LEWISTON — Most folks who know him, given a single word to describe Lewiston Maineiacs’ majority owner Mark Just, would laugh.

The answer?

Passionate.

It has never mattered what he’s done, if he’s ever been anything else about a single endeavor, it’s passionate.

That passion drove him to increase his stake in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in the 1990s, shifting from a minority owner with one team, to a majority owner of another. That shift — to the Sherbrooke Castors — ultimately led to the team’s relocation to Lewiston, and gave the people of the Twin Cities their Lewiston Maineiacs.

Two years ago, that same passion led him to seek relocation again, this time to Boisbriand, Quebec, just outside of Montreal. It was a fiasco that played out like a soap opera, and ultimately, the team remained in Lewiston.

Fan support has waned since then, many people citing the failed move as a reason to stay away. The team did itself no favors by playing sub-par hockey on the ice, struggling to back-to-back 16th-place finishes in the overall standings.

Things are looking up, though. New management in the front office and a new and much-improved product on the ice have given the team a morale boost.

Still, the attendance is low here. The team and its staff are working hard to fix that problem. Just, on Saturday evening, sat at a table with Managing Consultant Bill Schurman and QMJHL Commissioner Gilles Courteau, and discussed publicly his feelings on pretty much everything.

Here is the entirely of what he had to say, in his own words.