Former Hurricanes respond to allegations

Please consider the following as a both a general response to the recent allegations against the 200809 Lethbridge Hurricanes coaching staff and as specific information about our years — including the 2008-09 season — playing for the Lethbridge Hurricanes.

We would like to begin by clearly separating ourselves and our team’s situation from the allegations against the OHL’s Sarnia Sting.

The allegations against the Sarnia Sting deal with events that occurred in another junior hockey league, in a different part of the country on a team the Lethbridge Hurricanes have never played against. The allegations against the Sting are reported to have occurred before any of us were playing major junior hockey.

We are very disheartened to hear about the experiences of the former Sting players. We fully support the thorough investigation of all the allegations against the Sarnia Sting.

As players who have only played major junior hockey in the WHL, we can only speak directly and exclusively to our time in the WHL with the Lethbridge Hurricanes. We fully support the thorough investigation of all the allegations against the 2008-09 Hurricanes.

As players who were present during the Hurricanes 2008-09 season, we are taking these allegations very seriously. It is very upsetting for us to hear that one of our teammates had such negative experiences during that time period.

None of us can say that we were aware of absolutely everything that happened to every player on our team during their time with the Hurricanes. However, after thorough reviews and discussions among ourselves over the past few days, we can all unequivocally state that we were all treated with great respect and professionalism throughout that year and throughout all our years with the coaching staff of the Hurricanes.

The team culture developed by our 2008-09 coaching staff was based on work ethic, dedication and the highest level of professionalism. Our team became an extended family.

The Lethbridge Hurricanes’ 200809 coaching staff taught us a lot about the game of hockey and, more importantly, taught us a lot about how to conduct ourselves as respectful, responsible young citizens. The qualities we developed during our time with the Hurricanes have helped shape us into the people we are today and we hope that our children can someday have the same experiences we did growing up playing junior hockey in Lethbridge.

We can only make statements about things that we have directly experienced, and our direct experiences are what we have described here.

We wish all the best to everyone on the Lethbridge Hurricanes team during that year and every year, and we thank everyone for reading this. Signed by:

Ben Wright

Carter Ashton

Kyle Beach

Carter Bancks

Brennan Yadlowski

Juha Metsola

Derek Ryckman

Mitch Versteeg

Brandon Brossoit

Dwight King

Luke Alexiuk

Brock Sutherland

Dan Iwanski

Brandon Anderson

Cam Stevens

Colton Sceviour

Craig Orfino

Adam Chorneyko

Brody Sutter

Brent Henke

Luca Sbisa

Zach Boychuk

Cam Braes

Drew Hoff

Austin Fyten

Mike Tajdeh