Forget staying on the bus, the Maineiacs appeared Thursday night to have left their skates, sticks and spirit back home in Lewiston.

Like in the two previous games leading off road trips, the Maineiacs had no answer for their opponent, falling behind early and losing control late as Victoriaville held serve at the Centre Desjardins, walloping Lewiston 7-0 behind a Kevin Poulin shutout, two goals from Joel Chouinard and three helpers from Philip-Michael Devos.

“I don’t know what it is, but our ability to play on the road has to improve or there are going to be some long bus trips this season,” Maineiacs’ coach Don MacAdam said. “We had another one of those games where (goaltender) Adrien (Lemay) had an outstanding game, and we couldn’t play well in front of him.”

In each of the Maineiacs’ two previous road trips, Lewiston lost its first game of the trip, once each to Montreal and Acadie-Bathurst, both by a 4-3 margin. This time, it wasn’t even close.

Victoriaville struck first, and quickly. Andrej Nestrasil beat keeper Adrien Lemay just 3:53 into the contest. After pummeling Lemay for much of the rest of the frame, Maxime Robichaud fired the puck past the weary netminder at 18:30 to give the Tigres a cushion.

In the second, tempers flared and the Maineiacs’ deficit got deeper. Goals by Chouinard, Olivier Hinse, Yanni Gourde and Keven Dupont ran the score to 6-0 in favor of the Tigres. Chouinard netted his second in the third to cap the scoring.

Lewiston finished the game with 34 total penalty minutes, 20 of those coming from four separate fights. Sam Finn led the team with 11 penalty minutes on the night.

One bright spot, MacAdam said, was the team’s trio of underagers.

“Our three 16-year-olds really played well tonight, they played to the potential we saw in them for the future,” MacAdam said. “On the other end, our best players were far from our best guys out there (Thursday).”

The Maineiacs travel Friday to Shawinigan, where they will take on the Cataractes in a 7 p.m. contest.