Cold Lake Aeros franchise folding

Image: Arthur Green.

The Cold Lake Aeros Junior hockey club is no more. 

On Sunday, the team announced they were ceasing operations after being established in Cold Lake in 2021. 

There was no Aeros team last season because the Canadian-American Junior Hockey league did not operate in 2024-25. An April announcement said the league would return for the upcoming season. 

“From day one, the Aeros were built on a dream: to give highly skilled young athletes the opportunity to use their hockey talents as a pathway to higher education,” the release said, signed by Axel, Sandy, and Peter Axmann. 

The team has since deleted their Facebook page.

This was the third iteration of a team under the controversial “Junior A” banner in a non-Hockey Canada sanctioned league. The Aeros first operated out of Edson when the Western States Hockey League first expanded to Canada in 2018, when Cold Lake’s team was the Wings.

After the ownership of Derek Prue fizzled out, a new team sprang up in the Cold Lake Hornets, that also lasted just one season.

That’s when the Aeros re-located to Cold Lake in 2021.

The franchise’s proudest moment would be winning the inaugural Champions Cup in front of a large Imperial Oil Place crowd in 2022.