he international intrigue that descended on the stillness of Shelburne, Ontario, revealed itself first to Owen Bennington on a humid Friday afternoon in May.

After a welding class, the 15-year-old boy found his school locker had been vandalized. When he finally wrenched it open with the help of a janitor, he found a note containing two words: Russian bitch.

Five days earlier, Bennington was one of three local kids drafted by the Shelburne Red Wings, a team made up almost entirely of Russians in their teens and early 20s who crossed the globe to take part in an unprecedented hockey experiment – the creation of the first foreign junior hockey team in Canada.

Eighteen young players, most from cosmopolitan cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, are supported by parents and extended families who have taken bank loans, sold possessions and live in squalor to finance the journey to this town of 5,500 set on an endless vista of Ontario farmland an hour's drive north of Toronto. They come chasing a long shot dream almost universal among Canadian boys – to play hockey for a living in the NHL. They come believing this country is the best place on the planet to play the game. And that we have something to teach them.

But how they have been received by many in Shelburne feels more like a cold war than a warm welcome.

“I thought people in town would be supportive of such a unique experience,” says Ken Bennington, Owen's father, deputy mayor and the man who helped land the Red Wings. “Bringing Russians here to follow their dreams and play in our town, what could be wrong with that?”

Plenty, as it turned out. For some who believe the town's ice time, coaches and referees should be dedicated to developing local kids, the invitation Shelburne extended to these young Russians felt wildly inappropriate. And by siding with them, the Bennington family was cast as traitors. They weren't the only ones.

“I was angry with how I was being treated,” Owen says softly, several months after the incident. “But I thought that was the end of it.”

The Greater Metro Junior A Hockey League is a break-away republic – the largest and one of only a few operating outside the auspices of Hockey Canada, the sport's national governing body.

Half of the players on the fifth-year league's 13 teams come from Canada, the other half from countries including the United States, Russia, Finland, Sweden, South Africa and Australia. This, to the dismay of Hockey Canada, which permits only North American players to participate at the Junior A level, and limits teams to two foreign-born players at the major junior level.

If hockey has largely knit the cultural fabric of our nation, it is most densely woven in small-town Canada. Rinks are a gathering place for the pastime that unites communities. In a small town where hockey is entertainment, culture, social network and birthright, the rituals born from Saturday night games and practice at the crack of dawn is the setting of infinite dreams.

It is felt as deeply in Shelburne as anywhere. But Shelburne is a town divided.

The arrival of the Red Wings has pitted innocent, dream-seeking Russian boys and their hopeful parents back home against narrow-minded residents, small-town politics and a territorial national sporting body anxious to outlaw for-profit competitive leagues and foreigners. The bad guys versus the good guys. Shades of McCarthyism, hockey-style.

On Sept. 11, Ken Bennington, a boyishly handsome 41-year-old famous in Shelburne for his community work as a coach, referee and assistant general manager of the Red Wings, discovered first-hand something his son already knew.

As he waited with the team for a bus to the Red Wings season opener, Janet Gordanier and Sharon Long, executive members of the Shelburne Minor Hockey Association, showed up to ask Bennington about a rumour they had heard. Had he recruited three local boys, including his son Owen, to round out a short-staffed Red Wings lineup?

The mothers recited Hockey Canada's policy and issued a stern warning. If they boarded the bus with the Russian players they would be banned from participating in the town's minor hockey system.

It wasn't a minor threat.

“They were like Cagney and Lacey,” Bennington says. “They came directly at me and wanted to know what local boys were on this team. It was very uncomfortable. These are my neighbors.”

Everyone boarded the bus.

“We wanted to make sure these players and their families knew what would happen if they played with this team,” Gordanier says. “If that was my son, I'd want to know what he was up against. We don't want these boys to suffer.”

Two weeks later, Bennington, a 13-year referee and founder of the local referee's association, received an email letting him know his services were no longer required by the Shelburne Minor Hockey Association.

The local kids who pulled on Red Wings sweaters that day were banned from the minor hockey system that had – on the ice at least – raised them.

Word spread quickly, through the town and the school. One afternoon, the bus carrying Owen's high school hockey team left him behind. He soon quit the squad. At school, taunts emerged.

“As soon as the season started, every time I went down the hallway, people would say things like, ‘Look out, here comes the superstar,' and ‘Do you need help filling up the water bottles,'“ Owen says. “It's frustrating. But this is a much better level of hockey than I would be playing in Shelburne minor hockey. I want to play in the NHL so bad, I'll do anything. Hopefully, I can find another path.”

Ken Bennington is baffled and bothered by the ill will the Red Wings have sparked – something he never anticipated when he urged his son to try out for the Russian team he invited here.

“I thought (Owen) might have trouble fitting in on the all-Russian team,” Ken says. “That hasn't been a problem. Instead, he is struggling to fit in his hometown of Shelburne. I knew we were operating outside the rules. So did the boys. What disappoints me is that it was the local people whose kids I've been coaching and refereeing for years who turned me in.

“I'm an outlaw.”

In 2008, upset about a small but growing number of unsanctioned leagues, Hockey Canada issued a directive that labeled organizations like the GMHL “outlaw leagues.” The rule was extended in July 2009 to minor hockey players. The policy states that anyone – athletes, referees, coaches, even arena volunteers – who participates in an “outlaw league” is banned from Hockey Canada programs for the season, and must appeal to be reinstated.

“The policy is there to discourage support for a league that recruits players without putting anything back in the system,” says Glen McCurdie, vice-president of membership services. “We're not trying to be heavy handed. But we have a dearth of arenas across our country and we'd rather use our ice to develop our own players.”

In Shelburne, an informal community intelligence network began to nose out GMHL conspirators. Locals began to take sides.

“We get dirty looks in the grocery store,” Sharon Long says. “But there are also people thanking us for protecting the kids and the community.”

“Hockey Canada has their reasons,” chips in Janet Gordanier. “I don't know enough to know why they're doing it. All I know is we have to implement it.”

Shelburne residents who have nothing to do with the Red Wings began to worry they'd be called a traitor if seen supporting the team in any way. Owen's aunt, Karen McCallum, fretted her own children would be banned from minor hockey if she attended her nephew's games.

Keagan Leveque, one of the local Red Wings, has also faced heckling at school. “Everybody's afraid now,” says his father, Keith.

Tony and Carol Berardi's 10-year-old son Jacob was warned he'd be kicked off his hockey team because he worked as a water boy for the Red Wings, a job he adored but quickly abandoned.

Mark Taylor, a local police officer and veteran referee with the Ontario Minor Hockey Association, has purposely avoided officiating GMHL games. But still, “the threat (of removal) was made,” he says, because he billets two Russians in his home.

Taylor believes the Red Wings team is positive for the town, and his family.

Each night at dinner, the players teach the Taylors a new Russian word. Their 14-year-old son adores them. But it has put the couple at odds with long-time friends and colleagues.

“We share dinner tables together,” he says. “But the development of Shelburne Minor Hockey is not their concern. The development of their own children is their focus. It's selfish.”

League insiders say dozens of players, officials and coaches have been expelled from sanctioned hockey programs for their involvement in the GMHL.

Over the past year, about a dozen officials who worked these games have been banned by Hockey Canada, says Al Zimmer, a long-time sanctioned referee who quit two years ago and serves as the GMHL's chief referee. “If you come here, you will be blackballed,” he says.

In October Zimmer learned the league's private list of 60 officials had been leaked to the Ontario Minor Hockey Association. Within days, officials working under the radar with the GMHL resigned in order to maintain their status with Hockey Canada.

Zimmer has filed a complaint to the federal Privacy Commissioner of Canada whose office has assigned an investigator to the case. “It's really a nasty thing and it's probably worse now than ever,” Zimmer says. “These officials come to us wanting more work. …They want an alternative. Many don't find their way through Hockey Canada's program with much success.”

As with referees, the GMHL gives players more opportunities and access to highly competitive hockey. And for an outlaw league on the fringes of the country's development system, it has had some surprising success.

In November, the Columbus Blue Jackets inquired about Red Wings' phenom Stanislav Dzakhov, a 17-year-old sniper from Moscow who averages more than three points per game. In June, a Slovakian right winger named Matus Matis who played on the league's Bradford Rattlers, was selected 18th overall by the Major Junior Chicoutimi Sagueneens.

More and more, major junior scouts are turning up at games. “We know about the league,” says Blue Jackets assistant general manager Don Boyd. “We're having a look and I'm sure every team in the league is doing the same with players there.”

GMHL founder Bob Russell, a former centre who starred with the Sudbury Wolves before spending two seasons in the mid-70s with the Edmonton Oilers, says his fledgling league has already worked its way onto hockey's radar.

“We've been accepted,” he says. “Our goal of showcasing talent from around the world is happening. We're doing nothing illegal. We're not funded by government. It's free enterprise. (Hockey Canada) can't come in and threaten a private company.

“I believe in Hockey Canada. It's the greatest hockey organization in the world. I just don't like their recruitment policies. People are fed up. We let the borders down and let everyone come see what we have here.

“We invite the world to come here. And hockey is the thing we have shown we're best at in the world. I don't understand this.”

The intention and sentiment, he says, is as open and multi-cultural as Canada itself. And it helps Canadian kids, too.

The three Shelburne boys on the Red Wings are playing at a far higher level now than they had they'd stayed in the local system. “They've put themselves in a better position in hockey,” Russell says.

Inspired by the promise of an accelerated hockey education and mystique of the sport's homeland, Russian families pay the equivalent of $20,000 a year to send their sons to Canada. In many cases, extended families have pooled resources to finance a dramatic leap of faith.

For the boys, the pressure of excelling in hockey's hotbed with high stakes, a language barrier, unexpected controversy and little time to prove themselves can be isolating.

Their performance on the ice over this eight-month season will largely determine whether they move to a higher level or grudgingly accept a life without hockey.

“I don't think about losing because if you think about losing, it's more chance it will happen,” says Maxim Prikhodchenko, a defenceman who stands 6-foot-5 in socks.

His mother, Inna, works as an accountant and his father, Alexander, as an electrician in St. Petersburg. They happily pay for their son to chase his dream.

“He wakes up at 3 a.m. to watch the NHL games on cable television,” Maxim says of his father. “He dreams that I will play in the highest league – the NHL.”

Alexander and Inna's modest, two-room apartment on the outskirts of Russia's cultural capital is full of reminders of their only child; Maxim's smiling face on a computer screen, his guitar in the corner, his beloved cat Simona in a furry ball on the floor.

“We want to do the best for our son,” Alexander says. “I want him to test himself.”

Maxim left home at age 11, travelling to play and train with a regional team 600 kilometres from home, then later in Moscow. Three years ago, he came to Canada to play with the Bradford Rattlers of the GMHL, and joined the Red Wings this season.

“It's not always the right thing for kids to leave so young, but if you see your kid is talented and he really wants it, it's something you have to do,” Inna says through a translator, her voice cracking, then falling to a whisper. “This is hard but it is life. It is what life tells you to do.”

The couple has enjoyed a middle class existence until recently, but had to sell their SUV to help pay Maxim's hockey expenses. “It's a big sacrifice but it's a very considered decision,” Alexander says.

But for all they have given up, the family knows time is running out on their dream.

Alexander holds a photograph of his son's 2007 Moscow CSKA team, and points out two players – Maxim Goncharov and Nikita Filatov. Both were drafted by the NHL – Goncharov in the fifth round – 123rd overall – by Phoenix in 2007, and Filatov in the first round – 6th overall – by Columbus a year later. Goncharov is currently in the AHL and Filatov with the Blue Jackets.

At 20, Maxim's best hope is to catch the eye of a scout and land in the American or East Coast league. He has no backup plan. Hockey is all he wants.

“Whatever comes, I told him he can quit hockey and do what he wants,” Alexander says. “My question is, ‘Will you have regrets?”

Back in Shelburne, inside the bright, two-story, four-bedroom home of Ken and Robin Bennington at the end of a leafy cul-de-sac, Maxim takes his father's words to heart. “I want this. I really want this,” he says.

On coffee tables and walls in the Bennington home are the universal images of a parent's hockey dreams – team photos of Owen through the ages, dressed in skates and jerseys. The basement is cluttered with hockey nets and sticks, and shin and elbow pads in pungent piles. The walls are covered with photos of Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr, the shelves heavy with minor hockey trophies. These days, the tableau features three Russians who hog the chairs in front of the television.

Along with Maxim is team captain Nikki Vasilyev and Artem Gavrilov, a 19-year-old right winger from near Moscow. Each pays $500 a month to live with the Benningtons.

This is Gavrilov's first time outside of Russia, and his English is the choppiest on the team.

“My parents aren't rich,” he says, recalling their reaction when he asked if he could come to Canada to play hockey. “‘I don't know how you can go,' they said. So, my whole family – cousins, uncles, friends – all gave money for me to come.”

But it hasn't been enough. Gavrilov has only covered $3,000 of his $6,500 Red Wings bill, which doesn't include rent or spending money.

He's broke. His visa won't allow him to work, but he's desperate to stay. “My dream is to play hockey in Canada.”

The team has given Gavrilov time to pay the balance, but he doesn't know where the money will come from. “It's pressure,” he says. “I think about it whenever I'm not playing.”

No one feels the strain more than his parents, Anatoly and Olga, who are embarrassed to show a visitor their home in Chekhov, a drab city of grey buildings – an old war command post linked to the Kremlin by underground railroad – an hour south of Moscow.

It's little more than a shack near the end of a dirt road, built in the 1960s. The couple always intended to renovate it, like their neighbours did, but can't afford to. The walls are exposed cinder blocks, the roof corrugated metal, the floors wooden planks, the shifting walls covered in deteriorating wallpaper.

Olga is an office manager and Anatoly a driver, and most of their income goes to Artem's pursuit of hockey. They're deep in debt, and Olga has taken on extra work.

“We are the kind of people who invent hardships and then overcome them,” Olga, an elegant woman with striking eyes, says through a translator. “If you want something, it's going to be hard. You struggle through.”

Artem showed unusual athletic ability and commitment at a young age.

At four, he was doing push-ups. From the time he was nine, Olga drove him to hockey practice in a town 40 minutes away in a jalopy the family bought with a loan for its roomy trunk to carry hockey gear.

A Russian journalist who visited Artem's school when the boy was nine asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. “A sportsman,” Artem shot back.

“You could see how much he wanted it,” his mother says. “He never missed one training. We just had to support him.”

Anatoly knows his son's desires. A soccer and hockey player as a young man, he tugs at his sock to reveal a scar from the ankle injury that ended athletic dreams at the age of 20.

“I want something more than what happened for us,” he says, eyes filling with tears. “(Artem) has already achieved more than I ever did. And so I am proud. I want his desire to be fulfilled, that if he wants to be a sportsman, he will be.”

Now Olga also cries. As her husband talks, her eyes scan the dreary home where the crumbling walls and makeshift furniture are softened by small, homey touches – a vase of purple flowers on the kitchen table, lace curtains in the bedroom, a copy of the Lord's Prayer and a Detroit Red Wings cap, on a wall.

“His father's dream was broken with his ankle,” she says. “We want (Artem) to follow his dream and we want to be there when the dream arrives.”

Like other Russian parents, they say professional hockey is beyond reach for the children of families like theirs. Hockey, they say, is subject to the same kind of corruption that infects larger Russian society.

In addition to the standard fees parents pay to enroll their children in programs, under-the-table payments in the tens of thousands of dollars are demanded by coaches and trainers in exchange for ice time.

Those without means can watch their children warm the benches while less talented teammates with richer parents are provided every opportunity.

“I was strongly against hockey because of all the corruption,” Anatoly says. “But it was all he ever wanted. What we like about Canada is he can show what he has. If it's not enough, it's okay. It's what he has. Here, he could not show what he has.”

Complaints of bribery and extortion in Russia's youth hockey system have surfaced recently with open letters to top Russian sports and political officials from families alleging they were subject to demands of tens of thousands of dollars from coaches to see their sons play.

Prominent Russian sports journalist Vladimir Dekhtyarev says that families who refuse to pay bribery demands risk robbing talented sons of a career in hockey.

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“Parents pay something starting from $10,000 to $20,000,” he says. “(I have heard) a place on a youth national team of Russia going to world championships or to these series in Canada (sometimes) cost on the level of as much as $50,000. Everyone is either trying to silence it or resist attempts to resolve the matter. So players are leaving to Canada in order to play hockey there regardless of the money.”

Legendary goaltender Vladislav Tretyak, president of the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia, told The Star through his press secretary that he has pledged to investigate corruption in hockey, and that the issue has recently been raised in the Russian parliament's upper chambers. But it's too late to help Artem Garilov, who worries he might have to surrender his dream and return home.

Robin Bennington can't check her emotions when talking about the Russian boy she now considers part of her family. Her tears flow freely.

“The other night I could tell he was upset but he wouldn't talk about it. I pulled him aside and said, ‘If you feel sad, I feel sad.' He opened up and it just breaks my heart. It hurts so much to see him struggling like this. I want to help him but I don't have $3,000 to give him. I don't know what he's going to do.”

Of all the boys, Owen is closest with Artem.

“Owen is an only child,” Robin says. “I've always felt badly about that. And this was a chance to give him the experience of having other boys in the house, the experience of a bigger family.

“He's such a kind boy, he dances around the house and makes us all smile. It's like he's one of mine now. I can't imagine letting him go.”

“I can't find them,” a stone-faced Jim Aldred says

It's opening night and the Red Wings' coach is at the Thornhill Community Arena waiting for Bennington and the team to arrive after their confrontation with Janet Gordanier and Sharon Long.

The puck was to drop for the Red Wings' first game against the Toronto Canada Moose at 7 o'clock.

At 6:48 p.m. there's still no sign of them.

Each time the large glass doors at the far end of the arena open, Aldred, along with a growing pack of spectators, some wearing Russia T-shirts and waving small Russian flags, strain to spot the team everyone around the league is talking about.

“I see it as a privilege as a Canadian to open up and help these kids out who came here to better themselves,” says Aldred, who was exiled from the Hockey Canada fold after choosing to coach in Shelburne.

As a player in the minor pro leagues in Rochester, Toledo and Holland, Aldred was a tough 6-foot-2, 185 pound occasional goal scorer. As a coach, he's a calculating tactician and militant disciplinarian known for a no-bullshit ethos.

“You have to stay on these Russian kids,” he says. “If you're not strict, you lose them. They want you to be tough on them.”

Several of the Red Wings players don't speak English. And there are some puzzling on-ice cultural differences.

“They're really tough on each other,” Aldred says. “They'll yell and scream at each other on the bench. I was thinking a few of them were actually going to fight at one point. But I can't tell what they're saying.”

At 7:16 p.m., the double doors fly open again. This time, the entrance fills with players, stick blades bobbing over their heads like a charging mob.

After a quick warm-up, the Shelburne Red Wings stand at attention on the blue line as the regal opening strains of the Russian national anthem spills from tinny speakers. Some spectators shift awkwardly.

As the Red Wings remove their scarlet helmets, the classic Russian features come into view – chiseled jaw lines, tidy mops of blond and black hair, piercing blue eyes. It brings to mind the grainy images of the Summit Series, when Russians skated in Canadian rinks for the first time 38 years earlier, almost to the day, in September 1972.

They tap their sticks on the ice as the anthem concludes. One teen turns to another and flashes the first visual clue to what's going on inside their heads – a wide-eyed, half-smile that quickly fades into a deep breath. The Red Wings win 7-6.

Igor Vasilyev should see this.

Last year, the St. Petersburg car dealer saw a business in the Canadian hockey experience. His son Nikki had been in the league for four years competing alongside and against a few other Russians spread across the league's rosters.

Why not, he thought, seize the economic and cultural opportunity of an all-Russian team?

“It's the dream of many Russians to play in Canada,” says the 41-year-old former hockey player who sells BMWs and Land Rovers to St. Petersburg's elite. “We watch the NHL. It's the best league in the world. And Canada has the best hockey in the world.”

The decades-old mystique of Canada versus Russia on the ice was an easy sell to most of the GMHL's owners anxious for some marketing buzz to bolster the fragile economies of junior hockey clubs.

Vasilyev named his junior squad after his favourite NHL team – Detroit for its historic Russian pedigree, which he recites like a kid thumbing through hockey cards: “Fetisov, Larianov, Konstantinov, Krutov, Makarov, Kasatonov, Federov…”

To build a Russian pipeline for his own mini-Red Wings, Vasilyev set up a recruitment office in St. Petersburg to advertise the opportunity available half a world away.

Each player pays $6,500 to don the Red Wings sweater. Flights, insurance and another $500 a month for room and board in local homes makes the journey expensive. Yet business is steady.

“Everyone knows about this league in Russia,” he says through a translator. “This is the only place in Canada we can come and play against Canadians.”

In an hour-long conversation prior to the season launch, Vasilyev breaks into English only once, when asked how his team will do this season.

“We will be the best,” he deadpans. “Da. We will win.”

On Oct. 8, at the Red Wings' home opener, Georgy Kiselev, the Red Wings' 16-year-old starting goaltender, mouths the Russian anthem to himself, slapping his stick on the ice as the piece reaches its final crescendo.

Off the ice, dressed in a suit and looking on is Nikki Rodkin, another of the team's goaltenders and Kiselev's best friend. Boyhood neighbours in St. Petersburg who attended public school No. 181, they rough-housed in the playground, not far from the outdoor rink where they would later learn to play hockey.

They were both late comers. Nikki first pulled on goalie skates at 9. His pal joined in two years later. From the beginning, both were set on being goaltenders. They watched NHL hockey at home, phoning each other to discuss the play in Russian colour commentary. They wore the same team sweaters, hung out on weekends and family cottage getaways.

They were inseparable.

And so they remain as 16-year-olds, living in the same home in Shelburne, where they sleep in bunk beds in the Berardi basement. They are friends, but also competitors, fighting for ice time in the Red Wings' net. So far, Georgy is the undisputed starter, as Shelburne wins their home opener 5-4. Nikki is hopeful for a chance as the season wears on.

At home in the middle class St. Petersburg apartment of Elena and Kissel Kiselev, Nikki's mother Tatiana Rodkin is visiting. Together, they lay out caviar and tea on the small kitchen table and talk about putting their boys on a plane to play hockey in Canada.

Rodkin, who manages a beauty salon in St. Petersburg, says she was “hysterical” when her son first left.

“The first week I was dying. But it's very important to give them freedom at 16. Responsibility is part of learning to be a man.”

She's a rabid hockey fan, and believes the sport brings out the good in a man. “Hockey boys grow up to be nice men, hard working, courageous, role models.”

Georgy told his parents that two months in Canada is the equivalent of playing a year in Russia. He's competing against much older players at a level non-existent back home.

“Coming back here is like coming back to nursery school,” Kissel says.

All three parents say they have no illusions of NHL prospects for their boys. “When Georgy started at 11 years old, he was with a team ranked last,” Elena says. “They would lose 30 to nothing. But he said, ‘I'll play on Spartak (a top-rated team at the time).' He did it two years later. Then he said, ‘I'm going to Canada.' He did it. Now he's saying ‘I'll play in the NHL.' I don't know.”

And if they decide to keep pursuing their dream in Canada? What if they don't come home?

“I gave my son a chance,” Kirill says. “Now it's his choice. His destiny.”

Georgy and Nikki's romantic reports of hockey life in Canada have travelled by Internet to others back home.

One, Nikita Ushakov, a 16-year-old who played with Rodkin and Kiselev on the local Spartak team, is waiting on a visa so he can join his friends in Shelburne. He should arrive any day now.

“They told me it's good there (in Canada),” the lanky, soft-spoken boy says in a St. Petersburg café in early November. “They say hockey is so big in Canada, if you play well and work hard, you can gain a lot.”

Ushakov doesn't speak English and has never traveled abroad. His parents took out a bank loan to finance the move. The remarkable test of faith and hope that brought these boys across the world is incomprehensible to Ken Bennington.

“My son is 15, the same age as some of these Russians when they come to Canada,” he says. “I can't imagine sending (Owen) to Russia if the roles were reversed. There's no way. Yet, they're able to do it. I give them credit because it's something. It's pursuit of a better life.”

On sleepy residential streets in Shelburne close to dinnertime, youngsters engaged in the ancient ritual of street hockey wear Red Wings sweaters rather than the jerseys of stars like Crosby and Kessel. The team is 13 and 6, third in the league.

“We just love them,” says Carol Berardi. “They're great kids and we're helping them live their dreams. I just don't understand why everyone's got themselves so worked up about this in town.”

In Shelburne, for as long as anyone can remember, hockey is what brought people together. But today many will say hockey – specifically Red Wings hockey – has pushed them apart.

“In a matter of months the walls have gone up,” says Debbie Crawford, a mother of two boys who has been involved in the minor hockey association for 13 years.

“We can't have anything to do with them. And until the sanctions are removed, the walls have to stay up or we could lose our permits to play. For us to lose our sanctions, that's the end of our minor hockey system.”

She says the local association has lost some precious Friday ice time to the Red Wings. And because referees who work GMHL games are off limits, it must now pay mileage for out-of-town refs to come in.

She doesn't blame the Red Wings alone for what she calls “a lot of tension in town.” Hockey Canada's outlaw ruling has meant Red Wings' offers to help train young players in town had to be rejected.

“I do question some things about this policy,” Crawford says. “It's been a real problem. We can't allow our young players to step foot on that ice or they can't play hockey. We can't jeopardize minor hockey for the kids of Shelburne for the select few on that Red Wings team. We have to make a stance here.”

Bennington sees no thaw in this cold war.

“One year ago I was held in high regard by the community as a public official,” he says. “Now I'm the No. 1 bad guy on Shelburne's most wanted list. I know they want to protect the kids. But protect them from who?”

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