LEWISTON – We’ve all heard them – and hung up on them: those pesky, pre-recorded pitches, looking to use celebrity to sell you something.

Some Lewiston-Auburn area residents received similar phone calls Wednesday.

Only these weren’t pre-recorded voices.

And they weren’t your typical sales calls.

Six Lewiston Maineiacs skaters sat down in the team’s front offices Wednesday and started dialing – one-by-one – down a list of season-ticket-holding sponsors who had yet to renew their tickets for the playoffs.

“I was completely surprised. I couldn’t believe that I got to talk to Max Gratchev,” Androscoggin Bank’s Carrie Lacasse said.

Back in the team’s coaching offices at the rear of the building, coach Don MacAdam spoke of the team’s apparent renewed commitment to marketing the squad.

“Those initiatives are some that I’ve used in the past in other places,” MacAdam said. “Not only are they a nice touch with the players calling sponsors, they work. We want this team to be recognized as a community team. We want our players and our entire organization involved in the community. It’s as simple as that. Our players calling sponsors is nice, but it’s only a start. We want our players going to schools, going to hospitals, going to events. That’s just what we’re going to be doing from now on, and very aggressively, by the way.”

The team also sent some players to local schools Wednesday, passing out ticket vouchers along the way.

“We couldn’t leave the classrooms, they kept wanting to talk to us about the playoffs,” Lewiston defenseman Patrick Cusack said.

The team also announced a few other playoff-related items Wednesday. One, a contest, calls for area fans to decorate their businesses or vehicles with signs of support, and then take a picture of the artwork. The team will draw a winner for each playoff series the team plays, and that winner will receive a large prize pack which includes four tickets and an autographed jersey, among other items and perks.

The team also announced Wednesday plans to show the Webcast of the team’s away games in the Shipyard Lounge at the Colisee, free of charge. Doors for those events open one hour before game time, and there will be pizza, hot dogs chips and candy, as well as a full bar.

Finally, the team is hoping fans will use their lunch breaks Thursday to join a short rally at the Colisee to see the team off on its trip to Drummondville. The bus leaves at approximately 1 p.m.

And this may not be the end of it.

“I’m quite sure there’ll be a twist and turn or two,” MacAdam said, almost cryptically. “It wouldn’t be fun to take the element of surprise out of all of this, would it?”

With the renewed focus on marketing, rumblings of an impending announcement on the team’s status in Lewiston have again started.

“We’re doing the things we should be doing anyway,” MacAdam reiterated. “The team is here now. I understand people’s concerns, and their need for clarification, but the fact is, the team is here now, and it needs the people’s support.”