You shouldn’t have. No, Lewiston High School hockey community, you really shouldn’t have.

Norm Gagne, a man of impeccable character with an indisputable record of training boys to play both hockey and the game of life, is prepared to walk away from your fractured camp.

Rather than sign his name to a performance review littered with third-hand aspersions about his leadership, Gagne is prepared to let someone else coach the Blue Devils in 2008-09. Whether it’s a resignation or a non-renewal of his contract is a game of semantics Gagne’s, um, superiors gleefully encourage you to play.

Tucked between the cryptic quotes in Justin Pelletier’s excellent coverage of this breaking story was the textbook cautionary tale. Parents who wouldn’t know a blue line from a buffet line pull a predictable complaint out of their backsides. Administration, fearing the wrath of the taxpayers who keep them in designer stuffed shirts, leave the asylum door unlocked. And the guy in the crossfire says to hell with it.

Concerns aren’t always baseless. Coaches need checks and balances. Just as The Oracle at Delphi was accepted without question and The Boy Who Cried Wolf invited skepticism, however, track records are an important barometer in these situations. I’m compelled to err on the side of 563 wins, 33 years of selfless service and six state championships. Also, hundreds of now-grown men who would stand in front of a speeding locomotive for their former bench boss.

Forget Gagne for a moment. Lewiston players deserve better than to have the adults in their life let a coach of this caliber bail from a profession that sorely lacks passion and institutional memory.

The suits and sweater vests hide behind the shield of “personnel matter” when they have neither the stones nor a common-sense explanation to support their actions in 10,000 words or less.

This, of course, is one of those myths of the educational establishment. Fifteen months ago, when Leavitt Area High School canned boys’ basketball coach Mike Remillard, SAD 52 embraced that stand-by for 24 hours. Only after bold print held a cigarette lighter to its fanny did the superintendent’s office concede that the dismissal was due to an inappropriate locker room motivational tactic. The people who foot their direct deposit had a right to learn what, why and wherefore.

Gagne’s supposed shortcomings aren’t as scandalous because, well, they just aren’t. I don’t need to read his evaluation to know that. To know him 20 years has been to know an educator who embodies class, as opposed to the abrasive minority in the bleachers that supply the final three letters in the word.

All he did in three winters was win three Eastern Maine championships. It follows, then, that the smudge in Gagne’s file most likely derives its source from one of three hackneyed parental objections.

• “He yells too much.” Yeah, and your kid probably deserved it. Have we lost our mind since 1980? If I had a dime for every teacher who slammed a door, dropped a book on his desk and howled at my class until the vein in his temple turned the color of Grape Kool-Aid, I could afford counseling. Gagne is old-school. To paraphrase the smirking sensei from “The Karate Kid,” this is hockey, not a knitting class. Deal with it.

• “He picked Tommy (Tyler, Tanner, Tucker, insert your precious champ’s name here) for varsity and then never let him play.” Yes, little buddy is now a senior, but six sophomores play his position better. Or perhaps that 71 he pulled in phys ed was enough to satisfy the bare minimum to stay on the roster but not enough to pass the Gagne test. When you’ve enjoyed a lifetime of seeing your players make the honor roll and advance to the college of their choice, you get that way. Deal with it.

• “If we had a younger/hipper/prettier coach, we would’ve won one of those state championship games.” We now have a generation of dads in Lewiston and Auburn who grew up when it was divinely ordained for LHS or St. Dominic to hoist the Class A trophy. Not sure how to break this to ’em, but there were eight teams in the entire state playing hockey and eight gazillion assembly-line jobs within a mile radius of Lisbon Street back then. Those paychecks have migrated south, along with people who have the wherewithal to make four babies without government assistance, start hockey programs and build an arena in the center of town.

Lewiston is closing in on a stretch of 15 years with one state championship, that coming in 2002. You owe Gagne an engraved thank-you for keeping your program in the same paragraph with Biddeford, Kennebunk and Falmouth. Your tradition means squat. Deal with it.

Lewiston’s superintendent, athletic director, boosters and majority of fans who get it should deal with the problem sharply and succinctly, by inviting the grumblers to stuff it. Watch this truly good person slip away and your hockey program will get what it truly deserves: A slow, perilous slide into irrelevance.

And by the time you realize that you shouldn’t have, it will be irreversibly, laughably late.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].