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Vegreville Vipers Junior Hockey Team Folds
Vegreville Vipers Junior Hockey Team Folds
Michelle Pinon - News Advertiser
Mere days after the Vegreville Vipers first exhibition home game against the Lac La Biche Islanders the Alberta Elite Junior Hockey League (AEJHL) officially announced that the team would be folding immediately.
In a press release, dated Sept. 25, it stated, “While this marks the end of the team’s chapter in Vegreville, it also signals an exciting new beginning for its talented roster of players.
All Vipers players have been successfully offered contracts to other AEJHL teams, ensuring that each athlete will continue to develop in the player-focused environment that they’ve come to thrive in. The team’s players will be back in action as early as this weekend, representing their new teams across the league.”
Vegreville Mayor Tim MacPhee was able to shed some light on team’s departure during a Sept. 30 telephone interview. MacPhee stated, “They asked us to supply them with an ice user contract to fire the Vipers back up again in a new league and we certainly agreed to it. We were looking forward to renting all that dead ice during the morning and early afternoon when no one is using it.
They were asked to pay per month upfront and so they paid for September, and then they informed us that they couldn’t get enough players to put a team together and that they would be stepping back.”
MacPhee added, “We had no idea they were not going to be able to form a team. As a town our responsibility is to find ice users to keep the costs for everybody down that uses that facility. It’s a brand new league. It’s said they couldn’t make a go of it here in Vegreville. We’re sad for them, but we’re sad for all the other ice users too, because they were keeping the costs down for everybody else.”
Filling those time slots will be challenging, admitted MacPhee, but that is what the parks and recreation department has been tasked with. MacPhee said the town would be losing about $35,000 in revenue and that typically the team would have purchased gym passes for the players to work out.
Dan Tabak explained the situation, stating, “So, unfortunately, as we started with the team (middle of August) trying to recruit players by the time of last Wednesday we were only able to recruit four players. We were able to play that Sunday as an exhibition game with the majority of all but five players were from the Lloydminster JPHL (Junior Prospects Hockey League) team, who we were affiliating with. They were kind of filling our roster as we were trying to recruit and promote more players.
Wednesday we got notification from the Lloydminster team, that effective immediately they weren’t going to be able to provide those affiliated players, they may be able to do one or two players in the future once we had a full roster.
But in saying all that, games starting two days later, Friday. With only four players registered within the team, there was no way that we would be able to register and be able to play games. “As we folded the team we had confirmed that all of our contracts within Vegreville had been filled. The rink had been paid in full. We had sponsorships within Vegreville, and effective immediately, we are refunding them. We have talked to the four sponsorships and have been refunded or will be refunded in the next day. As we’re making arrangements with…We will be working with those families as well to try to assist them and get them refunds, but again, that is going to take a little bit of time.”
Tabak was asked if he would like to say anything to fans and community members, he responded, “We are devastated ourselves, in that we weren’t able to ice the team. We were very much looking forward to it. We felt the momentum and the support that we had within the community was phenomenal, and we thanked them for that support.
We truly feel sorry for not being able to bring that hockey experience to Vegreville within the Alberta Elite Junior Hockey League. In saying that, we do also want to wish the Rangers, the Junior B team the best of luck and success this year, as there will still be viable hockey here in Vegreville.”
