LEWISTON — Montreal was not kind to the Lewiston Maineiacs in their previous visit to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s newest outpost. Nor was Shawinigan, the league’s oldest. In each of those contests, the Maineiacs played a typical-for-them road game, which this season has not been at all good.

They get a chance this week to fix that and at the same time turn their dismal record on the road into something resembling respectable with a two-games-in-two-nights swing to face the Junior and the Cataractes.

“We were so bad (in Montreal) last time, we hope we can only be better,” Maineiacs coach Don MacAdam said.

In general, road travel has not been kind to Lewiston. After a season-opening victory in Chicoutimi on Sept. 11, Lewiston didn’t win again on the road until Oct. 11, squeaking out a 2-1 win over the PEI Rocket. The Maineiacs are 2-6 away from the Androscoggin Bank Colisee, compared to 7-2 at home.

“We have to get over our struggles on the road, and the way we get over it is by playing the way we play at home,” MacAdam said. “It’s no more complicated than that. On the road, we’ve been a different team. We don’t finish our checks nearly as much, we don’t skate to the same level that we do at home. We can’t use the bus ride as an excuse. In every game, one team’s had to ride a bus to get to the game.”

Montreal, the Maineiacs’ opponent Wednesday night, has been an enigma this season. The Junior have a pair of NHL-drafted goalies in Jake Allen and Jean-Francois Berube. They are 9-8-0-1 this season, sitting just ahead of Lewiston in the overall league standings by virtue of a shootout loss. They’ve won two consecutive games, and last time against Lewiston held on for a 4-3 win after taking a 4-1 lead late into the third period.

“The way you beat quality goaltenders, you take the puck hard to the net and create traffic there,” MacAdam said. “You have to have screens in front of the net, and with the team speed we have, you have to be attacking the net with that speed.”

The Junior have been streaky this season. They’ve won their last two after losing six in a row, and prior to that they’d won three straight to start October. Montreal will play without newly-acquired defenseman David Stich, who will serve a two-game suspension beginning Wednesday.

Shawinigan, meanwhile, started slowly, recovered and now has appeared to level off. The Cataractes are 9-8-1-2 in 20 games this season, and sit in third place in the Telus Central division, three points ahead of Lewiston with three more games played.

“They’re regrouping from that start,” MacAdam said. “The organization’s too strong and the players are too good. When we played against them there, parts of our game were on track, other parts not at all.”

With the calendar shift to November, the Maineiacs are faced with a daunting schedule. They play just four games at home all month, three of which come the week of Thanksgiving. Six games on the road will test the team this month, with another four-game trip scheduled to open December. In all, only four of the team’s next 14 games are at the Colisee.

That swing begins this week, with 7 p.m. games in Montreal (Wednesday) and Shawinigan (Thursday). The team will skate at home Sunday, Nov. 8 against former coach Clem Jodoin’s Rimouski Oceanic before heading back on the road for a three-in-four swing to Victoriaville, Drummondville and Chicoutimi.