It’s the equivalent of the carousing husband returning from the pub or the no-tell motel and jimmying his way through the window, because his exasperated wife padlocked the door.

Or the prodigal son, willing to settle for croutons from the floor surrounding his parents’ table after prematurely frittering away his inheritance on profligate living.

The Lewiston Maineiacs will be back in 2009-2010. Perhaps beyond.

With that gnawing question finally answered, only one remains.

Will you?

Maybe it’s a loaded query, since it implies that every seat on the bandwagon held a fanny in the first place. We know that isn’t true, or we wouldn’t have been held hostage by this discussion, this silly soap opera in the first place.

Ultimately it’s you who wield the power. And by you, I mean the casual hockey fan or the peripheral person who has scarcely acknowledged this franchise’s existence.

Not the choir members, the elders or the deacons of the First Church of the Frozen Pond. Those 1,800-or-so devotees who’ve adopted the ‘Yaks as family shall return in droves. They may see, speak or hear evil, but may God help the outsider who dares speak up about their downfalls.

Like the repentant hubby and the reproved offspring, the Maineiacs will unveil a new organizational flow chart and most, if not all, will be forgiven.

The spurned will see the departure of a favorite scapegoat or two and feel restored. They’ll have no reservations about investing their financial or emotional capital with a team that couldn’t wait to hang its shingle in Fredericton or suburban Montreal only eight weeks ago.

Hockey is a daily multivitamin to those good folks. That’s why so many were willing to accept a team of Quebec Major Junior Hockey League castoffs or Hanson Brothers wannabes calling Androscoggin Bank Colisee home as a reasonable facsimile next winter.

That still leaves half the blue-and-orange bleacher seats consistently unspoken for. And it’s the rest of us, the majority of us, whose response to any promised changes will write either the book or the obituary.

There’s the first obstacle. The Maineiacs must overcome the statewide perception that they’ve been dead for two months, already.

Now begins the daunting task of undoing a damaging cycle of handshakes, secret phone calls, bizarre sound bites, faxes, no-comments, 11 o’clock news bulletins and terse press releases for whom management has nobody to blame but itself.

Al Davis, in all his arrogance and desire to secure the best possible bottom line for his beloved Raiders, could not have fouled up a flirtation with Irwindale or Los Angeles any more brutally than the Maineiacs mauled this one.

It began with owner Mark Just’s late-January rant to my colleague Justin Pelletier, essentially blaming Lewiston, Auburn and surrounding communities for their role in this cycle of codependency.

If only they filled the arena. If only they understood what this level of hockey is all about. If only I had good cooking at home, I wouldn’t need to peruse the menu.

Never, publicly at least, did the boss acknowledge his own failures.

Assuming that Lewiston was naturally a more rabid hockey town than Sherbrooke, for example.

Believing that the product would sell itself.

Not building a marketing and promotions pyramid of go-getters that would proactively seek the spectators who weren’t getting the message.

For a team so dependent on the community, the Maineiacs’ anonymity and failure to build their brand in the region are inexcusable. Minor-league sports need to overcome that inherent label by taking major pains to become part of a city’s DNA. Six years after the start of this experiment, the Maineiacs’ front office is no closer to reaching the unconverted than it was at the ribbon-cutting.

In a state bereft of economic zest and hope, the cost of attending what is essentially an amateur sporting event is unacceptable.

The team’s allegedly deep in the red in spite of that revenue, and in spite of attendance that isn’t even close to the league’s basement. So it’s essential for the Maineiacs to convince us that it’s essential for us to pony up $40 to $80 and drag our families to a game once a month or twice a winter.

Will we foot the bill going forward for a team that hasn’t sold us? That tried to divorce us? That came crawling back to us?

To forgive is divine, but I suspect the Maineiacs will need a dose of divine intervention to survive beyond next season’s seven-year itch.

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