Harry Houdini would be proud.

After posting three first-period goals – two of which came on a re-emerging power play – the Lewiston Maineiacs escaped Shawinigan Sunday night with a 4-2 win over the Cataractes after enduring a 28-shot barrage over the final two periods.

“We have some tired boys coming home on the bus,” Maineiacs’ head coach Ed Harding said. “The guys have a chance to get some rest now and regroup, and the fact that we got four points (out of six in three days) is fantastic.”

The win, Lewiston’s second in a row and third in four games, lifts the team’s record to 16-10-1-0 (33 points) and keeps the team in sole possession of third place in the Eastern Division.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Lewiston played its second straight solid game and came away from Drummondville with a 3-1 win. The Maineiacs took four of a possible six points in three games in three nights on the road.

Jonathan Bernier earned the win Sunday, which came against former teammate Sebastien Piche’s Cataractes, who are now 11-12-0-2 and in eighth place out of 10 teams in the Telus Division.

Marc-Andre Daneau got things going for Lewiston with an unassisted tally at 10:21 of the opening frame when he swiped the puck and fired it past Shawinigan keeper Kevin Maletto.

Just 1:29 later, Stefan Chaput converted on a power play chance with help from Kevin Marshall and Alexander Beaton to make it 2-0, and Patrick Cusack upped the lead to 3-0 at the close of the first with another power-play goal, this one with help from Eric Gelinas and Daneau.

“We’d started out with three power plays even before that, and we were talking about that killer instinct,” Harding said. “We’d wanted to do a bit more with those opportunities. But we started to get the puck to th net more, and got a couple of goals.”

Shawinigan started to chip away. With help of some penalties in the second, the Cataractes outshot Lewiston 11-2 in the middle frame, and they got one goal back on Olivier Donais’ first of the season.

“We were killing penalties all period long,” Harding said. “We weren’t very bright.”

In the third, Donais set up Sean Smyth for his fourth of the year to draw Shawinigan to within one, but Stefano Giliati picked off a pass late with Maletto on the bench for an extra skater and dumped the puck into the empty net to secure the win.

Lewiston next plays at home Friday in a rematch of last years league final against Val d’Or.