After twice trailing by two goals, the Portland Pirates rallied for their biggest outburst of the season to beat the St. John’s IceCaps 7-3 on Friday night before a crowd announced as 1,495 at the Cross Insurance Arena.

Andrew Campbell scored twice on the power play and fellow defenseman Brandon Gormley added the winner as the Pirates finished with five unanswered goals in the third period to win for the third time in four games.

“When we work like that and play together, we have a chance to win,” said Coach Ray Edwards. “But I don’t want to get too excited. It’s one game.”

The Pirates end October with a 4-5 record and remain unbeaten in their three games in Portland.

With Halloween contributing to a sparse crowd (the actual attendance appeared less than half of the announced total), the Pirates fell behind 2-0 in the first and 3-1 in the second. On Portland’s first power play, Campbell took a cross-ice pass from Lucas Lessio in the sixth minute of the second period and went top shelf from the left circle for his first goal of the season to make it 3-2.

“I just wanted to get it high and on net, and it ended up working out,” Campbell said.

Later in the period, Pirates goalie Louis Domingue received help from the post and crossbar to keep St. John’s at bay. A Pirates penalty with a little over two minutes remaining gave the IceCaps a chance at a back-breaking goal.

It never came. The Pirates killed off the penalty, Domingue made three tough saves – he finished with 29 – and Portland went into the final intermission whistling a happy tune.

“Those are big parts of the game, when your penalty kill guys step up like that and come up with a big kill,” Campbell said. “That puts a lot of energy and momentum back.”

Campbell converted on Portland’s only other power play in the 12th minute of the third with another high shot, this one a wrister set up by Brendan Shinnimin and Evan Oberg.

“I knew I wanted to shoot high,” Campbell said. “On the second one I kind of saw a spot.”

Gormley’s winner came four minutes later on a nice drop pass from Alexandre Bolduc and gave the Pirates their first lead.

They added three in the final three minutes, with Tobias Rieder outracing a defenseman for a breakaway goal, Shinnimin potting an empty-netter and Darius Dziurzynski scoring from close range after a hustle play by Eric Selleck only seconds after Shinnimin’s goal.

“We were fired up after the second period,” Campbell said, “and obviously came out with a really good third.”

The IceCaps had led 3-1 with a goal just 12 seconds into the second period by Carl Klingberg. St. John’s had taken a 2-0 lead in the first thanks to a pair of Portland penalties 44 seconds apart.

Ben Chiarot needed only nine seconds of the five-on-three advantage to bury a slapshot in the left corner of the goal. Then, just as Mark Louis was leaving the penalty box after serving his time for boarding, John Albert finished off a St. John’s attack with a one-timer from in close for the second goal.

“We took some penalties and we lost momentum doing that,” Edwards said. “Five-on-five I liked our game. We just had to stay with the five-on-five game and keep pushing.”

The Pirates responded quickly. Oberg uncorked a drive from the blue line 19 seconds after Albert scored to cut the margin in half and leave it 2-1 at the first break.

“The work ethic has been way better the last four, five games,” Edwards said. “There’s certain areas where you know whether you’re working or you’re not working, and I think our guys understand those areas better now. They know they don’t want to let each other down.”

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