Vancouver Roller Hockey Is Open For Business
The long-awaited Vancouver conference of Burton hockey came to fruition Sunday night with the first session of Vancouver Roller Hockey (VRH) at Burnaby's Confederation Park. This creates an instant rivalry with the original Burton hockey conference, Burton United Socialist Hockey (BUSH), based at Burton's John McCormack Memorial Park. VRH has an impressive line-up of longtime BUSH mainstays who were instrumental in the founding days of Burton hockey such as Stefan Klopp, Joern Hornhardt, Bernie Koth-Kappus and Lorne and Laird Bilinski. Also joining VRH are former BUSH leaguers Jerod Warren and Tony Sivilay. Under the auspices of the Burton Hockey Conferences (BHC), both VRH and BUSH will function as the American and National leagues function in Major League Baseball, playing independently as part of the same umbrella group with occasional interconference play. It is hoped that a VRH/BUSH challenge series can be played each Christmas or whenever is convenient. Both Stefan and Bernie tout the advantages of the new VRH with Vancouver's location allowing for longer seasons and cooler weather conditions. Stefan has also challenged BUSH to increase their schedule of games to compete with VRH.
