LEWISTON — A second-period lull for the second game in a row yielded familiar results Saturday for the Portland Pirates.

The Pirates were the victim of a botched play and a pair of untimely penalties in the middle frame and the Providence Bruins took full advantage, scoring two goals off turnovers and another on the power play on their way to a 5-2 win in front of a sold-out Androscoggin Bank Colisee crowd of 3,737.

“The crowd was great, we didn’t give them much to cheer about,” Pirates coach Ray Edwards said. “We had some good flurries there in the third period, where if we could have popped one in, now we’d have had something. But we weren’t able to. (Providence goalie Niklas) Svedberg was really good tonight.”

Ryan Spooner led the Bruins with two goals and an assist, including the empty-netter to seal the win with 1:18 to play. Craig Cunningham, Alexander Fallstrom and Seth Griffith also scored for Providence, which lost Friday night to Manchester in a shootout.

“Last night I thought we let one get away,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “At St. John’s we had the same thing happen, lost a two-goal lead but we won in overtime, so that’s encouraging for us. We’re a young group, we’re still getting to know each other, but you never want to see leads disappear. I thought (Friday) we were so much better.”

Jordan Szwarz and Jordan Martinook scored goals for the Pirates, who are still looking for their first win of the early season.

A fast-paced first period yielded a handful of chances at both ends of the ice, but both defensive units were up to the task. The Pirates’ defenders allowed only five shots to reach starter Mike Lee, and only two of those posed any serious threat.

On the other end, the Bruins stymied the Pirates for much of the frame, until a power play resulting from an extra minor after a fight between Portland’s Brandon McMillan and Providence’s David Warsofsky.

After setting up in the Bruins’ zone, Andy Miele finished a set of passes with a crisp setup to Brandon Gormley at the left point. The defenseman one-timed the shot toward the cage, and on the way, Szwarz redirected it past Svedberg.

The Bruins came out of the gate in the second with fervor. At 5:16, Providence tied the game when Zach Trotman sprung Griffith on a break up the middle. Griffith muscled his way through a pair of defenders and beat Lee high blocker to knot the score.

A Gormley turnover allowed the Bruins to take their first lead less than three minutes later. An apparent miscommunication behind the net between Gormley and Lee resulted in Gormley skating to the net front and losing the puck. Johnny-on-the-spot, Fallstrom was there for Providence and he banged it into the cage for a 2-1 advantage.

Providence added another at 12:43 on a Spooner break when he beat Lee low glove with a deke.

Martinook drew the Pirates within one again at 13:50 with a snap shot from just inside the blue line on a feed from Gormley, but the Bruins reestablished their two-goal edge at 15:55, just 20 seconds into a power play, when Craig Cunningham banged home a bank shot off the back boards at the left post.

“That second period’s unacceptable, just from a discipline standpoint,” Edwards said. “The game’s going pretty well, you give up a goal, and that’s OK. You have to manage that. We didn’t manage that situation well at all … and took a couple of poor penalties, and we had some lackadaisical play there with the goaltender and the defenseman. The second period was obviously the game.”

Spooner finished things off with an empty-netter in the game’s final minutes.

“They have a good team, they can skate, they’re physical,” Cassidy said. “After that, I thought we were able to skate and be physical as well.”

NOTES: Prior to the game, the Phoenix Coyotes signed veteran forward Jeff Halpern to a two-way contract. Halpern played last year’s lockout-shortened season with the Montreal Canadiens, playing in 16 NHL games. Prior to that, Halpern skated for the New York Rangers, Washington Capitals, the L.A. Kings, Tampa Bay and Dallas. He began his professional career with the Capitals’ organization out of Princeton University in 1998 and played in six games with the Pirates, then the Capitals’ AHL affiliate … Tobias Rieder, who scored two goals in the Pirates’ first game, was a scratch Saturday with a lower-body injury … Mathieu Brisebois, Kyle Hagel and Gilbert Brulé were also scratches for the Pirates …

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