LEWISTON – Sebastien Piche had Saturday circled on his calendar for a while.

The former Lewiston Maineiacs’ defenseman, traded to Shawinigan and on his third team since leaving Lewiston, made his first trip back to his old stomping grounds since that trade.

He gave his old fans plenty to be happy about.

Piche was one of nine Rimouski Oceanic skaters to record at least two points as the hottest team in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League kept rolling through Lewiston on Saturday, posting a 9-2 win over the Maineiacs in front of 2,649 at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“The way I coach, it’s always been about consistency,” Rimouski coach and former Lewiston bench boss Clem Jodoin said. “We’re just starting to get all of our players back now. We’ve lost 250 man-games to injury already this season, and some of those players are just getting back now.”

Keven Veilleux – easily the best player on the ice Saturday – was one of those oft-injured players. He had a goal and two assists against Lewiston, as did Jordan Caron (who completed the Gordie Howe hat trick with a fight against Matt Bourdeau) and Felix Lefrancois.

The first period bordered on embarrassing. The Oceanic beat the Maineiacs to every puck, and more than once took it away with relative ease. Lewiston’s turnovers turned into goals. Rimouski recovered its turnovers.

Even more embarrassing: Rimouski 4, Lewiston 0 after one.

“Our forwards were not very good at all,” Lewiston coach Don MacAdam said. “They’re not scoring, one guy got both tonight, and the backcheck … it’s like we’ve never gone over backchecking before.”

Keven Veilleux, Ryan Kavanagh, Maxime Ouimet and Jordan Caron all scored in the opening frame for the Oceanic, and all at even-strength.

“That was important, because we know, even though the record wasn’t that good, they play hard,” Piche said. “We had to start the game off strong.”

The teams played evenly in the second – a much better showing for Lewiston as Rimouski appeared to ease off a bit.

That changed just past the midway point in the period, though, as Lewiston’s Matt Bourdeau got into it with Jordan Caron from Rimouski. Officials assessed both players with fighting majors.

Max Gratchev, playing for the fourth and final time this season against his old team, scored both Maineiacs’ goals in the middle frame. The first came shorthanded, and his second on a rebound of a Billy Lacasse shot in front of Dopud.

“The middle part of the game was even,” MacAdam said. “Peter (Delmas) had a rough start to the game … but we played well through the middle part.”

The final period was a parade to the penalty box for Lewiston. The Maineiacs committed five penalties, and the Oceanic scored twice on those five chances to go 3-for-9 with an extra skater on the night.

“We took too many bad penalties again,” MacAdam said. “We have two or three players who keep doing it … and it’s mind-boggling to me, because it hurts us every time. We have half our team sitting the bench because they don’t kill penalties, and then we count on three or four people to do all of the work.”

Lewiston will face Victoriaville on Sunday afternoon in a game that’s turned into a virtual must-win for the Maineiacs.

“We’ve put a lot of pressure on ourselves to (Sunday’s) game,” MacAdam said. “The Victoriaville game now becomes a major game for us.”