VERDUN, Quebec — David Rose had a golden opportunity to end the game for Montreal 1:40 into overtime. He missed.

Rose had another chance 3:12 later.

He wasn’t going to miss again.

Cherry-picking behind the Lewiston defense, Rose corralled a pass from Charles Landry streaked into the Maineiacs’ zone and wristed the puck into Lewiston goaltender Nick Champion. The puck hit the keeper in the arm and trickled into the cage behind him, giving the Junior a 6-5 overtime victory over the Maineiacs in Game 1 of the team’s second-round, best-of-seven playoff series in front of 3,022 at the Verdun Auditorium on Friday.

“That’s a good team over there, they have a great team,” Lewiston coach J.F. Houle said. “I thought we played a pretty good game overall. I thought we played well enough to win, but we just fell short tonight.”

Rose flew the zone in transition after Lewiston forward Michael Chaput tried to weave toward the front of the Montreal cage. Seeing his teammates gain control, he called for the puck and Landry fed him on the tape off the boards.

“He’s a pretty offensive guy, he’s done it a few times,” Montreal coach Pascal Vincent said. “He was in a good position. It’s a talent he has, he can read when to go and when not to go, but what a great pass. It started with a good one-on-one with (defenseman Francis) Meilleur, a good heads-up play by Landry. That’s the beauty of having a team with experience.”

About three minutes earlier, the Maineiacs turned the puck over at their own blue line and Rose received a pass all alone in front of Champion, who got his body and left arm on that shot and sent it harmlessly into the corner.

The loss is another in a line of heartbreakers against Montreal this season. For the fourth time in five games against the Junior, the Maineiacs held a lead in either the second or third period, only to lose in dramatic fashion.

“Not only against Lewiston, but a lot this year, when we’re down one or two goals after two periods, we find ways,” Vincent said. “We did that again today. It’s times like that that your experience shows a little bit.”

But this time was different.

The Maineiacs crumbled in the third, only to pick themselves back up again late in regulation to force overtime.

“It happens a lot to teams, when you’re winning by one, you start squeezing your sticks a bit, and Chaput got open in their zone,” Houle said. “I was happy that we got the game to overtime. It wasn’t like all of the others, because we were the ones who had that last comeback.”

Goals from Olivier Dame-Malka and Bissonnette in the second staked the Maineiacs to a 4-2 advantage.

Louis Leblanc cut the Maineiacs’ lead to one just 1:12 into the third on a backhand deke on a breakaway. With 2:03 remaining in regulation, Philippe Lefebvre evened things at 4-4 on a rebound from Lewiston keeper Nick Champion’s right, and Louis-Marc Aubry tacked on another 41 seconds later to put the home team in front 5-4 with 1:22 to play.

Chaput was responsible for overtime, though. The puck squirted out to Dame-Malka at the point, and he tried to shoot through seven players and Montreal keeper Jean-Francois Berube. The puck ricocheted back to Etienne Brodeur at the left half-wall. He zipped a pass across the crease to Chaput in the lower right circle, and Chaput buried his chance with 30 ticks remaining on the clock.

The same teams will face each other Saturday, with a quick turnaround to a 3 p.m. game.

“We rolled all four lines (Friday),” Houle said. “I think everybody should be good to go (Saturday).”

Lewiston had the first good chance of the overtime session, but Berube denied Kirill Kabanov on the right post.

Trevor Parkes started things off for Montreal at 7:36 of the first, cruising into the zone and fired a deceptively quick wrist shot past Champion low to the keeper’s blocker side.

Parkes netted his second in less than three minutes when he stuffed the puck into the cage from the left post on a third-chance rebound after the puck squirted through Champion’s pads on the power play.

The Maineiacs reversed the momentum on a power play of their own, and cut the Montreal lead in half when Matthew Bissonnette’s power play shot from the point snuck past Berube after a pair of tips.

The Montreal native kept things going on his own, adding another less than two minutes later when he finished off a 2-on-1 with a snipe that snuck underneath the crossbar above Berube’s glove hand.

Berube took over the period from there, stuffing Lewiston on multiple chances on another power play, and then robbing Houde-Caron at the left post with an acrobatic, diving glove save from out of nowhere to keep things tied at two.

The Maineiacs thought they’d taken a lead at 5:37 of the second when Dame-Malka found Stefan Fournier alone on the right wing at the red line. Fournier went in on Berube alone, deked to the backhand and roofed the puck past the sprawled out goalie. The net came flying off its moorings, prompting a review. After seven-plus minutes, despite the fact that Berube himself knocked the cage awry, officials overturned the goal, saying only that the net was off before the puck crossed the line.

“I think that would have been a big goal for us, but, you know, it’s part of the rules,” Houle said.