LEWISTON — With the Lewiston Maineiacs primed for the stretch run, the team will welcome the most decorated franchise in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League — the Gatineau Olympiques — to the Androscoggin Bank Colisee for a pair of games this weekend with the hope of catching them in the standings and earning a better seed when the playoffs begin in two weeks.

“You go to their building, it’s pretty magical,” Maineiacs’ coach J.F. Houle said. “They’ve won a lot of championships, they’ve had a lot of good coaches, good players, and they have a very storied franchise. They’re a team that seems to thrive toward the end of the year and in the playoffs. They can be sleeping the whole year, and then in the playoffs they start winning games. You really have to be ready and prepared well for a team like that.”

But the Colisee, as the team’s goal song has reminded fans 134 times this season, is the Maineiacs’ house. This season, Lewiston has won 21 of 32 games at its home rink, with a positive 41-goal differential in those games. With only two regular-season home games remaining, the Maineiacs are looking to close things out in style.

“We’re on a little bit of a roll right now,” Houle said. “It important to be on a roll going into the playoffs, and we are at home, so we need to take advantage of that.”

Easier said than done.

The Olympiques, a team the Maineiacs have never seen in the playoffs and a team with which the Maineiacs have never shared a division, often chug along in the Telus West in relative obscurity.

But not to the coaching staff.

“They’re a team that has a lot of offensive power,” Houle said. “They went and got (league-leading scorer Philip-Michael) Devos from Victoriaville at the trading deadline, they have (Hubert) Labrie coming back, he’s a great defensman, they have a good goalie in Clermont. They’re a scary team, really, when you look at it.”

Part of the team’s tradition is lining up good coaching. Benoit Groulx is a veteran bench boss with a knack for late-season success in the QMJHL.

“He’s a good coach, he has good systems,” Houle said. “I think Gatineau and us are two of the teams other teams are looking at and saying, ‘Oof, I don’t know if I want to play those guys.’ I think it’s going to be a great matchup this weekend.”

Helping the Maineiacs deal with the Olympiques this weekend will be a relatively healthy lineup. Defensive stalwart Sam Finn will continue to sit out, likely through the beginning of the playoffs. But the rest of the team appears good to go, including forward Pierre-Olivier Morin, who is set to return from a broken nose.

“(Morin) has got speed, he’s good defensively,” Houle said. “He doesn’t have the points I’m sure he wanted this year, but he does a lot more than getting points for this team.”

The fact that the team is on a little bit of a roll — points in four consecutive games and a five-out-of-six-point road trip — should also help, Houle said.

“Getting quite a bit of points this weekend has certainly given us the momentum,” Houle said. “It gave us that belief that, ‘Hey, we can do this’ again. We kept it positive and we’re getting almost everyone back.”

Friday’s game will begin at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday’s contest, also doubling as fan appreciation day, slated for 4 p.m.