LEWISTON — The way the Portland Pirates have played this season at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee, the team might want to consider extending its arrangement.

Chris Brown scored twice and different players registered at least one point as the Pirates crushed the St. John’s IceCaps 6-1 in front of another sold-out crowd of 3,750 Sunday afternoon in Portland’s sixth and final scheduled appearance of the season at the Colisee.

“(Saturday) night was a really good effort by our guys, and (Sunday) I thought was another good effort,” Portland coach Ray Edwards said. “We’ve put a couple good games together here, so we’re trying to build a little consistency.”

Portland is 5-1 this season at the Lewiston rink, and is 8-1-0-1 in its past 10 games here.

“It’s pretty good. It’s always nice to get out here and the fans come out,” Brown said. “We’ve had some success here.”

The win helps the Pirates keep pace with the Providence Bruins in the Atlantic Division after the Bruins won again Sunday to remain one point in front of Portland.

“Really we’ve had one bad game in about eight here,” Edwards said. “I think we’re on the right track, but I still don’t like shoving that bad game in the middle of it. We’re really trying to establish the same game every night, trying to find a way to get points every night. This conference is tight, and there’s a lot of good teams, and you can’t afford to not play well for a stretch.”

Several of the Pirates’ stars shone brightly Sunday, but perhaps the most impressive performance came from the man behind the mask, goaltender Mike Lee. The 22-year-old keeper stopped 31 of the 32 shots he faced to earn his fifth victory of the season for Portland in as many starts. He’s spent most of the season starting for the Gwinnett Gladiators of the ECHL. In five starts (and six total games) for Portland, Lee has a 1.40 goals-against average and a .957 save percentage.

“Our goaltending has been solid, and Mike was solid again (Sunday),” Edwards said. “It’s too bad we couldn’t have finished it off for him (for a shutout), it was kind of a crazy bounce that went in there. But he’s played really well for us.”

The Pirates didn’t lean to much on Lee early, though his save may have been the catalyst for a fight and subsequent three-goal outburst in the first period that put the game firmly in the home team’s grasp.

Portland’s Mark Louis and St. John’s Ryan Schnell dropped the gloves at 15:11. Less than 10 seconds later, the Pirates broke the ice in the scoring department as Phil Lane crashed hard to the net off the ensuing faceoff and redirected a feed from Rob Klinkhammer past IceCaps goalie Chris Carrozzi for a 1-0 Portland lead.

Brown made it 2-0 on the Pirates’ first power play chance with help from Stone and Brendan Shinnimin, and 1:06 later the lead expanded to 3-0 on an Evan Brophey strike.

A long stretch of uninterrupted play highlighted the early part of the second frame, with neither team doing much in the offensive zone. The IceCaps were the territorially aggressive team in the latter stages of the period, but Lee again stonewalled their chances, twice diving across the crease to stop a shot.

Early in the third, St. John’s had its chance to do some damage with an extended 5-on-3, but Lee again came up with a big stop. Still down a player, Stone sprang leading scorer Alexandre Bolduc on a breakaway behind the IceCaps’ defenders and he put away his 19th of the season.

Brown sent a quick snap shot toward the cage just 3:25 later that beat Carrozzi high glove to push the lead to an insurmountable 5-0, and Shinnimin added another with 2:07 to play.

St. John’s got its only goal from Jason Gregoire in the final minute of play to spoil Lee’s shutout bid.

NOTE: Cindy Schlaepfer, a former women’s player at Cornell University and a leader with Western Maine Youth Hockey, Frank O’Connell, a longtime hockey booster, and the late Don Boucher, the former girls’ hockey coach at St. Dominic Academy, were honored Sunday as part of the Pirates’ observation of USA Hockey’s Hockey Weekend Across America…