After a rocky start to their season, the Steel Kings are now done for the year, their demise brought on by lack of players and the departure of the team’s owner.
The future of the team looked bright back in spring of last year, when the District of Tumbler Ridge signed with the Greater Metro Hockey League (GMHL) to bring a team to Tumbler Ridge.
After that, though, the problems started.
In July, Andre Payette took over as owner of the team, hiring head coach Brian Verbeek early in September.
But on September 28, Payette passed away suddenly while driving between Tumbler Ridge and Mackenzie, where he also co-owned the Mackenzie Mountaineers.
That was two days before the team was supposed to play its first game, but the entire league was having problems.
At the time, they postponed the start of the season, due to a number of challenges faced by the new teams. “After conducting a thorough analysis, it was determined that a slight delay would ensure a stronger start to the season for the teams within that region,” said the league at the time.
Problems included: difficulty in finding billeting and busing for some of the teams, getting insurance in place, and figuring out a schedule that worked.
They also were having troubles getting officials to the games.
“Of particular interest,” said the league, “BC Hockey, the provincial arm of Hockey Canada, has been aggressive on their stance of sanctioned leagues and teams operating outside of their control. BC Hockey’s statements that anyone associated with the GMHL, as well as their extended family members, should be punished and penalized by Hockey Canada, has caused a measure of confusion and anxiety.”
So the league took a month to recalibrate. In that time, the co-owner of the Steel Kings, Lauren Barr, took over on full ownership of both the Tumbler Ridge and Mackenzie teams, moving coach Brian Verbeek to Mackenzie (where Payette had been both owner and coach), and working hard to build a team.
“Yesterday I signed 11 players,” said Barr when she came on board. “And my intention today is to finish off our roster. I’ve been talking to kids and figuring out who I’m going to sign. I have lots of different players coming from Iqaluit, the Northwest Territories, from Saskatchewan. I just made a trade for a player from Slave Lake. Alberta, so there’ll be players from all over the country.”
But those players never materialized, and when the team played its first game, it was with a number of players borrowed from Barr’s other teams in Mackenzie and Slave Lake.
The team played three home games, all of them short players (including having no goalie for any of them; for one game, they borrowed the goalie from Slave Lake; for the other two, they used the visiting team’s back-up goalie) and lost all of the games, though the team was starting to show signs of forward momentum. They signed two local players and not one, but two goalies.
But then, Barr left, returning the two BC teams to the league at the start of December. Her stated reasons: lack of funds and difficulty in finding players.
The last few games of 2022 were scrubbed, and GMHL West Director Derek Prou said at the time, it was likely that one of the two teams—Mackenzie or Tumbler Ridge—would be going on hiatus for the rest of the season. And with Mackenzie having a roster of 15, Tumbler Ridge was the obvious team to put on hold for the season.
That outcome has now come to pass. Prou says he is going to be speaking to the District this week to discuss the future of the team.
“The League has given us the approval to suspend the team operations for this year and start again next year, pending municipal approval,” says Prou. “I intend to speak with leadership in town on the matter this week.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
