A day of rest and a shuffled lineup didn’t do the Lewiston Maineiacs any good.
Dany Masse had three goals and three assists, Yannick Riendeau notched five points and seven other Drummondville skaters had at least two points as the Voltigeurs, for the second consecutive night, scored nine more goals than Lewiston, this time in a 10-1 victory over the visiting Maineiacs in front of 2,616 at the Marcel Dionne Centre.
“We continue to take stupid penalties and we continue to get the results of just that,” Lewiston coach Don MacAdam said. “We had a game plan to reduce the number of penalties, we we didn’t do that at all.”
This was the fourth time in 10 games this season Drummondville scored in double digits against Lewiston, and the second time in as many nights.
“As much as we played well on offense, the biggest thing we’re happy with tonight is how much better we played on defense,” Drummondville coach Guy Boucher said. “We wanted to focus on that tonight.”
The Voltigeurs, who scored more than five goals per game during the 68-game regular season, are now on top two games to none in the teams’ best-of-7 first-round playoff series, which shifts to Lewiston on Tuesday and Wednesday for Games 3 and 4.
Drummondville outshot the Maineiacs 48-17 on the night, and Peter Delmas finished with 38 saves for Lewiston.
“Goaltending is anything but the issue here,” MacAdam said.
The Volts started in early and often – again – on Saturday.
Masse put the home team on top at 5:27 of the opening period with his fourth of the series, and followed that with his fifth at 13:56. The floodgates opened after that one, with Riendeau and Mike Hoffman notching goals before the first intermission to put their team on top by four.
“We count on three or four people to lead us and when they don’t lead us, and it gets bad, it gets really bad,” MacAdam said.
“That’s the way we’ve been playing all season, we tend to slowly wear other teams down as the game goes on,” Boucher said.
The barrage continued in the second. Six different Volts scored in the middle frame to push the lead to 10-0, and Drummondville finished the game 6-for-9 on the power play, pushing their two-game total to 12-for-27.
“The issue here is taking penalties,” MacAdam said. “Some of the penalties we’ve taken are just stunning in their stupidity.”
Dominic Savoie broke up Marco Cousineau’s shutout bid late in the third with his first career playoff goal.
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