Most of the differences between road cranksets and mountain bike cranks boil down to the size of the chainring bolt circle or BCD for bolt circle diameter. There are all kinds of BCDs but they seem to have settled into 3 categories: Road, mountain and compact road.

A 'road' crank usually has a BCD of 130 mm. This limits the chainrings to 39 teeth. If the crank has a triple, the smallest ring can be limited to either 24 teeth or 30 teeth depending on the inner BCD. Road cranks usually use 52 tooth outer rings with 42, 40 or 39 tooth inner rings. They may also use a 50 tooth outer with a 39 tooth inner although this is less common. Most road cranks are also 5 armed.

Most mountain bike cranks currently available use a 4 armed spider with a 104 mm outer BCD and a 64mm inner BCD. This means that you can go much smaller on the middle ring than a road crank. It also means you can fit a 22 tooth inner ring on the crankset so that you have lower gears.

Compact doubles split the difference. They use a 110 mm BCD. You can put a 50 tooth outer on the crank and a 34 tooth inner (you could go lower on the inner). The idea is to have a wide range of gears but not have to put up with the derision of your fellow roadies for having a third chain ring.

A mountain bike crank can work just fine on a road bike. A 44/11 is a pretty small gear and you reach maximum RPM quickly. I'd probably look for a Shimano Trekking crank which uses a 48 tooth outer with a 36 or 34 middle ring which gives you a higher gear for cruising. Since the crank is a 4 armed mountain bike crank with a 104/64 BCD, you can change the inner ring to from the 26 it comes with to a 22. This gives you an astounding range.