LEWISTON — Michelle and Shane Manson have a pair of sons, 2 and 6 years old. Neither boy remembers a time when they did not share their home each winter with a professional hockey player.

The Mansons have been a billet family for the Lewiston Maineiacs for a half-dozen years. On Wednesday, they — and the kids — were trying to come to grips with the idea that the billet lifestyle is over.

“We celebrated birthdays together,” Michelle said. “We celebrated holidays together. They become a part of your family; they really do.”

Through trades and cuts, hockey’s natural-selection process, the Mansons have hosted several players over the years. Most recently, feisty forward Cole Hawes has shared their home.

At the Manson home, Cole’s room in the finished basement still looked lived in. There’s the desk and computer. There’s the television, the bed and the hockey mementos on the walls.

“A lot of his stuff is still here,” Shane Manson said. “There are still shirts in his closet. His shoes are everywhere. I kept tripping over them, so I just tossed them back in his room.”

The Mansons thought he’d come back. Hawes himself expected to be back in Lewiston come the start of hockey season. Sure, everyone had heard all about the struggles of the Maineiacs organization. Few thought it would come to this.

“Of course, we’ve known right along what could potentially happen,” Michelle said. “We were just hoping that at the end of the day, something would keep it from happening.”

No such luck. On Tuesday night, everybody who follows the Maineiacs learned that the team was being dissolved. Members of Lewy’s Legion, among the most ardent of hockey fans anywhere, took it hard. They had no qualms about admitting it.

“It was a really bad night,” Michelle said.

She cried, harder than she has in years. Almost every hardcore fan you talk to will tell you the same.

For a billet family, losing a team is about more than just giving up on a local connection to hockey. It’s the loss of a way of life.

“There is definitely going to be a void,” Michelle said. “I don’t know how we’ll manage it. Lots of trips to Canada, I guess.”

It’s not just having an aspiring hockey star in the house. It’s all the peripheral stuff, too.

Michelle’s parents are also a billet family. Some of her closest friends are people she did not even know before the Maineiacs came to town. The players, the coaches and the fans became one, big extended family.

Now most members of that family are going their separate ways, and not by choice. The coaches — people with whom the Mansons used to dine — suddenly have to sell their local homes and look for jobs elsewhere.

“They made a life here,” Shane said. “This is life-changing for a lot of people.”

Life-changing for Shane, too. He has always been the one to cook for the hockey players in the house. That will mean a big adjustment in the way dinner is served, come winter.

Mourning the loss of the Maineiacs feels quite a lot like the sadness that follows a death in the family. On Wednesday, the Mansons seemed to be going through the classic stages of grief, including denial.

There was, for example, the matter of the downstairs portion of the house. Down there is what used to be Cole’s room. Before Cole, the room belong to Marco Desveaux and there were nearly a half-dozen before him.

Across from that sacred room is a place called the Players Pad, a standard rumpus room with a hockey theme. The shelves are stacked with pucks, walls covered with photos, jerseys hanging on a hook. There’s a hockey quilt that inspired one player to score his first goal, a goalie mask staring from a far wall and a replica hockey rink made of foam on the floor.

The basement is all hockey.

“I said, ‘Let’s take a break,'” said Michelle, with a bit of self-ridicule in her eyes. “Let’s not go downstairs for a while.”

But of course, it’s hard to avoid an entire portion of a house. Denial, one of the earliest grief stages, didn’t last long, but acceptance wasn’t exactly rushing in, either.

“It’s going to be very weird in the wintertime,” Shane said, glancing at the hockey memorabilia around the room. “It’s going to be different, that’s for sure.”

Not that it was always easy. The Mansons have watched their share of teenage hockey players grow into young men. When that happens, there are almost always trials. A couple of the players got into drinking and partying too much. The Mansons had to part ways with them because that is not their style of living.

And yet, plenty of other players, gone for years and yet somehow, across time and space, are still part of the family.

 “Our first player, he’s 23 years old now,” Michelle said. “We still keep in touch.”

As they described their experiences as a billet family, wandering through their home, the two Manson boys vied for attention. Patrick is kind of conservative. He’s more into karate than hockey, Michelle said.

Ryan, on the other hand, while only 2, exhibits some hockey traits. He’s rambunctious, energetic and aggressive. While his parents spoke with reporters, the boy pulled a helmet onto his head and snarled. At one point, he dashed across the room, batting at the floor with a miniature hockey stick. It’s easy to imagine the kid growing into a hockey player in just a few short years. And even if he doesn’t, there is a strong sense around the Manson household that it is a hockey kind of family.

Always has been, Michelle agreed, and always will be.