It's hard to say. Baie-Comeau has always had a reputation for being kinda dirty - no matter who was the coach, who was GM, who played for them, etc. They were a really skilled team this year but that didn't stop them from gooning it up when they lost in the playoffs.
That makes you think the coach is involved somehow, but B-C coach Eric Veilleux and Halifax coach Dominique Ducharme are really good friends and I'd be surprised if Eric would be so disrespectful that way. But then again...how else can you interpret this situation? Veilleux takes a timeout, puts his 4th line on and this fracas happens after the first faceoff.
In the semi-finals, B-C successfully drew the Armada into a brawl (though that was more mutual combat than the blatant incitement against Halifax was). They lost a 4th liner for two games to suspension, while the Armada lost one of their better players in Ryan Tesink. In that sense they "won" the brawl. I think they were trying to accomplish something similar here. It didn't work. They succeeded in getting Lewis suspended, but one of their top D-men (Verpaelst) got suspended too so it ended up a wash.
I think that their ultimate goal was to hopefully goad Fucale into taking a swing at someone and getting a suspension as a result. There was no way they were going to win the series as long as Fucale was between the pipes.
As you can see, trying to rattle Fucale is a fool's errand - especially when players like Lewis are on the ice. You could see that he wasn't just going through the motions - he was genuinely enraged by what B-C was doing. But really, any one of the Mooseheads would probably be willing to stick up for Fucale like that. They know that it's his skill that allowed them to play such aggressive offense. Halifax gave up a lot of breakaways and odd-man rushes this year because they pressed so hard. They couldn't play "their game" the way they did without absolute trust in Fucale. In turn, Fucale knew that anyone coming after him would be in for a world of hurt, so he never had to worry about fighting those battles.
We'll have McCarron handle those duties whenever Fucale is ready