Lewiston Maineiacs waste no time getting to Memorial Cup

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This article was published 14/05/2007 (7013 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

(CP) – The day he finalized his roster last August, head coach Clement Jodoin stood before his Lewiston Maineiacs and told them they would play in the 2007 Memorial Cup in Vancouver.

“I’ve never done that before,” Jodoin said Monday from Lewiston, Maine. “It was a feeling. It was the leadership we had inside our dressing room and it was the chemistry.”

The Maineiacs took their coach seriously and wasted no time getting to the Canadian Hockey League’s championship tournament, which starts Friday at the Pacific Coliseum.

Lewiston swept three of their four playoff series and lost only one game en route to winning the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League championship. That was after the team posted a league-best 50-14-2-4 record in the regular season.

“Since the beginning of the year, Clem was saying he believed in us and we could do it,” captain Marc-Andre Cliche said. “I think all guys fell in line with that.”

The Memorial Cup opens with the Ontario Hockey League’s Plymouth Whalers facing the host Vancouver Giants on Friday.

Lewiston’s first game is against the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers on Saturday.

The Whalers didn’t clinch the OHL title until Sunday, while the Tigers needed double-overtime in Game 7 to beat the Giants for the WHL title Monday night.

The Maineiacs will be the most rested team heading into the Memorial Cup with nine days between completing a sweep of Val-d’Or in the QMJHL final and their tournament-opener.

“There are pros and cons,” Jodoin said. “I don’t know the situation of the other teams, but the key is for us to start the tournament healthy.”

The Maineiacs gave up the fewest goals in the QMJHL this season. Their post-season sprint was accelerated by an improved power play and the return of goaltender Jonathan Bernier, who had missed 35 games with an ankle injury and didn’t get back into the lineup until just before the playoffs.

Bernier was the first goaltender taken in last year’s NHL draft at No. 11 overall by Los Angeles. He was named the most valuable player of the QMJHL post-season with a 2.34 goals-against average and a .919 save percentage.

The’-year-old from Laval, Que., was cut from the Canadian junior team in December after a lacklustre camp.

“He was upset,” Jodoin said. “I told him ‘The ball will come back in your court sooner than you think.’ The ball was to bring the Lewiston Maineiacs to the Memorial Cup. He had his challenge and he did it.”

Lewiston’s power play was OK during the regular season, but the Maineiacs sharpened up to a success rate of almost 30 per cent when they were a man up in the playoffs.

Jodoin, a former assistant coach with the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens, has been coach and general manager of the Maineiacs the last three seasons and was also an assistant coach for the Canadian junior team the last two years when they’ve won gold.

“I spent more time focusing on our team this year than focusing on other teams in the league,” Jodoin said. “I learned from my past experience it’s better to do the little things better on our team than worrying about what the other team is doing.”

The key players for Lewiston are Cliche (pronounced Cleesh), a New York Rangers draft pick who won gold with the Canadian junior team in January, Bernier, rookie centre David Perron, left-winger Pierre-Luc Faubert, high-scoring defenceman Chad Denny, playmaker Eric Castonguay and overage forward Simon Courcelles.

Perron,’, leads the Maineiacs in post-season scoring with 12 goals and 16 assists in 17 games.

Courcelles won a Memorial Cup with the Quebec Remparts a year ago and Lewiston acquired him in a trade last summer.

The Maineiacs franchise was based in Sherbrooke, Que., before moving to Maine in 2003.

The inclusion of the Maineiacs and the Whalers out of Plymouth, Mich., marks just the second time two U.S.-based teams are in the tournament since the it went to a four-team format in’83.

The Spokane Chiefs and Portland Winter Hawks participated in the’98 tournament with Spokane in as the host team. The Winter Hawks won it that year and were the last American club to do so.

Lewiston had one more practice scheduled at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston before heading to Vancouver on Wednesday.

“We’re going to kiss the ice and say ‘Thank you very much for the great year we had this year’ and we’re going to move on,” Jodoin said. “Trust yourself, trust your ability, trust your team chemistry and let’s go.”