Time to rethink RBC tourney disaster

Hockey Canada has nobody to blame but itself for the Royal Bank Cup tournament that concluded Sunday night at Brampton in almost complete anonymity.
Hosted by the Streetsville Derbys, a team with very little fan base, a mediocre on-ice record in recent years and an apparent inability to organize much beyond a penalty shot, the national body might have been wise to poke around, kick some goalposts and ask a few questions before awarding its Canadian Jr. A Hockey League crown jewel.
In retrospect, the tournament turned out pretty much the way everyone anticipated.
As it stands, the event to produce the champion for Jr. A hockey in this country is viewed in most corners a colossal embarrassment. The crowning insult was a nationally televised final in which a smattering of fans — reported to be 900 and change — turned out to the cavernous Powerade Centre in Brampton to watch the Burnaby Express pound the Yorkton Terriers, 8-2.
That the other 35 teams in the Provincial Jr. A Hockey League were obligated to purchase $1,000 worth of tickets couldn’t even prop up attendance figures so miserable officials stopped posting them early in the week-long event.
It would take a miracle for Hockey Canada to consider southern Ontario as a venue any time soon when it is handing out the event. Then again, considering the tournament never really has caught the public fancy in Ontario, maybe it’s time to let it go. Previous national championships in Sudbury and Ottawa are recalled as flops, too.
Publicly, HC is blaming the RBC dud on a variety of issues, ranging from competition against the Stanley Cup playoffs to the lack of a home crowd for the host side because it was forced to move all the way from Streetsville/Mississauga to Brampton to stage the five-team tournament. Get real.
It is more likely a great many potential fans were turned off by the presence of a host team with little profile and which didn’t deserve to be competing in the first place. Geez, the Derbys had not even played a game since February after losing a first-round playoff series.
As a comparison of entries in the RBC, consider that the Derbys had half (27) the wins of the next closest competitor, Burnaby Express (54). At the top was Fort William North Stars, which represented the Ontario Hockey Federation and brought a nation-best 61 regular season and playoff wins into the tournament.
Maybe Ontario doesn’t deserve to host this prestigious event. However, it wasn’t a fair test of the market. It may take a long, long time before we learn otherwise.
In truth, perhaps the event truly belongs in small-town western Canada.