Cuddy Shark

GMHL helping deteriorate midget minor hockey

Kevin, I would think it more offensive to the sensibilities for anyone to believe signing up in a hockey program which, for no particular reason other than marketing purposes, and certainly with no credible evidence, purports itself as Junior A.
Observing hockey as you have from the dad’s seat for 24 years ought to tell you one thing —  that there’s not enough players out there to fill a 36-team league such as the Provincial Jr. A Hockey League, much less three other Tier II leagues in the province.
Easily, at least half of the current teams in the Provincial league could fall through the ice and the quality of the league would be vastly improved to a level approaching what Junior A should be.
Somebody once may have declared it open season for every hockey nut with a few bucks to start up a junior hockey team in every burg in the land, but I do get the idea that starting up a league and putting a misleading label on it is as ludicrous.
On another note, how difficult is it to see that the GMHL is helping deteriorate the midget level of minor hockey? How can it not since it focuses on the very players who should be playing at that level. Perhaps too many people may blinded by the reality that it is a business playing on the gullibility of a hockey public willing to cut a check for their kids to play hockey at the ‘junior level’. That is a market which seems to know no bounds.
Call it super-midget. Call it midget-plus. Please don’t call it Junior A.

Olympic-sized rink nice, but impractical

The Magna Centre in Newmarket is to include four arenas — three regulation-sized rinks and an Olympic-sized jewel with seating for more than 1,000 specators.
Why?
It is a noble gesture to construct a rink with international dimensions and one which the National Hockey League likely should have dictated to member teams when they were building new digs during the past two decades or so.
But who is going to willingly want to call this rink home?
Every user group will agree that it could use more ice time.
Will the Newmarket Minor Hockey Association put the enlarged ice surface to good use? Who knows? Possibly, although there is little advantage to playing on an enlarged ice surface as opposed to traditional ice floe.
One must wonder, though, who else, with the ability to draw an audience of that size is going to even want to use that ice surface?
Not likely the Newmarket Skating Club, which is comfortably set up at the Ray Twinney Complex. Its ice shows and carnivals draw crowds too large to be accommodated at the new joint.
The Newmarket Hurricanes? Doubtful the Jr. A franchise would be eager to move out of the bowl at the RTC in favour of a smaller seating facility.
Unless, of course, the plan is to rip down the RTC one day in the not too distant future. The place is 20 years old, which seems to be beyond middle age for facilities in Newmarket these days.
Quaker Pool, after all, reached its 30s and is now a flat piece of real estate awaiting its next orders.
The real need for ice in the community has nothing to do with Olympic dimensions. It is the adult leagues, the rentals and, yes, youth groups, too.
Maybe it’s nice to say we have an Olympic-sized ice surface in our midst. But that’s as far as it goes.

Is there really room for yet another 'junior' league?

My buddies and I are thinking of starting up a hockey league.
We can call ourselves anything we want, if we choose, and if we can persuade folks to buy into it. Bully for us.
That pretty much describes the game plan of the Greater Metro Hockey League, which somehow has the audacity to incorporate the term Junior A into its name.
The latter operates, it claims, to develop players for the next levels of hockey. A noble sentiment, to be sure. Oddly, in doing such, it is a program which many see as a detriment to the health of minor hockey.
That’s because in a market already stretched beyond its limits by teams seeking quality players born during the years 1986 to 1990, there already exist far too many teams for the good of junior hockey.
At the Junior A level, or Tier 2 as it is commonly known, there exists 35 teams. Toss in a bunch of Junior B teams in a number of leagues across the province, which, in effect, is the same calibre, and, well, there just are not enough qualified junior hockey players to go around.
So how is it a new hockey program can spring up out of nowhere and call itself Jr. A?
Hockey Canada did not sanction the program so one can suppose it could call itself the NHL, if it chose to do so. Clearly, given that the top junior-aged players are playing elsewhere, it is not of Junior A calibre, as washed down as that level itself may be.
Ironically, it was only at the outset of the 2005-06 season Hockey Canada moved to strengthen minor hockey at the fading midget level. HC did so by vastly reducing the number of so-called under-aged players each team could sign to junior rosters. Teams at the Jr. A level, for instance, are limited to using just two each. Levels below are forbidden to use age-restricted players, leaving them to play at their properly designated age groups.
Then along comes the GMHL, offering a place to play its definition of junior hockey for kids willing to bite at their bait.
Make no mistake. The folks running the GMHL believe they are providing a service to the hockey community.
In a province where junior hockey is already watered down, along comes a league created to provide a ‘junior’ hockey venue for clients of the Bob Russell Hockey Enterprises, a hockey business which “recruits” around the world for its hockey boarding school. In this case, that would be the Bradford Rattlers.
By the way, my buddies and me are thinking of calling ourselves, oh, let’s say, Team Canada. Is that taken?