LEWISTON – Coming off one of the more inspiring and critical wins of the season may be a dangerous situation for the Lewiston Maineiacs.
After upending the Chicoutimi Sagueneens on Sunday, the Maineiacs have had five days to bask in the glow of victory over the team still ranked No. 1 in the CHL Top 10 weekly poll.
On the ice at practice this week, that fact has been downplayed, with the coaches choosing instead to focus on the two upcoming home games that will finish off the team’s first half. Lewiston has a chance to finish with more wins than losses before the Christmas break for the first time in three years with a win tonight against PEI or Sunday against the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies.
“We didn’t say a word about the Chicoutimi game, or about P.E.I. through (Tuesday),” said Harding. “(Wednesday) we got back at it, we talked about P.E.I. I told them I don’t care who we’re playing, I don’t care if Moncton was coming in here, we want to build and expand on what we did against Chicoutimi.”
All the team did in that game was shut down the top power play unit in the league eight times, allowing few shots from in close and from the point.
“There were certain things, our backcheck was pretty good,” said Harding. “Our forecheck was pretty good, but we can still do a better job. On our in-zone coverage, we can still do a better job. It’s about guys making decision out there.”
In the team’s game against Quebec the Friday prior to the win over Chicoutimi, the coaching staff was less than pleased with the team’s efforts.
“There’s two things in backchecking,” said Harding. “As a forward, you have to establish your backcheck lane immediately so the defensemen know. There’s got to be some communication there. There was none of that against Quebec and it’s something we’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks. We did a great job with that and it made life a little bit easier for our defensemen against Chicoutimi. We need to continue to do that, and if we do, we’ll continue to be successful.”
Despite the Rocket’s lowly 11-21-1-0 record, the Maineiacs are hardly taking them lightly. Just Wednesday night, P.E.I. nearly pulled off the upset on the road in Quebec. The Rocket led 3-0 in the third before Quebec came storming back to win 4-3 in overtime.
“P.E.I.’s got some very good hockey players,” said Harding. “The Stewart kid (forward Danny Stewart) is very good, they’ve got the new Russian kid (Anton Skorych), we saw him for the first time last game we played them and he’s a very good player, and any time you put (Ryan) Mior in net, he’s capable. He’s come in this building before and shut us out, so we’ll have our work cut out for us.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
