0 lead.

Lacasse picked up the puck on a nifty redirect by Danick Paquette off his skate and was off to the races, powering up the right side of the ice. He drove to the net with the puck on his backhand, and slid the puck 5-hole on Lafleur.

“In the first period, we gave up four odd-man rushes and we lost seven battles along the boards,” Tourigny said. “You can’t win that way.”

Both teams enjoyed a full, two-minute power play right after the Lewiston goal, but both came up empty. Lewiston buckled down defensively in the second half of the frame, allowing just five shots to reach Delmas after scoring the goal.

On the other end, Lafleur battled the puck a bit, but kept it out of the cage to keep the game close.

In the second, Lewiston twice squandered power plays on Paquette penalties, and twice the Maineiacs paid for it. After the Huskies scored on their first power-play chance of the middle frame, the Maineiacs nearly scored, but officials ruled the puck had been batted in by a gloved hand.

At 11:30 of the second, Lewiston began its first power play chance for the period, which lasted 26 seconds, until Paquette interfered with a player in the center zone.

The Huskies seized the momentum, and converted an even-strength goal at 16:09 on a shot from the low slot by Benoit Gervais to take a 2-1 lead.

Lewiston went back to work on the man advantage at 16:18, but at 17:11, officials whistled Paquette for a high stick. On the ensuing 4-on-4, Sergey Ostapchuk snapped a shot off the right post on a rush up the left side to give his team a two-goal cushion headed into the third.

Paquette didn’t skate a shift in the third period, prompting fans to chant variations of “We want Danick” for most of the final frame.

“He’s a great kid, and I’d do anything for Danick,” Harding said, “but he’s going to learn to play the right way. We have a responsibility to Lewiston, we have a responsibility to our fans, we have a responsibility to the Atlanta Thrashers to teach him how to play the right way. He’s not going to take penalties while we’re on our power play. That is probably the biggest taboo in hockey, going offsides and taking penalties on the power play.”

Macenauer picked up his second of the contest 2:10 into the third to dig the Maineiacs further into a hole, out of which they could not climb, and he capped the hat trick at 14:49 of the final frame, banging his own rebound past Delmas at the right post.

Lewiston will play its final home contest before Christmas on Sunday when it takes on cellar-dwelling Val d’Or in a 2 p.m. matinee at the Colisee.