LEWISTON — After their last foray onto the ice at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee turned into their first defeat at the Lewiston rink in more than five years, the Portland Pirates will look to begin a new streak Friday when they welcome in division rival Manchester for the fourth of six home games to be played here.

And the Pirates are peaking.

The loss to the Worcester Sharks at the Colisee was the start of a tailspin that saw Portland lose four of six games, three of which were played on home ice.

But since that stretch, Portland has found its offensive touch, and with that scoring prowess has come a handful of victories, including a win over the Monarchs in Manchester that kicked off a stretch of five wins in seven games, the most recent of which was a 2-1 overtime win over Bridgeport in Portland on Tuesday. In that game, veteran defender David Rundblad took a feed from NHL regular Oliver Ekman-Larsson and buried the chance in the extra session.

“I don’t think either coach is enamored with the game, but you have games like that on a Tuesday night without many people in the building and without much of an atmosphere,” Pirates’ coach Ray Edwards said in his postgame comments after the Bridgeport game. “You have to find a way to manage those games that aren’t going the way you want, and you may not be playing the way you want, but you need to find a way to get points, which we did.”

Chad Johnson, back between the pipes Tuesday for the first time since a lower-body injury sidelined him in Manchester on Dec. 2, was solid, stopping 28 of 29 shots in the victory. Edwards called his performance “solid.”

Alexandre Bolduc, a veteran of 48 NHL games and the Pirates’ captain, leads the team in scoring with 13 goals and 12 assists for 25 points. Rob Klinkhammer (19) and Andy Miele (18) are next on the list, with offensive-defenseman Ekman-Larsson there as well with 17. The Pirates as a team are first in their division — and third in the conference — in total goals scored.

They’ll take on a Manchester team Friday that has scored six fewer goals and trails Portland by a point in the standings.

Manchester, the AHL affiliate of the Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings, has a handful of players on the roster who were on the ice to celebrate the Kings’ championship finish last spring, including former Lewiston Maineiacs captain Marc-Andre Cliche.

Cliche has been durable for the Monarch this season, posting three goals and four assists with a plus-6 rating while playing a lot on the team’s shutdown and penalty-kill lines.

Other Monarchs who played a role in the Kings’ victory a season ago include Andrei Loktionov, Slava Voynov, Dwight King and Jordan Nolan, son of former NHL and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League coach Ted Nolan. Other familiar players with Manchester may include Andrew Bodnarchuk, one of the top defenders in the QMJHL who played in numerous games against Lewiston, Tyler Toffoli, a highly-regarded rookie who tallied 100 points in the Ontario Hockey League last season, and Tanner Pearson, another rookie, who racked up 91 points in the OHL.

The game at the Colisee is the fourth in the Pirates’ six-game set at the Lewiston rink, and the meeting between the Monarch and Pirates is the fifth already this season for the rivals, who have split the season series to this point, 2-2.