LEWISTON – Two fewer games on the schedule means one less at home, but hockey fans should have an easier time going to see the Lewiston Maineiacs in the 2008-09 season.

The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League released its schedule Wednesday for next season. “This is one of our better schedules;x we’re pretty happy with it,” Maineiacs President and Governor Matt McKnight said. “You can never get everything you want, but we certainly have been trying to focus on getting more weekend games.”

Even the weeknight games the Maineiacs drew turned out OK. “We were able to position them in areas that are different than typical weeknights,” McKnight said. “Two of them are during the Christmas vacation break, which are usually great games for us. One is on the eve of Thanksgiving, and another is during school vacation week in February, so it worked out pretty well.”

Lewiston will play 25 of its 34 home dates on Friday, Saturday or Sunday next season, with just nine scheduled during the week. Of those nine, three are during school vacations.

“Even though it’s only two less games in the schedule, going to 68 games instead of 70 certainly helped a little bit with picking some prime dates,” McKnight said.

Another highlight of next season’s schedule is a pair of home dates at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.

“We worked with Portland to figure out when we’d like to have them,” McKnight said. “And the nice part was, the league basically asked, ‘Who do you want to play?’ We were looking for Quebec or Montreal, to have a bigger-name city.”

They hit the jackpot- a double set with the Quebec Remparts, and of course, head coach Patrick Roy.

“We’ll certainly be using Mr. Patrick Roy’s name to spread a little publicity for those two games,” McKnight said.

The team’s home-opener will be its third game of the season, on Friday, Sept. 19, the first of a pair of back-to-back games against new division rival Shawinigan. The Maineiacs are in a division this season with the Cataractes, the Drummondville Voltigeurs, and the Victoriaville Tigres.

The Maineiacs’ road schedule features four sets of three-games-in-three-nights, though all four involve multiple games in one of two locations. The Maineiacs will play Cape Breton twice and Halifax once in their first three-in-three in October, Victoriaville twice and Quebec once later that month, Shawinigan twice and Montreal once in January, and Gatineau twice and Montreal once in late February and early March.

Lewiston will also close the season at home for just the second time in six seasons, finishing with a four-game homestand on back-to-back weekend’s in March.