LEWISTON – Time out: The Lewiston Maineiacs may not be on the move after all.

The Maineiacs, the 18-team Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s lone United States-based team, applied to the league on Jan. 31 for permission to relocate.

The league granted the request. But it now appears the team, after listening to suitors in Boisbriand, Quebec, and, most recently, Fredericton, N.B. – among others – may remain in Lewiston for a while longer.

“Right now, the Lewiston Maineiacs are going nowhere,” said head coach Don MacAdam. “As far as I’m concerned, the team never had concrete plans to go anywhere in the first place. Mr. Just owed it to himself on the business side of things to explore all of his options, to listen to what other people had to say.”

MacAdam had, before Tuesday, been mum on the topic, saying only that the business side of the Lewiston Maineiacs’ organization “wasn’t his department.”

Tuesday, though, he broke that silence.

“I’m a member of the management group here, as the coach,” MacAdam said. “I’ve been around the management side of the game for over 30 years at various levels, and I’ve been given the chance here to offer my input.”

MacAdam was hired in January, with 22 games remaining, to replace Ed Harding as the team’s head coach. He has previously coached in the NHL, AHL and ECHL, and he owned and operated a team – the Dayton Bombers – in the ECHL.

Maineiacs’ president Matt McKnight directed all questions to team owner Mark Just, who said little late Monday night, avowing only that “anything is possible.”

Rumors started appearing as early as Monday morning on an Internet chat board that the Maineiacs were seriously considering returning to Lewiston next season – and beyond.

“I haven’t heard anything different than we’ll be playing at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee next season,” MacAdam said. “I know there are all kinds of rumors out there, but right now, we’re still here.”

Nine days ago, McKnight approached the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton about the possibility of joining forces with the school to jointly promote the school’s varsity program and the Maineiacs, who would relocate to the Aitken Centre on UNB’s campus.

According to UNB athletic director Kevin Dickie, the school won’t begin to consider that option for at least two weeks.

He told the Daily Gleaner of Fredericton that the timeline of two weeks initially advanced by McKnight to have the framework of a deal in place “doesn’t work for us. We have no deadline at our end. We’re not ignoring it, but it’s going through due process.”

Meanwhile, David MacDonald, a businessman from Nova Scotia, has been busy in efforts to acquire the Charlottetown Abbies of the Maritime Junior A Hockey League and relocate that franchise to Lewiston. His deadline came and went overnight, as a deal had to be in place for that league to vote on the relocation by Tuesday.

Jim Cain, president of Firland Management, which owns the Colisee, said Tuesday he has plans to meet with Maineiacs’ officials Wednesday, though he didn’t specify which officials, nor did he divulge the nature of those discussions. He said he was anxious to get something, anything, settled.

“The customers, the fans, want answers,” Cain said. “I believe they deserve answers sooner rather than later.”

The Maineiacs, meanwhile, are two games from the end of the regular season, with the playoffs still in sight. The team is tied with Val d’Or for the league’s 16th and final playoff spot. Lewiston will host Baie-Comeau on Friday and Chicoutimi on Sunday.