With tomorrow being Halloween, we may be able to lay a fresh headstone on a team. The league laughingly calling itself the National Junior Hockey League, while not covering the nation, is as everyone expected, an absolute disaster.
The Vulcan Rampage, the once proud expansion team of the CAJHL, who jumped ship instead of paying bills to the CAJHL is showing its true colors.
Friday night, the Rampage sure went on a tear. Getting pumped by the Edson Eagles, by a margin of 15 to 4. All 11 skaters and two goalies must have been elated to have been on the road for the weekend. All that team bonding that can be done when an organization sets out to embarass themselves.
Luckily the Vulcan Rampage had another game on the road the next day against the High Prairie Red Wings. The excitement must have been overwhelming for some players Saturday night. A complete and thorough beating by a score of 14 to 1 was gifted to all 9 of the Rampage skaers and its two goalies.
Yes, you read that right. Nine skaters.
It looks like the Red Wings players couldnt be convinced to play for the Rampage on Saturday. Understandably because the Red Wings dont have a full roster either, and not having extra players is a problem when the other team is in such bad shape that you cant help them.
Emails and Facebook messages from people in Vulcan Alberta are not showing much support for this new “junior” program. Residents calling the program “embarassing”, “disgraceful”, and “a general disaster”.
Beyond the community having these opinions about the Rampage program, the team, if you can call it that, is completely unprofessional in its operations.
The Rampage have no news about the players on its website, yet they are claiming to be a junior team who wants to advance players. No player biographies are available on the team website.
Most important, none of the players or their statistics are listed on Elite Prospects. In fact Elite Prospects has the team listed as “not active”.
With nine players, and two goalies on the roster for the last game, I bet the goalies are glad their stats are not on their Elite Prospects profiles.
This is an example of the “hockey genius” business plan. Throw anything out on the ice, collect the money, and then try to call it junior hockey.
Rumors out of Vulvan now are that players are looking for other options, and could be on the move. At least its not like a whole lot of players could have to find new homes, all the other NJHL teams need players too, so there is always a silver lining I guess.
