NEUGISE’S AROUND THE SJHL

By: Jamie Neugebauer
Voice of the ND Hounds

Before I get into a bit of a ‘State of the Union’ as far as I see it, let’s stay positive with a couple commitments!

Humboldt Broncos’ captain and defenceman Doug Scott has been dominant in pretty much all of the 36 Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League games he’s played in, and his speed, strength, and tenacity (not to mention an absolute howitzer) is sure to make him a fan favourite at Rochester Institute of Technology (Division I, NCAA), where he committed two Mondays ago. The North Vancouver, B.C. boy is set to go to R.I.T. next year along with Dauphin Kings forward Grady Hobbs, probably the best player in the Manitoba league, and could be the fifth Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League alumnus on the Tigers in 2021-2022! Pretty cool to see such a concentration of SJHLers, which means there are coaching staffs at the D1 level that are taking notice of our league! It’s a great thing.

Also have to shout out Notre Dame’s Max Messier, the son of Hounds 1988 Centennial Cup champ and Carolina Hurricanes’ scout Joby, who has committed to D3 NCAA’s Concordia University of Wisconsin. Max will head straight down there for second semester, and hopes to be in the line-up when the Falcons open their season Jan. 14 at Trine University in Indiana.

Ok, now on to what’s on all of our minds.

I have had many people ask me lately: when do you think the SJHL will be back? Is there any news? Well, the short and true answer is, who knows?

Here is a longer answer.

The SJHL Board of Governors will be meeting in early January to establish a couple points, including how late the regular season could conceivably restart, and even more brutally, whether they imagine a future for the 2020-2021 season at all (more on that last point later). Hopefully there is some quick news that comes out of those meetings, and that it isn’t one giant impasse like that which stalled the start of the season at least a couple of weeks longer than it could have.

So, let me put my prophet hat on and outline the three scenarios I see for the remainder of this campaign, ranging from ‘big-time pie in the sky’, to ‘hopeful/creative’, and finally to ‘would suck big-time’.

A quick note: I love Mike Reagan and the Flin Flon boys and fans, but I could not even begin to guess how they would fit into this…so I’m not going to.

Big-time Pie in the Sky

This is the scenario the optimists out there seem to think is possible, which I would obviously bite your hand off for in a split second. The scenario is that the recent restrictions that “cancel Christmas/New Years” have an excellent effect, the vaccines are all working and on schedule, new cases plummet, and therefore SaskHealth and the Saskatchewan Hockey Association approve organized hockey after Jan. 15. The Board of Governors of the SJHL have a plan in place, they remake a schedule to include an only north-south cohort-based remainder of a regular season, including about 20 more games per-team, and the 25 games-or-so played by each club at the end is therefore enough to work out playoff rankings based on win percentage.

Players start flying in, then quarantine for two weeks until late January. Teams practice for two more weeks, and jump right back into that said schedule somewhere in mid-February, and angels sing the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus on repeat.

This would absolutely remarkable, especially because it would mean that the 11 or 12 clubs and SaskHealth could agree on how many fans are allowed to attend games, which is the impasse that held the season back in the first place. Is that number of fans for the rest of the year going to be 150-per-game in this scenario? It’s surely not more than that; so as much as I would love to see this scenario go forward, say a restart Feb. 19, that cannot be an easy conversation to have again.

Still, starting again between mid-February to mid-March is the only way we could have something-like a conventional 2020-2021 campaign, while starting earlier than that is really, really hard for me to see.

Hopeful/Creative

Then if I am at-best extremely cautious about the first scenario, what’s the middle ground?

Well, it would require the typically conservative BoG to open its mind, I suppose.

All these issues drag into February, through March, and a standard ‘regular-season schedule’ is now likely impossible. Remember, Dr. Shahab said the general public won’t even START getting the vaccine until April-May, so any sort of SJHL is still going to be based on his level of happiness RE: the pandemic; there won’t be a 20-21 ever with even a 50 per-cent full arena, or teams on road trips where they stay in hotels, et al.

So, could there be a situation where within the cohorts, all participating teams get into the playoffs? Have a few games to establish seeding with very local clubs only, and do some best-of-three or best-of-five stuff, and hope that by the time we get to the finals itself, teams can travel for a champion of the North vs. champion of the South showdown?

How late could this possibly be? It’s not an easy question. Rinks start to take ice out for other functions probably in May, and then how late can you go before you run into messing with what we hope is a somewhat normal 2021-2022 season?

I just want the 20-year-olds looking for post-secondary spots to have more games to show what they can do, and I want the younger kids to get at least a little more development at this level. Teams still need to pay their full-time staff, so some games with some gate has to be better than no games and no gate, even with operating costs…am I wrong?

Would Suck Big-time

Obviously, the last scenario is that the BoG pulls the plug on 20-21. Remember, the teams never agreed that 150 fans max-per-game for the whole season is viable, and from a purely business standpoint, it’s hard to argue, as clubs have to project a struggle to balance operating costs with little or no gate. Still, I am staying hopeful this won’t happen, for the kids, and all the trainers, staff, rink staff, etc. who rely on SJHL games for critical income.

Would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on my social media accounts!

(Follow Jamie on Twitter at @Neugsie)