NoCo Ice Center, Windsor CO - THUMBS DOWN
I'm kinda new to the whole, "Use a thread to rant" idea, but after what went down the other night, I just gotta vent. This might be a little long.
First off, there are several issues at play here, and in the interest of cautioning other members, I'm going to name some names. Not people, but the ice rink that this whole debacle centers around. Mods, if the situation absolutely necessitates it, asterisk out the offending names.
I play in the A league at Northern Colorado Ice Center, formerly Providence Ice Centre, in Windsor, Colorado. I have played there continuously for the last four years, and have moved up from the beginner league to the advanced league. In the last four-five months, the Colorado Eagles of the CHL bought out the rink (which was having some financial difficulties), renamed it, and brought in a fella I'll call Bill (NOT his real name) to run the rink. Bill brought with him a philosophy of rink management developed in Minnesota, which differs greatly in both enthusiasm for hockey and number of available players.
His ideas included, but were not limited to, increasing the number of protected players on a team from three, to ten. For the D league (beginner), this wasn't so much of a problem, because there is an abundance of weekend warriors and such sufficient to fill out eight 16 man teams. However, the A league (advanced) barely had enough players to fill out three and a half teams.
Fast forward to last Sunday, September 30th, when league play was supposed to start. Neither a schedule of games, nor team rosters had been posted. When I called to ask what was going on, Bill informed me that he was in talks with the Fort Collins rink, the Epic Center, to combine their league with ours, and start up inter league play. This, of course, was ridiculous, because the Epic Center had already drafted teams, set up a schedule, and given their players assurances that business would be as usual. Inter league play fell through, as I expected. Unexpectedly, however, was Bill's resignation early last week, only a couple of months into his tenure.
Fast forward to yesterday, when my team captain calls me. However, instead of telling me when our first game is, he informs me that he's sorry, his team already protected a goalie, and Northern Colorado Ice Center just willy nilly placed me on his team without checking to see if he already had a goalie.
So here I am, brand new gear barely two weeks out of the box (which I will post, if only to cheer myself up), scheduling my Sundays so that I don't have anything competing with my ice time; now, everything's gone. I'm scrambling for a team somewhere, because I don't want to go all winter playing occasional drop-ins.
Seriously, I don't understand how you screw things up so badly; with close to a 95% player retention rate from season to season, the adult league is basically a license to print money. On top of screwing me out of playing time, I know of two other goalies that got gypped. Jerseys arrive two, three, even four weeks after the start of the season. Games are starting at 11:00 at night. The guy running the Zamboni takes chunks out of the ice because he hasn't been properly trained. And God help me when I try to get a refund for the games I already payed for, but didn't get to play.
Bunch of savages, I tell ya.
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