BARRY Dewar owns the Kamloops Storm.

Fred Pittendreigh owns the Chase Chiefs.

The two probably won’t be exchanging Christmas cards this holiday season.

“Fred hates me, I hate Fred, can you print that?” Dewar asked Wednesday during a phone interview. “We have a very long-standing rivalry. I think he thinks I screwed him over the very first year when I was really trying to help him. But now I’d do anything I can to screw him over.”

The screw-job Dewar speaks of took place three years ago, at the end of the Chase Chiefs inaugural season in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League (KIJHL).

Lorne Cumming, acting Chiefs general manager at the time, accidentally typed ‘p’, for player, beside a netminder’s name instead of a ‘g’, for goalie, in an online Hockey Canada registry database.

Cumming later made the correction, but it was too late.

Shortly after the Chiefs beat the Princeton Posse with the aforementioned goaltender between the pipes, Pittendreigh was informed his team was being stripped of the two points earned from the victory.

League officials decided to hold a vote at the end of January, less than a month before playoffs, to decide if the points should be reissued to the Chiefs.

Five out of six Okanagan Division KIJHL teams (Princeton and Chase were not allowed to vote) voted against the proposition to reissue the points.

Pittendreigh claims Dewar had agreed to vote in Chase’s favour. That didn’t happen.

The Chiefs finished the season tied in points with the Summerland Sting and missed the playoffs because the Sting held the tie-breaker.

Pittendreigh holds Dewar partially responsible for his team’s misfortune, insisting Dewar was influential in swaying other teams to vote against Chase.

“That’s just Barry and the way he operates,” Pittendreigh said. “Barry wins at all costs.”

Dewar said he may have influenced other owners to vote against the Chiefs, but only because Pittendreigh had tried to get a Storm player suspended for a clean hit earlier that season.

From a financial standpoint, a playoff berth would have meant more revenue-producing home games for Pittendreigh.

“We were on a seven-game winning streak heading into the playoffs, we would have annhiliated him and everybody else so that’s why they voted against us.”

The proverbial bad blood between the two owners still boils and this weekend it will spill on to Art Holding Memorial’s and McArthur Island Arena’s ice when Chase and Kamloops face off in a home-and-home series.

The Storm sit two points above the Chiefs in the standings and have taken two out of three games from Chase this season.

But a recent run of bad form has some Storm members worried about their future with the team.

“Some of the players are gripping their sticks a little tighter because they want to make sure they’re still here when the Keystone Cup is here,” Dewar said.

And while Dewar is happy with the job coach Greg Hawgood is doing, no one is invulnerable to the consequences of losing.

“We have no intention of making changes, but winning is important and he knows that, and he knows that he has to produce.”

Chiefs head coach Tyler Boldt admitted he isn’t sure what the recipe for victory is on the large McArthur Island ice surface, but he plans to put the reins on his team’s forechecking to ensure forwards aren’t getting caught up-ice.

Hawgood and his staff won’t have to prepare to defend Chiefs leading scorer Brandon Mistal or discuss Chiefs goaltender Riley Wall’s weak spots. Both players will be playing junior A hockey this weekend.

Benefitting from money raised during this weekend’s games will be the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Special powder blue jerseys worn by the Storm Saturday night will be auctioned off to the highest bidders.

The Puck drops at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights.