Junior B schedule on hold

Hockey fans finally know who will be playing in the junior B showcase taking place Sept. 7-9 in St. Catharines.

It will be host Falcons, Niagara Falls Canucks, Thorold Blackhawks and Welland Jr. Canadians from the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League’s Golden Horseshoe Conference, as well as well as eight teams from the Western Conference and six from the Midwest.

When fans will be finding out what junior B hockey will look going forward remains up in the air.

The 2018-19 regular season could open with all teams from last year, minus the Caledonia Corvairs, returning and competing in the same conferences.

Or it could open with 15 teams, including only St. Catharines from the Golden Horseshoe, playing in a two-division GOJHL, and 10 others playing in a yet-tobe-named league.

It all depends on how the Ontario Hockey Federation rules on an appeal filed about two weeks ago by the so-called “Group of 15.” At issue is a unanimous decision made in 2015 to pool resources with team fees funding a league infrastructure including a full-time commissioner and paid conveners.

“The whole idea was to pool resources and, to a great degree, follow what has become the best practices in Hockey Canada across the country,” Curtis Clairmont, president of the Waterloo Siskins and a member of the

GOJHL’a board of directos, told a news conference Friday afternoon in in St. Catharines.

The Group of 15 believes giving the “best practices” approach will do more to more the players.

“If you look across the country, the leagues have operational control, they have their own infrastructure to promote the players, the franchises,” Clairmont said. “That is the model across the country.

“At some point in time, volunteerism has to get replaced by people who are working on the case full-time.”

That’s the conclusion we came to, if for no other reason it’s the best practices across the country.”

A potential move to a division that would include Cambridge, Elmira, Kitchener, Listowel, Stratford and Waterloo would increase travel costs for the Falcons as well as put an end to such regular-season rivalries as games against Niagara Falls, Thorold and Welland.

Falcons president Jim O’Connell said “time will tell” whether replacing Thorold with Stratford for a Friday night home game will be a wash in terms of attendance.

O’Connell said a lot of “soul searching” went into the Falcons’ decision to appeal the OHL’s refusal to create a 15-team league.

“We believe in the vision of the GOJHL and essentially feel that it would be a more competitive league,” he said. “It’s the road we want to go down.”

The news conference was told junior B operating budgets range from $175,000 to $400,000 annually, but Clairmont refused to say how much the average league fee would be for the upcoming season.

“I don’t think it’s the money, I think it’s more the philosophy,” he said.