National championship needs worthy contenders

At least the Provincial Jr. A Hockey League will be represented by a well-rested host when the Royal Bank Cup faces off May 6 in Brampton. The national championship for the Canadian Jr. A Hockey League is to be hosted by the Streetsville Derbys, a team eliminated from league playoffs in the opening round Tuesday night by the Georgetown Raiders. All that now stands between the Derbys and the pinnacle event for Junior A hockey in this country is about 10 weeks or waiting out a gruelling set of four playoff series and a Dudley Hewitt Cup qualifying tournament. Nice. The Derbys, who successfully bid for the right to stage the championship, will be aiming to become the second consecutive host team to win the crown after an opening round playoff loss, achieved only last spring by the Weyburn Red Wings. It is a feat that hardly lends credibility to a national championship. The only redeeming feature about this host squad is a late-season surge that barely secured a record above the .500 mark. Hardly remarkable. Recalling the last time a Provincial team attempted to land the RBC, it was the Newmarket Hurricanes doing the bidding for the 2000 tournament. Despite being armed with a solid track record both on and off the ice, the Hurricanes were dismissed without so much as a sniff from the Hockey Canada folks awarding the event. The same can hardly be said about the Derbys who, only last season, were among the worst teams in the province and qualified for playoffs in order to round out the North Conference and maintain the league’s mandate to have 32 of 36 teams participate in the post-season. One can’t help but recall the 2004 RBC champion Aurora Tigers were built from scratch over three seasons. Streetsville, by comparison, vaulted from ninth to sixth in the league’s West Conference in one season. Never mind the fact the Derbys, a franchise whose best days were in the 1970s and 80s, can barely draw a quorum for home games with nightly attendance often in triple digits — as in 100 and change. At least in the case of the Ontario Hockey Association, better the tournament should be awarded to the host league that can locate the event where it pleases and then send a champion and finalist. In this case, the Derbys could host with two other teams participating. At least in that scenario, the two worthy teams would be assured of berths in the event. As it stands, the Royal Bank Cup champion could be a team that really has no business participating in the tournament in the first place and wins as few as three games over a span of 10 weeks. It’s about credibility.