Obviously, the news around the Edmonton Rush has not been good despite their placement in the western conference finals. They have a chance to get to the Champions Cup with a victory this week, but that’s not what is on the team’s mind.
“There are two separate sides to it: the business side and the players’ side,” Bruce Urban said to the Edmonton Sun”They just get focused and show up at the game and the adrenaline starts pumping and they’re like a racehorse. You pull them up to the starting line, the gates open and the race is on.
“So I personally don’t think that there’s any type of distraction at all with the players. Sure, they want to know the future but I think with these guys, when it’s time to go they put their head in the right zone and they go.”
The players might not totally agree.
Rush captain Chris Corbeil was on TSN Radio this week and said it has weighed a bit on the players.
“Of course it is (a distraction),” Corbeil said, via the Edmonton Sun. “It’s hilarious. Yesterday, I was at work, I had just got there at 8:15 a.m. and the messages and the tweets start rolling in and my phone’s going off to the point where my co-workers are like: ‘What is going on?’
“They thought I was having some kind of family emergency. I said: ‘Our owner just called out the City of Edmonton, the mayor, all his staff and the Edmonton Oilers. So it should be a good little morning.’ ”
“This is all out of the players’ control,” Urban agreed in an article.
It really is a mess for the players who have no say and this still hangs over their head going into their game tomorrow night in Calgary.
Urban says, “And I’m a little disappointed in how it’s happened but the reality is we don’t have a lease for a venue and the season-ticket holders are saying, ‘Um, you’re not asking for our money.’
“Nobody will talk to you, it makes it difficult — on not just the owner, but the players as well.”
Despite the cries towards the city from Urban, the players still face the repercussions.
“There is nothing I can do aside from remind the guys, ‘Listen, we’re in playoffs,’ ” Corbeil said. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about. We have absolutely zero control over any of that stuff.
“And use it as a little bit of incentive and a little bit of a motivator to say, ‘Guys, maybe there is some truth to this and who knows if this group will be together again in the future.”
We’ll see how the team responds tomorrow night in Calgary, and if it is the last game they play in a Rush uniform.
