One night after scoring the most goals they had all season in a road game, the Lewiston Maineiacs sputtered out of the gate in the second of back-to-back contests away from home and never recovered.

Maxime Legault netted a goal 1:04 into the game and Gabriel Girard held down the fort between the pipes to earn a shutout as the Shawinigan Cataractes skated past the Maineiacs 3-0 in front of 2,605 at the Centre Bionest on Thursday.

“(Girard) was solid, but I don’t think we were paying the price we needed to pay in front of the net to score goals,” Maineiacs’ coach Don MacAdam said. “We have too many guys on the ice right now who aren’t paying the price.”

Steeven Jacques, one of the team’s final cuts at training camp, played Thursday after Sam Finn was suspended for removing an opponents helmet in a fight the previous night. He stepped in and played center and left wing, as Billy Lacasse also missed his second game with an undisclosed injury.

“Steeven played well for us,” MacAdam said. “He played with some grit and determination, and we used him on the PP and PK at both center and left wing.”

Against Montreal on Wednesday, the Maineiacs were the epitome of discipline, never allowing the Junior a power play. Thursday in Shawinigan, Lewiston still only went down a player three times, but the Cats made the team pay, netting their second and third goals of the night with an extra skater.

“We knew what they were going to do and it didn’t matter, they did it anyway,” MacAdam said of the Shawinigan power play. “They got both of them from the side of the net.”

After holding the Junior to fewer than 30 shots Wednesday, the Maineiacs’ defense opened back up against Shawinigan, allowing 43 shots to reach keeper Adrien Lemay, who again held up his end of the bargain with a 40-save effort in the loss.

Legault’s goal in the game’s opening minutes set the tone for the remainder of the contest. After weathering a barrage of shots at the end of the first, Lewiston made a push to start the second, but another timely goal, this one from Charles-Olivier Roussel on the power play, gave the homestanding Cataractes a two-goal cushion.

In the third, the Maineiacs had the upper hand on the shot clock, but Girard was up to the task. An early-third-period tally by Nicolas Larocque-Marcoux capped the scoring, sending the Maineiacs to their ninth defeat of the season against 10 wins.

“One thing we can say tonight, the players never stopped working,” MacAdam said. “They weren’t always working smart, but they were working.”

The Maineiacs return to action Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee against former coach Clem Jodoin’s Rimouski Oceanic.