With one turn of phrase, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Commissionaer Gilles Courteau may have summed up another week of rumors and postulation the best:

“Unless there is a major turnaround,” Courteau said, “there will be no teams from the QMJHL in Boisbriand next season.”

Uh oh.

In what appeared to be a slam dunk move, the Lewiston Maineiacs announced last weekend their intentions to relocate the franchise to Boisbriand, Quebec, a northwest suburb of Montreal. Now, facing severe opposition from Montreal Junior owner Farrell Miller, if the team is going to relocate, it will likely have to move somewhere else. Or, it will have to stay put.

“Nothing has changed in our stance since we filed the application,” Lewiston president and governor Matt McKnight said. “The reason we filed in the first place was that, in talking with most of the other owners, they all thought it was the right move, to put a second team in the greater Montreal area.”

Miller, who purchased the St. John’s Fog Devils last year and moved them to Verdun, another Montreal suburb, signed his purchase agreement with the league with the understanding that the league’s rules permitted him to flex territorial rights if another team wanted to relocate to within 40 kilometers (about 24 miles) of his location. Those by-laws apply to every team in the league.

Boisbriand is about 32 kilometers (20 miles) from Verdun.

In a release earlier this week, the Junior reaffirmed their position.

“The Montreal Junior Hockey Club has communicated to the QMJHL that it will retain, without modification, its exclusive geographic territory that it acquired in connection with its 2008 Franchise Agreement with the QMJHL,” the team said.

“On January 21st, 2009, the Montreal Junior Hockey Club communicated to the Governors of the QMJHL that (i) it has chosen to retain its exclusive territory without modification and (ii) that it is not seeking any financial compensation in connection with this issue.

“At no time has the Montreal Junior Hockey Club sought any compensation, financial or otherwise, in connection with its exclusive territory.”

McKnight said that the league never even thought about the territorial rights clause in talks to move the team until Lewiston brought it to their attention, that it might pose a problem. Even then, he said, they thought Miller would waive the exclusivity, given the large number of people in the Montreal metro area and the potential for a financially-beneficial rivalry.

“It was never the intention of the league to provide one team exclusive access to 3.5 million people,” McKnight said.

In an ironic twist, the person leading the group looking to lure the Maineiacs to Boisbriand is an associate coach with the Montreal Junior, former NHL defenseman Joel Bouchard. In an interview expressing joy over the move last week, Bouchard even told people he’d met with Lewiston owner Mark Just privately in Chicago, back in December.

Just said in recent interviews his motivation for relocation the team is almost exclusively finacial. Despite a favorable lease, the Maineiacs have never turned a profit, and attendance has dropped from 2,710 paid tickets per game in 2006-07 to 2,170 this season. On six occasions there were fewer than 2,000 fans in the building.

The Maineiacs have seven regular-season home games remaining, and five road games. If the team qualifies for the playoffs – it is currently in a battle for the league’s 16th and final playoff position – the Maineiacs will play at least two more home games in the postseason.