LEWISTON – Even a little bit of home cooking and an exciting pregame announcement couldn’t save the Lewiston Maineiacs on Tuesday.

They stayed a bit closer to Drummondville, and they held on to a rare lead for a bit longer than in Game 1, but the Maineiacs ultimately fell prey – again – to a lethal Drummondville power play and to overall team speed and depth as the Voltigeurs skated to a 7-2 win over Lewiston at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“We took fewer dumb penalties (Tuesday) than in the first two games, but still, too many,” Lewiston coach Don MacAdam said. “We spent way too much time killing.”

The Maineiacs are now behind in the teams’ best-of-7 series 3-0, with Game 4 set for Wednesday night in Lewiston.

Adrien Lemay made his second start of the series, having allowed 12 goals on 58 shots in Game 1. He faced 57 shots Tuesday, and stopped 50 in the loss.

“He was terrific,” MacAdam said simply.

The parade to the penalty box continued for the Maineiacs on Tuesday, too. The Volts benefitted from 17 power plays, connecting for five goals on those chances.

“We really felt we might have been able to do better,” Drummondville coach Guy Boucher said. “We get a few goals on the power play, and then we change what we’re doing for no reason. We’ll talk about that for tomorrow.”

Also on the tip of Boucher’s tongue was a late-game altercation between defenseman Olivier Hotte and Lewiston forward Danick Paquette. Paquette was given two five-minute majors and ejected with less than five seconds to play in the game.

“Why do you put players like that out there in the last 20 seconds of a game with a five-goal difference?” Boucher questioned. “We’ll remember that one, for sure.”

For one period, anyway, the Lewiston Maineiacs hung with the top-seeded Volts.

Drummondville opened the scoring with a power-play goal just 3:59 in on a third rebound chance in front of Lemay. Yannick Riendeau buried that chance from the right post to put his team on top, 1-0.

Lewiston fired back with a power-play goal of its own 4:30 later when Billy Lacasse kicked the puck to himself after a Sam Finn shot got tangled up in front and planted the puck in the back of the net. Max Gratchev followed that one with his second of the playoffs at 10:16 to put the home team on top, 2-1.

The Volts came right back with another pair. First Mike Hoffman found the net for his seventh in three games at 13:02 on a partial breakaway, and Riendeau struck again on the power play with a goal through Lemay’s wickets in the final minute of the first.

“We have a pretty resilient group that’s been used to rebounding quickly,” Boucher said.

Riendeau capped his hat trick in the middle frame less than three minutes after Olivier Hotte scored his first of the playoffs to push the Volts out to a 5-2 lead.

Hoffman notched his league-leading eighth of the playoffs and second of the game early in the third, again on the power play, to run the lead to four goals.

Patrik Prokop buried a power-play goal late in the third to cap the scoring.

The same two teams will duke it out again Wednesday. A Drummondville win would end the Maineiacs’ season, and send Lewiston to its only first-round defeat via sweep in team history. The only other time a team swept Lewiston was in 2005, when Sidney Crosby and the Rimouski Oceanic ousted the Maineiacs in the second round.