When the Deer Lake Red Wings signed former Growlers James Melindy and Jordan Escott, they thought they were set for a fantastic senior hockey season, but Hockey NL has put a damper on those plans.

Team director Jim Goudie says they signed the ex-pats, knowing it wasn’t in violation of any rules, in an attempt to strengthen their league. He says the available talent pool is limited, especially with the smaller population on the west coast.

“We said let’s go with some ex-pats, so we came up with a rule, last place teams could have four ex-pats, first and second place teams could have two,” says Goudie. An ex-pat would be someone who has played minor hockey in Newfoundland for at least five years but was living outside of the west coast district. “And at that time there was no rule in place to say we couldn’t go after these two guys.”

According to Goudie, Hockey NL disagreed and informed the team that they could not sign the two players as the season approached. The Red Wings appealed and won because there were no rules in place blocking them from signing the two Avalon-based players.

That’s when Hockey NL took a different approach, says Goudie. A special resolution was passed to change the rules, setting up a boundary splitting the island in half at Gambo. Anyone east has to play in the Avalon East league, and anyone west of the boundary has to play in the Central West league.

Deer Lake decided to appeal again based on special circumstances – namely because the season was fast upon them, but it didn’t end in their favour.

“No one else had approached them, ” said Goudie of Melindy and Escott. “We made our appeal, (and) that appeal was recently rejected. That’s it, I guess we can’t have these guys playing in Deer Lake this year, and I guess if the rule holds, we’ll never have them play on the west coast ever again.”

VOCM News has reached out to Hockey NL for response.