Helping hand

Town of New Glasgow, Crushers come to terms on sponsorship deal

Maybe the idea is to help the Junior A Crushers ‘flourish.’

At an annual cost of $7,500, the Town of New Glasgow will have a sponsor’s patch on the front of player jerseys when the Pictou County Weeks Crushers hit the ice in September.

Crushers team president Wade Sullivan also said the Maritime Hockey League will approach Pictou County’s other six other municipal units in the weeks ahead to inquire about funding opportunities.

“We would like to talk to other towns,” he said, adding that other fundraising efforts are in the planning stages.

Sullivan said that while the Crushers are in no danger of relocating the franchise in the next year or two, the organization wants to be on sounder financial footing and he said moving the team could be a necessity at some point.

“Things haven’t been good (financially) the last few years,” he said.

“If we don’t do something soon to try to improve things, there’s a chance that someday we might not have a team here.”

To increase revenue and cut cost, the league put a pay-toplay system in place a year ago for players new to the league, and also stopped paying players – although teams can easily circumvent that rule if they choose to.

New Glasgow had been a sponsor of the Crushers prior to the team moving from John Brother MacDonald Stadium into their new home at the Pictou County Wellness Centre (PCWC), at the end of 2012.

Mayor Nancy Dicks called the Crushers a vital part of the community “not just to the Town of New Glasgow, but to all of Pictou County,” she said.

Dicks went on to say that the players do a lot of volunteer work at various community events and called the club “an anchor” at the PCWC.

“It’s important to have a team that draws people in to the facility.”

Sullivan said the Crushers operate on a budget “far north” of $300,000 per season, with the major expenditures being transportation costs – roughly $60,000 last season alone for buses used for road games – as well as billeting players, a postsecondary school bursary program that maxes out at $20,000 and roughly $50,000 in equipment costs.

When the Crushers called JBM Stadium home, they didn’t have to pay ice rental fees for practices and games, a luxury that did not move with them to the PCWC, where they shell out more than $4,000 monthly for ice time during the season.