LEWISTON — Matthew Bissonnette has been admittedly slow on offense to start the playoffs. But even he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity the Moncton Wildcats gave him Friday night.

Curling back after a failed rush, Bissonnette stepped in front of a pass backward from Moncton forward Daniel Pettersson intended for one of a pair of Wildcats defenders. Alone in the slot, he turned, sized up Moncton goalie Brandon Thibeau and fired a shot, beating the confused keeper high glove.

“I wanted to go bar down,” Bissonnette said. “That’s where I was looking the whole way.”

Bissonnette’s goal was the dagger for which the Maineiacs had been searching. He joined four other Lewiston skaters on the score sheet and Maineiacs goaltender Nick Champion stopped 30 of 31 shots he saw in another solid game between the pipes as Lewiston upended Moncton 6-1 Friday in Game 5 of the teams’ best-of-seven, first-round playoff series at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee. The victory clinched a 4-1 series victory for the Maineiacs, who won a first-round postseason series for just the third time in eight seasons.

“When you get a team on the ropes, you have to finish it,” Maineiacs’ coach J.F. Houle said. “It was a tough couple of years, but we have an older squad and a much better squad now, and the guys worked hard. From the beginning of the year, we set our bar pretty high and we feel this team can go pretty far.”

Bissonnette, who previously played in Moncton, was all smiles after the final buzzer rang.

“Pettersson and me, we go way back when I played in Moncton,” Bissonnette said. “I didn’t know we were that good of friends. It made it real sweet, I guess, that I got to put the dagger in. It was a huge goal. I got a little lucky on the pass, but it was a big goal.”

But he was only one of 12 different players to register at least one point Friday for Lewiston, which has showcased its forward depth all series long.

“It’s nice to have different guys contributing to the win and it’s what playing as a team is all about,” Houle said.

Moncton, meanwhile, has relied on only a handful of players on offense, particularly late in the season and in this series after a pair of significant injuries.

“There’s nothing like the playoffs to get the younger guys some experience,” Moncton coach Danny Flynn said. “It was a devastating blow for us to lose Ted Stephens two weeks before the playoffs. He was probably our best player at the time … Then we lost Scott Trask early in the first game, and he’s a heart and soul guy. So that was two guys out of our top six on what’s a real young team to start off with.”

Alex Zafiris again provided a spark of offense for the Maineiacs, being in the right place at the right time into a 1-0 Lewiston lead.

With the Maineiacs fourth trio on the ice and mucking and grinding down low, the puck bounced out to the top of the right circle. There, Christophe Lalonde gathered it, wheeled and lobbed the puck back in toward the net. Before it got to the crease, the pick pinballed led through three sets of skates and surfaced in front of Zafiris, who pivoted to his right and slid the puck into the net.

Antoine-Houde Caron, playing just his second game of the series after a three-game suspension, had a second Lewiston goal on his stick with 24 square feet of net at which to shoot, but fanned on the offering. Moncton appeared to gain some momentum after that chance, and with 58 seconds to play in the opening frame, the Wildcats evened the contest.

“It was tough to see because that same kind of thing happened in Moncton last game,” Houle said. “We’re a resilient team and we didn’t let that affect us.”

Devon MacAusland took a drop pass from Marek Hrivik as Hrivik fell to the ice after being bothered by a backchecking Lewiston forward. MacAusland glided into the right circle and beat Champion with a wrist shot to knot the game at 1-1.

Michael Chaput netted his third goal of the series on a power play just shy of the midway point of the second period, clanging the puck off the junction of the crossbar and right post through a screen and a slick pass from the left point by Sam Carrier.

Kirill Kabanov tacked on another at 12:16 of the middle frame, completing a swift breakout during which all five players on the ice touched the puck. The final pass was of the saucer variety off the stick of Pierre-Olivier Morin to Kabanov between a defenders legs. Kabanov shot and hit Thibeau in the shoulder, and the puck caromed into the cage over his left shoulder.

Lewiston continued to dominate the latter stages of the second when the teams skated 5-on-5. All of Moncton’s best chances came on a pair of power plays, and Champion was stellar in stuffing the ‘Cats offense.

“(Sam) Carrier blocked some big shots, (Sam) Henley blocked some big shots, Zafiris is doing a good job, so our penalty kill, like I’ve said before, can be a momentum boost if you kill the penalties off.”

Lewiston will face the Montreal Junior in the second round beginning next Friday. Montreal is the only team in the league the Maineiacs failed to defeat at least once this season in four tries.