LEWISTON – He seemed out of place for much of the season, mired on the third and fourth lines of a Lewiston Maineiacs team searching for some offensive leaders among a bevy of talented defensive and power forwards.

Marc-Andre Cliche was a rookie, though. He was 16, and the coaching staff wanted to give him time to develop, time to get used to the league, and time to work on honing his skills to be commensurate with the rest of the more experienced players on the team.

The time has come.

“I told (assistant coach Jeff Guay) last week that I thought he was ready for the move,” said Maineiacs coach Ed Harding. “Coach Durocher did a fantastic job of not putting pressure on him early. We wanted to bring him along slowly. We’re 35 games into the season now, and now it’s time to see what he can do.”

“I was told from the beginning that I wasn’t going to have pressure on me,” Cliche said, partially in French and in broken English. “They gave me time to adjust, to develop.”

From the time he became the Lewiston Maineiacs’ first pick in the 2003 draft, expectations have been high for the forward.

“It was cool to be drafted at No. 1,” said Cliche. “But that doesn’t make me any better on this team than anyone else. I knew that I had to come here and I had a job to do.”

Early on, other rookies and draft picks around the league started to flourish, none more noticeable than Sidney Crosby in Rimouski. Cliche, however, seemed stuck on the fourth line, traditionally a grinding line.

“He’s got some spirit,” said Harding, cracking a smile. “In the preseason he even got into a fight (against Quebec at the Kennebec Ice Arena). Getting hooked and slashed and held bothers him, and he lets those guys know about it.”

And while the rookie had spunk, it was also obvious that, if developed properly, he could also become a scoring forward very quickly.

“He’s like a sponge for information,” said Harding. “He’ll take what you tell him and just absorb it.”

“I was just out there working with him,” Guay said after a recent practice. “When you’re talking to him, as a coach, he has all eyes and all ears on you. He’s very attentive.”

That quality has endeared him to the coaching staff and to the fans, who have taken note of Cliche’s performance. In the last couple of weeks Cliche has been used on the power play unit, and in recent days has become a fixture on the Maineiacs’ top line alongside Alexandre Picard and Gabriel Balasescu.

“I always feel that I can do better,” said Cliche, “even if I have a good game. I am never satisfied with my own game. You can’t be. You’ll never improve if you are.”

“When he has a mediocre game, he thinks he played awful,” said Harding. “If he has a great game, he still looks at it like it was mediocre. That can be good, especially for a player like him. He knows where he wants to be, and he works hard at getting there.”

Cliche now has four goals and three assists, including one power-play goal, and 13 minutes in penalties.

After Christmas, Cliche will play for Quebec in the Canadian Under-17 tournament and will miss two games. When he returns, his insertion into the top two skating lines should make a solid and positive impact for the team in the final half of the season.

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