If people thought the Lewiston Maineiacs were shorthanded on Friday night, check out the team’s practice on Monday.

Alex Bourret and Jonathan Paiement left late Friday for Canada, where both will play for the league All-Star team against a team of Russian selects on Monday and Tuesday.

“When we miss players, the rest just have to step up,” said Maineiacs coach Clem Jodoin. “We can’t stop playing because we are missing players. They just have to fill the space and play harder.”

Bourret, arguably the team’s spark plug all season, had another goal on Friday night and is now third in the league in scoring with 41 points in 23 games.

Paiement will continue to serve his suspension for a hit in the team’s last game against Baie-Comeau on Wednesday when the team faces off against P.E.I, while Bourret’s status for the Wednesday game is unclear, since he will play back-to-back nights in the All-Star games.

Alexandre Picard, meanwhile, officially withdrew from the spectacle after suffering a concussion in last Sunday’s game against Baie-Comeau. Picard went to Columbus to be evaluated by the Blue Jackets’ team doctors, who have advised against playing against the Russian squad. His roster spot went to Baie-Comeau’s Jean-Francois Jacques.

Fewer penalties, almost

Friday night may not have added anything to the win column, but with one glaring exception, it marked a change in an important recent trend – penalty minutes.

In the first period of Friday’s game against Shawinigan, Lewiston took just one penalty, a non-retaliatory penalty to Michal Korenko late in the period. In the third, the lone blemish in the PIM column for the Maineiacs that was not matching was an infraction by Bobby Gates with the game already decided.

In the second, however, though just three calls went against the Maineiacs, one of them was big, as it created a 5-on-3 power play for the Cataractes, who scored twice in two minutes to take control of the game.

Home wrecking

In the QMJHL, if you can’t survive at home, you probably aren’t going to survive at all.

After starting out a league-best 6-0 at the Colisee this season, Lewiston hasn’t won a single game, going 0-5-1.

In the first six, Lewiston averaged 6.2 goals per game, including a 10-2 pasting of Rimouski on October 22.

On October 23, Rimouski rebounded for a 2-0 win, and the tailspin began. In the last six home games, Lewiston has scored just 12 goals, an average of two per game. In net, Jaroslav Halak and Jonathan Bernier started the year with a goals-against-average under 3.00 at home, but in the last six games that number is 4.33 per game.

On the attendance front, though, Lewiston has not seemed to suffer too badly. Through 12 games at home, the Maineiacs are averaging 2,540 fans per game, with the high total of 3,465 coming on opening night, October 1.

The two lowest dates so far this season were below 1,900, and those were both Wednesday night games. In fact, the four games with the lowest attendance numbers for the team this season are all Wednesday night games.

On Friday, the total of 2,776 was the fifth-best total of the season.