Even a great start on the road couldn’t rescue the Lewiston Maineiacs on Wednesday.

Jordan Kennedy’s best performance of his young goaltending career couldn’t offset the Maineiacs’ continuing woes on special teams as Tomas Kubalik knocked in his second goal of the game out of mid-air on a late power play to lift Victoriaville to a 4-3 win over visiting Lewiston in front of 1,819 at the Colisee Desjardins on Wednesday.

“We played well enough to win tonight, especially our goaltending,” Maineiacs’ coach Don MacAdam said. “Jordan was outstanding all night,he was square to the puck, he was aggressive when he needed to be. We just did a couple of things wrong, but that’s all it takes against a team like Victoriaville.”

Kubalik’s second goal of the game, his team-leading 30th point, crossed the line with just 1:15 to play and gave the Tigres their first lead of the game.

Kennedy, meanwhile, pitched a shutout on 17 shots in the first period, and finished with 41 saves on 45 shots behind a defense that has allowed more than 40 shots in six of the team’s last 10 games.

“You can’t fault Kennedy on any of the goals,” MacAadam said. They have an excellent power play and they basically beat us on the power play. We lost the game by taking a penalty after the play was over, which gave them the power play where they scored the winning goal.”

The Maineiacs’ penalty killing unit, which had been one of the top two in the league, has also faltered of late. It’s no coincidence, MacAdam said, that the absence of captain Billy Lacasse is hurting that group’s performance.

“Billy’s a big, big part of our team,” MacAdam said. “He plays on both special teams units and plays a lot of five-on-five, but when he’s not here, he’s not here and we can’t use that as an  excuse.”

The Maineiacs jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first on goals by Pier-Olivier Morin and Alexis Piette.

The Tigres tied things up in the second briefly until Morin potted his second of the night to give Lewiston a 3-2 advantage. Joel Chouinard netted his second of the night to even things up early in the third, setting up Kubalik’s late-game heroics.

Next up for Lewiston, after an off day Thursday, is a contest against Drummondville, which was named Wednesday the top junior team in all of Canada by a panel of NHL scouts.

“We knew that was going to be tough when the trip started,” MacAdam said. “That makes giving away at least a point tonight that much more disappointing.”