History
The franchise dates back to the 1968 expansion Ottawa M.&.W (MacIntosh & Watts) Rangers and made their home in Leitrim in south Ottawa. In 1972, the M&W Rangers became the Gloucester Rangers and played out of the Earl Armstrong Arena. The Rangers won their first Art Bogart Cup as league champions in 1981 by defeating the Pembroke Lumber Kings. The 1995 Centennial Cup (now Royal Bank Cup) was awarded to the City of Gloucester and the Gloucester Rangers. The Rangers, who were up by a goal in the championship game against the Calgary Canucks of the AJHL. The Canucks tied the game in the dying seconds and won the Centennial Cup in overtime. After their last playoff appearance of the 20th century, the Rangers fell on hard times missing the playoffs multiple times. After a 10th place performance after the 2001-02 season, the Gloucester Rangers Jr. A Hockey Club was sold, and the colours and uniforms were changed to black, purple, and silver, which gave the Rangers a new reputation for the 2002-03 season. The Rangers also landed the best players that were acquired in blockbuster trades with their cross-town rivals Ottawa Jr. Senators. The changes paid off. In December 2002, the Gloucester Rangers traded for Mitch O'Keefe, who would then go on to record 6 regular season shutouts in 2003-04. Despite losing the 2004 Art Bogart Cuo finals, the Gloucester Rangers were predicted to be a championship contender the next season. In October 2004, with the sudden resignition of coaches Justin Nistico and Wayne Hughes, the championship-bound team lost its wheels to players demanding trades before January and the Rangers dropped mid-way in the overall standings and lost the Hawkesbury Hawks in the first round of the playoffs.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)