The Maineiacs decline to offer new contracts to their coach and general manager.
LEWISTON – The Lewiston Maineiacs are doing some spring cleaning.

Less than one month after the team’s inaugural season, and just more than one year since it moved from Sherbrooke, the organization is again going through a major change.

Maineiacs general manager Normand Gosselin and head coach Mario Durocher will not return after the club declined the option for a third year on Durocher’s contract and did not offer an extension to Gosselin, whose contract expired at the end of the season.

“After considerable thought, I felt that the best interest of the Lewiston Maineiacs in the long term would be better served with a change in personnel in the hockey operations department,” majority team owner Mark Just said in a press release Sunday. “This was a very difficult decision to make but in the big picture, I feel that the hockey operations department as it was this year was not the best fit for our franchise now that it is situated in Lewiston, Maine.”

Gosselin said he was surprised to learn of the team’s decision when he met with Just at 8:30 Sunday morning.

“I am disappointed for sure,” Gosselin said. “I spent six years with the organization under Mark Just and it was a wonderful experience. To be the first GM in the league to work with a team based in the States was good. I met a lot of great people in Lewiston, from the billet families to the coordinators to the fans. I had a good time there. If you ask if I was surprised, yes, I was surprised, but that is part of the job. You know in hockey you can be hired one day and fired the next.”

For Durocher, the decision ends a tumultuous two years.

After taking the head coaching job with the then-Sherbrooke Castors to be close to his family, Durocher stayed with the team when it relocated to Lewiston. In the same year, Durocher was named head coach of the Canadian National Junior Team and traveled mid-season to Helsinki, Finland, where he led it to the silver medal. He returned to the Maineiacs in January and led Lewiston to the playoffs as the No. 9 seed after pre-season polls had Lewiston picked in the bottom three overall.

The move comes less than two months before the QMJHL entry draft, where all 16 teams will evaluate and select players to become part of their organization.

“I am actually happy Mr. Just chose to tell us now, before the draft,” Gosselin said. “To go into the draft without a contract, that would not have been fair. He was very fair to us, and I wish the organization the best in the future.”

Replacing the two key members of the organization seems to be on the fast track.

“We have a verbal agreement with an exceptionally qualified individual to fill the role of head coach and general manager,” Just said in the press release. “Over the next 10 days we will work to finalize an employment contract so that we are in a position to make a public announcement as soon as is possible.”

A report published by Canadian news organization RDS on its website Sunday suggests the front runner for the job is Clement Jodoin, who was an assistant coach with the Montreal Canadiens from 1997 to 2000, and again in 2002-03. Most recently, Jodoin had returned as an administrator at the Quebec Midget AAA level. According to the report, Jodoin was a part of the Halifax Mooseheads organization when Just was a minority owner there.
jpelletier@sunjournal.com

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