Over the past weekend, five member teams of the Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL) decided they wanted nothing more to do with Hockey Canada, and broke with the organization in order to join the British Columbia Hockey League (BCHL), which was until last year also a league under the direction of Hockey Canada.
Thus far, neither league in question has said what the plan is. The BCHL most likely won’t allow five new teams to join in league play more than half way through the season, and the AJHL doesn’t seem particularly excited about letting the group of five continue to play meaningful hockey games, forcing the entire situation into a limbo.
To those more intimately involved with the situation this wasn’t necessarily a surprise. The BCHL’s primary reason for leaving Hockey Canada was for economic gain and to participate in greater player movement. The teams that left the AJHL are some of the most competitive and successful—money-wise and hockey-wise–so it makes some sense that those teams would want to jump ship to greener pastures.
Hockey Canada has come under a lot of heat in recent years, all of it valid and completely deserved. But aside from the many skeletons buried in their closet, Hockey Canada is now faced with a legitimacy problem.
Teams and entire leagues now realize they don’t need the national governing body to be successful, and when players find a way to profit at the same level as the teams, they too will realize they don’t need Hockey Canada either.
One of the most powerful weapons that Hockey Canada has in its arsenal is its ability to bar players from competing for its national teams. That, along with the strict rules on out-of-province player movement will keep players from joining leagues like the BCHL wholesale.
So now Hockey Canada has to act. What will it decide to do? It has to do something–one of its charter junior hockey leagues has fractured at the seams and another completely turned its back on it with little to no downside or defect.
If more leagues decide they don’t need Hockey Canada, and if players decide they don’t either, then the whole thing will surely fall apart. The next few years will be very important for the organization that has for decades and decades governed Canada’s national winter pastime.
The entire ship is taking on water and it’s taking it on fast.
