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BOB WAKEHAM: Changes needed to senior hockey rules to ensure Herder fairness

To ensure the Herder is won fairly, a firm cutoff for any additions or pick-ups for NL senior hockey teams should be imposed

If the Deer Lake Red Wings defeat the Conception Bay South Blues in the finals of the Herder Memorial Trophy playoffs, there should be a huge asterisk placed next to their team name in any publication documenting the history of the Newfoundland Senior Hockey League.

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That addendum, that qualifier — call it whatever you wish — to Deer Lake’s potential championship has become a shameful requirement because of the shockingly unfair way in which the team management added two players to its roster strictly for the finals, including Cody Drover from the Grand Falls Cataracts, who is considered, from what I can gather from news reports, as one of the finest performers in the league.

Imagine being permitted to grab a star player from a team that’s not in the finals; if there was an analogous foul on the ice, it would call for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty — a penalty ironically familiar to Deer Lake coach Darren Langdon, who used his fists, and nothing else, to forge a career in the NHL.

Deer Lake already has in its line-up from the start of its schedule — if the information I’ve garnered is accurate — a former NHL goalie and a forward who played in Europe, the types of additions with a long tradition in the Newfoundland Amateur Hockey Association (NAHA), and considered above board, unlike the........

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