Quebec’s quick-strike offense was again too much for the Lewiston Maineiacs to handle.

The Maineiacs led for most of the game, and twice in the third period, but the Remparts continued to pour on the shots and eventually overwhelmed Lewiston in a 6-4 victory, their second win in as many nights, at Arena Ancienne-Lorette in Quebec City.

“I thought we played very well in the first period, we played pretty well in the second and then not so good in the third,” Maineiacs’ coach J.F. Houle said. “We had a lot of younger guys back on ‘D’ tonight.”

On the strength of a three-point night from forward Jess Tanguy, the Maineiacs took the lead early in the third period twice, once at 3-2 and again at 4-3.

“He had his best game of the preseason so far,” Houle said of Tanguy. “He was all over the place, had some good battles with the puck.”

Neither of those leads lasted more than 40 seconds though. After a Cameron Critchlow tally put Lewiston on top at 2:08 of the third, Axel Rioux evened things back up at 2:47.

Tanguy then again put Lewiston on top by one at 7:24 of the final frame, but Jonathan Audy-Marchessault struck for the equalizer at 7:38. Mirko Hoefflin and Olivier Hinse then added two more for the home team to lift Quebec to the victory.

Victimized in the second half of the game was Russian import player Andrey Makarov, who allowed five goals on 18 shots in the loss.

“It’s more how the team played in front of him (Saturday),” Houle said. “The goals, most of them were into open nets of back-door plays. It was the coverage more than the goalie.”

Audy-Marchessault led the Remparts with three points, and keeper Louis Domingue played the whole game for the victors, stopping 22 of 26 to earn the win.

With four preseason games down and two to go, Houle, despite the two losses and 14 goals allowed in the team’s last two games, is not worrying just yet.

“Now we feel we’ve seen enough,” Houle said. “We can go back home and have three good days of practice and we can start working on the systems more. The last couple of games, we’ve been running around a bit, and with two more to go, we need to tighten things up a little bit, work on the little details.”

Lewiston will play its final pair of exhibition games of the preseason on the road, one in Moncton and one in Fredericton as the home team, also against the Moncton Wildcats.

Copy the Story Link