Jonathan Bernier looks every bit like he belongs in southern California.

He has the hair and swagger to prove it, and he’s certainly not camera shy.

But his time in Los Angeles, while it has provided him an opportunity not only to play in the NHL but win hockey’s ultimate prize, has not taken away from him his love for his “other L-A,” Lewiston-Auburn.

Nor did it take away the area hockey community’s appreciation for Bernier, who sent him multiple messages following the L.A. Kings’ Stanley Cup victory.

“I’d say a lot, maybe 20 or more from Maine,” Bernier said. “I tried to respond to everyone, but my phone, it just kept ringing for two or three days nonstop with calls, text messages, emails. It was crazy for three days after the win, but a good crazy.”

Bernier stopped in to see his former billet family on his way back to Canada for a little rest and relaxation, which also gave him a chance to weigh in on the fact that Lewiston, the city that gave him his start in hockey, no longer has a team in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

“It’s really sad that they don’t have the team anymore, but that’s the business side of it that we don’t like,” Bernier said. ” We can’t really do anything about it.”

Following the 2010-11 season, the QMJHL bought the franchise back from owners Mark Just, Wendell Young and Paul Spellman and immediately folded it, dispersing the team’s players via a draft.

After a few trades, three of the players ended up with the Shawinigan Cataractes.

“Finding out the team was folding was the worst thing that could happen to us,” former Maineiac Michael Chaput said. “At least that’s what we thought. When we (Chaput, Pierre-Olivier Morin and Kirill Kabanov) ended up on Shawinigan, I guess we told ourselves that we had been lucky to fall in such a good place and obviously we were going to play for the Memorial Cup host.”

Lewiston had been building for a run at another President’s Cup championship (the Maineiacs were league champions in 2007), and many of the players on the team felt strongly that they would have contended.

And the numbers bear that out, as many of the former teammates had career years in their new locations.

“I took a look sometimes at how the guys from last year team were doing and I was really happy of the success everyone had with their team,” Morin said. “I think it would have been a really good year if we would have had the chance to come back in Lewiston for another year because we had a team really balanced at every position and with a lot of maturity and leadership.”

Even in their youth, Chaput and Morin realized, looking at the roster of players who have worn a Lewiston sweater, they were in good company. No fewer than 12 won titles this year.

Three are in the NHL full time, a handful more have had a cup of coffee and dozens are scattered across the hockey world.

Even the Maineiacs’ last coach, J.F. Houle, was coach of the year in the QMJHL in 2011-12 with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, and has helped out at this year’s Montreal Canadiens’ rookie camp.

Former bench boss Clem Jodoin, the achitect of the 2007 squad, is back in the NHL as an assistant with the Canadiens, and Roger Shannon, the team’s final GM, won the Memorial Cup as an assistant with Shawinigan and has recently accepted the job as director of scouting for the Moncton Wildcats.

“I think it makes us proud with all the success the alumni players had this year,” Morin said, “but it must be really nice for the people who worked in the Maineiacs’ organization all those years to see their players win big championships like that. I think the whole community can be proud of what they accomplished though those years, even if the team is not there anymore.”

“I guess by looking at that, you can say that Lewiston helped a lot of guys get to the next level and have success,” Chaput said. “(That is) something the town of Lewiston should be proud of, because that is where we grew up from being teenagers to becoming men.”

And these men, unlike the teenagers they once were, don’t forget their homes, secondary or otherwise.

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