Ayr Centennials buy, relocate Kitchener Dutchmen
The Tim Hortons restaurant in Ayr may just bring back the dutchie for a limited time.
It would be fitting, as the Kitchener Dutchmen are being passed across the region, with the community-owned Ayr Centennials purchasing the Jr. B squad and are moving it to North Dumfries Township. The announcement came on Sunday after the sale was approved by the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA), just weeks after the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League (GOJHL) playoffs, and all junior hockey playoffs for that matter, were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“If you would have said to me pick a team that you can move to Ayr, I mean, the Dutchmen would be right at the top of the list,” said Ayr director of hockey operations Tim Barrie, noting the team will remain community owned.
“The amount of connections that are coming out through people I’ve talked to, like Ben Fanelli and I are friends and he’s buddies with (Marc) Scheifele, who was a leading scorer there. Obviously, this has leaked a lot and all the texts from different people that I’m getting, saying, ‘Man, I can’t believe it’ and they have their own little mini-Dutchie story.”
Kitchener is one of the longest-serving centres in the Midwestern Conference, beginning in 1956 as the Kitchener Greenshirts. The Greenshirts won Sutherland Cup championships in 1965 and ’67, and as the Dutchmen, won in 1992.
Getting a Jr. B squad is quite the coup for the village, though it has seemingly been on the mind of the hockey operations side since 2017. After back-toback Schmalz Cups in Jr. C, the OHA adopted what was tagged the “Ayr rule” by locals, limiting teams in the then soon-to-benamed Provincial Junior Hockey League to only four players who had dropped down from a higher league.
To maintain their roster, Ayr’s executive explored looking at moving up to Jr. B to take the place of the then freshly departed Cambridge Winter Hawks. The subject was broached with then OHA president Karen Phibbs, but didn’t go much further. After that, discussions took place for the executive to buy another current Jr. B squad, but that went nowhere. Barrie didn’t want to reveal the name of that team.
The Kitchener Dutchmen had some fierce games against the Cambridge Winter Hawks, now there will be a natural Cambridge/Ayr rivalry.
At the start of this past season, Barrie had discussions with GOJHL commissioner Mark Tuck, saying they were interested in moving up to become the ninth team in the league’s Midwestern Conference, or would be happy to buy a current team.
Around Christmas, Tuck told Barrie to call Brad Lund, the Dutchmen’s director of hockey operations. He told Lund right off the bat the intention of buying the team was to move them to Ayr.
“We pretty much, right on the spot, had a deal in principle,” Barrie said, not willing to disclose the amount paid. Needing someone to help hammer out the deal, he called on Jeff Hall, his former teammate with the first Centennials squad and father of last season’s head coach Cody Hall. And just like that, it was done.
At that point, only Barrie, Hall, Tuck and Lund knew of the deal as a nondisclosure agreement was signed.
But Barrie said the reason for bringing Jr. B to Ayr actually had nothing to do with the drop-down rule. Instead, it was looking in the stands on Thursday nights and seeing the team’s rabid fans and wanting to reward them for their loyalty.
“It made us hungry to explore,” he said.
“Look at our arena, we hold 1,472 people and we had 2,000 people standing there watching this great high-level hockey on probably one of the most beautiful arenas in Ontario (during the Schmalz Cup). The atmosphere and the support from our community, it became exciting.
“It just made us realize, long term, we should look at our options moving up to a higher category of hockey. The excitement level of hockey in Ayr, which is, I don’t care what anyone says, per capita it’s probably the most passionate hockey town in Ontario.”
There are some decisions to be made now, as a general manager has to be announced, as well as a coaching staff and hockey operations.
He also has to be thinking about players as they commit now that the season is over.
With the purchase also comes a sale, as the Centennials franchise is on the block at the asking price of $35,000.