Time to put certain topics behind us. You are all better posters when old nitpicking is avoided.
Yes - I agree, but here is a summary from all of the stories I heard. In the end it's really an issue between Gardiner and Brad that the rest of us ended up being witnesses to.
I believe both of these coaches are at fault for this issue arising; Gardiner was playing a little lose with the rules and Brad for not pushing more on achieving clarity from Gardiner on what the plan was.
The Plan (there is some speculation in all of this) - I believe Gardiner had Bast (StFX , 4th year – Regina, Sask.) as a replacement for Vandall (DAL, 4th year – Saint-Louis de France, Que.) and was looking to have Vandall as the Alternate (due to his injury). You could sense something was up when the roster was not finalized after the All-Star weekend, but they let it drag on a few weeks.
The Office - Either Dal or the AUS office, regardless - someone informed Gardiner that a DAL player had to be on the 'active' roster and that he couldn't hide the Dal member as the Alternate. (so, if Vandall was to become the Alternate - someone else from Dal had to be placed on the roster). You can do this with the goalies because they all travel to Italy (Groenheyde from STU), but the Alternate forward does not - no reason to as they can't play once the tournament starts.
The Flip-Flop - once this happened, there was no choice but to place Vandall back on the roster (or some other Dal player) and push someone off. Gardiner select Bast as the odd-man-out. This decision obviously upset Brad (on top of this I'm sure Bast wasn't too excited having been told he was going by Gardiner and Brad plus the story about his parents making arrangements to go to Italy). As such Brad stood by his player and stepped down resulting in Todd being promoted to Asst. Coach. All of this was done behind the scenes with no news stories or Press Releases.
So, an unfortunate event - some promises were broken, feelings hurt, etc. but everyone has moved on. Not the first time, won't be the last time. The team did have three SFX players; Day, Slaney and Kirkpatrick and even though SFX said they put it all behind them, I suspect it was a big motivating factor in their 7-2 win over UNB on the 4th.
Lets play some hockey - only 10 games left.
