After one last home* game as the Berlin BlackJacks, any last remains of the team were declared dead, as a new team with a new name have officially replaced the BlackJacks on the LNAH website and schedule.

With last weekend’s loss and the official name change, the Berlin BlackJacks end their time in LNAH with a record of 3-8-1, good for 7 points and last place.

Say hello to Les Petroliers Du Nord, or in English, the Northern Oilers, owned and operated by Petrole & Propane Belanger.

Per the LNAH website, and again, poorly translated from French:

Saint-Jérôme, December 4, 2018 – The North American Hockey League (LNAH) announced today the arrival of the team LES PÉTROLIERS DU NORD (formerly the Blackjacks of Berlin) at the Rivière-du-Nord arena. St. Jerome.

It is this Saturday, December 8th that LES PÉTROLIERS DU NORD will play their very first home game against Assurancia Thetford Mines. The team, formerly based in New Hampshire, can count on the great experience of several star players such as Thomas Beauregard, Frederic St-Denis, Hugo Carpentier, Julien Brouillette, Maxime Clermont, Sasha Pokulok and Jonathan Bellemare, to propel the team towards a championship this year.

It is in the spirit of wanting to offer hockey fans of the Northern Crown a quality sport that the new shareholders rely on their LNAH team to make this sport shine in a brand new arena built and designed to accommodate this level. important hockey. 

In recent years, the LNAH has been a turning point, offering professional players a league focused on speed, robustness and spectacular games. We will still be eligible for competitive and entertaining games, but the league is relying more and more on the big hockey fanatics gatherings in the various arenas. 

To get your tickets for the NORTHERN PETROLEUM home game this Saturday, December 8, visit https://petroliers.lnah.com/. *

As the article mentioned, the team will play its home game at Riviere-du-Nord, a very nice, new complex that is uhhh, intimate, to put it mildly, with just 1,100 actual seats.

This probably should have been the play all along for LNAH rather than trying a team in Berlin, just sticking to the greater Quebec area. According to one article, the St. Jerome area had been eyeing a team in LNAH for more than two years before getting the chance to take over the BlackJacks.

(That article also offers some insight into the costs of running a LNAH team, with the new owners saying it takes approximately $500k a season to run the team.)

Frankly, this is one of the more bizarre things we’ve ever written about here, because generally when a team folds mid-season like Berlin, or Cornwall last year in the FHL, that’s the end of them, and maybe the league puts together a travel team to play their remaining road games. We can’t ever recall a team folding in the middle of the season, then re-appearing later on under new ownership, a new name, in a new city, and a new rink.

The only thing that comes close is the saga of the FHL’s Southwestern Pennsylvania Magic, who played one game under that name, didn’t have money to keep going, then had new owners come in who changed the name to the Steel City Warriors. But they at least continued playing in the same arena and city, and were basically the same team.

But again, with the new name appearing on the schedule and all over the LNAH website, the saga of the Berlin BlackJacks has officially come to an end.