ACAC title dispute

An interesting situation has arisen today in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) - where many WHL alumni head after their WHL days - following Mount Royal University's game five win over SAIT in the deciding game of the ACAC best-of-five championship series.

MRU's starting goaltender was injured in game four, forcing their backup to play game five. They found an emergency backup for game five, who dressed and sat on the bench but did not play in the series-clinching win.

Then the problems started - it's not clear right now whether SAIT complained or whether the ACAC discovered this on their own, but that emergency backup was found to be an ineligible player and the ACAC ruled that MRU's win in game five did not count. Apparently SAIT was given the option of having the game declared a forfeit win for them (making them the champions) or replaying the game. They chose to replay the game, which will take place on Saturday.

MRU is not happy and their players have indicated they will forfeit the game to SAIT rather than play the do-over game.

I kind of have to side with MRU, I think.....yes, technically their emergency backup is an ineligible player and thus they broke the rule. But the guy never saw the ice, so thus had no effect on the game. And we're not talking about the NHL here, where teams have entire AHL rosters of eligible replacement players available at a moment's notice - this is fairly low-level college hockey and these are unpaid student-athletes. Finding a backup capable of playing at this level on less than a day's notice - and on a weekend to boot - is far from a sure thing. If they hadn't found the guy they did, then presumably the next plan would have been to put the pads on one of their forwards or defencemen.....which is just asking for an injury and not something that needs to happen at this level.

There was no intent to cheat or deceive and the player had no effect on the game. I think the league and the teams should take a good look at the SPIRIT of the rule, not just the black-and-white wording of it, and make the sensible ruling here.

Anyone see things differently?

BTW, WHL alumni on the two teams involved include:

SAIT: Ryan Nieszner, Scott Orth, Clinton Pettapiece, Colin Scherger, Tommy Tartaglione, Mike Ullrich, Joel Woznikoski

MRU: Brad Bakken, Barry Horman, Jason MacDonald, Grant Toulmin