Whitecourt faces losing junior hockey team

If Brent Stark has his way, the Whitecourt Wolverines are staying put.

The former owner of the Alberta Junior Hockey League team that's called the town 160 kilometres northwest of Edmonton home since 2014 says he plans to exercise his right of first refusal to buy it back.

Rumour has it the current owners want to move the Junior 'A' squad to Devon, said Stark, who sold it to the Parkland Hockey Group out of Spruce Grove three years ago.

Both Parkland Hockey Group and the AJHL declined to comment on the team's ownership situation.

"I was asked a couple of weeks ago to waive that right (of first refusal), which I declined," Stark told CTV News Edmonton, adding he recently signed an obligation with the town to help build a new dressing room for the team.

"At the end of the day, we have a lot of good people in Whitecourt, and there's a lot of people that helped bring that team there and keep that team there.

"I really owe nothing to the (current) ownership group, but I owe lots to Whitecourt."

Randy Pipke, who's been taking in Wolverines players as billets since the team moved to Whitecourt from St. Albert, said not having Junior A hockey in the community would be "pretty devastating."

“People don’t realize how much money these guys bring to town, local companies, just even for the kids here that play their hockey — whether it be Bantam or junior, whatever they play — just having a team like the Whitecourt Wolverines play for us is, I think, very important for the community," Pipke told CTV News Edmonton.

The Wolverines finished the AJHL regular season in first place, with the playoffs set to start next week, a little more than a month after five of the circuit's clubs left for British Columbia's BCHL.

What happens next regarding the future of the team in Whitecourt is up to the league, says Stark, who understands the owners have applied to move it.

"At that point, it goes to the management committee, which then would take their advice or what their suggestion is to the board and then they get to vote on it," he said.

"Pretty much 90 per cent of people that are sitting at that round table at the AJHL are the same people that voted for this agreement, which has a right of first refusal, so if that's gone — if they're decided to go against that — I guess that puts us in a whole different realm after that."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Marek Tkach