(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

scrapped

Innisfail Eagles grounded for 2020/21 as Ranchland Hockey League season cancelled

Oct 17, 2020 | 1:45 PM

The NCHL ‘Senior AA’ 2020/21 season isn’t the only one being cancelled, as the Ranchland Hockey League also voted this week to take a year off.

The RHL, what would’ve been home to the Innisfail Eagles for the first time, unanimously decided to scrap its season also. The league is also ‘Senior AA,’ though the Eagles planned to compete as a ‘AAA’ team in order to be eligible for the 2021 Allan Cup.

Ryan Dodd, Eagles assistant coach and general manager, spoke to rdnewsNOW Friday and was blunt about how this will affect everyone involved with his club.

“This is the first year I will not have been involved with the Eagles since about 1994, so I’m devastated. You’re scared for the future of your club, your sponsors, and I feel terrible for the guys because as their coach, we have some great relationships and I love them; they’re like brothers,” Dodd said. “We won’t see each other, we won’t have the laughs. I won’t see them succeed, or help them through tough times and failures. I feel awful.”

Like the NCHL, the RHL was facing a season where they’d be forced to play games against one team on a given weekend, and then take two weeks off before playing someone else.

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In a, “working man’s league,” Dodd says, that simply wasn’t going to be feasible.

“We could only have 100 people in the facilities we’d be going into. Hockey Alberta has cancelled all provincials. We were only allowed 23 player cards, and zero affiliate cards,” he shares.

“Financially, a lot of these teams struggle with funding, ourselves included. If we don’t have our sponsors or fanbase at home games, we can’t have a hockey team. We rely heavily on the communities we’re in, so when they’re struggling, we do too.”

The Ranchland Hockey League had six teams last season, including the Nanton Palominos, Lethbridge Lightning, Siksika Buffaloes, Fort Macleod Mustangs, Kainai Braves and Piikani Broncs.

Dodd is confident all of those teams are financially secure as far as coming back for a 2021/22 season.

Another complicating factor, as Dodd explains, was that teams must have registration dollars into Hockey Alberta by a date in November, and with those fees being non-refundable and there being a chance Hockey Canada could shut things down if the pandemic worsens, the risk was too high.

“We had to ask ourselves at what point do we just say trying for an eight game season isn’t worth it?”

Last season, the Eagles were 3-0 up on Stony Plain in a provincials series which would’ve sent the winner to the 2020 Allan Cup. The series and the Allan Cup were cancelled due to COVID-19, marking the first time the national championship wasn’t awarded since 1945, and the only time since 1909.

In April 2019, the Eagles lost to the Lacombe Generals in the Allan Cup final in Lacombe.

Official word on the status of the 2021 Allan Cup hasn’t yet come down, though Dodd notes an Alberta team wouldn’t be able qualify anyway because of the cancellation of provincials.

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