The Cariboo under-18 triple-A Cougars are in a bit of a quandary trying to find opponents to play on Prince George ice.
Teams willing to make that trip to play the defending league champions are few and far between.
The five major midget teams in the Lower Mainland as well as two on Vancouver Island and the Kootenay Ice have told the Cougars they won’t be travelling north to play Cariboo. With the regular season still in limbo and no league schedule yet determined, teams are not required by BC Hockey to travel and it is up to each team’s general manager to make arrangements for exhibition games.
That means the Cariboo Cats will not be playing any home games at Kin 1 unless regular-season play resumes.
“The GMs don’t want to come to Prince George because they don’t have to,” said Cariboo Cougars U-18 general manager Trevor Sprague. “Our league said it would be disappointing if nobody comes up, but the GMs of the Lower Mainland have no interest in coming up here at all.
“For me, it’s disappointing we didn’t have this all scheduled in like any other normal league. Obviously, nothing is fair and even and really we’re not getting any help on it. It leaves us out and it sucks to be us, and nobody cares. Some people get upset with me when I say it’s the north versus everybody else, well this is the perfect example. In almost every sport, it’s the north versus everybody else. It’s not acceptable that we can’t get games up here.”
The Thompson Blazers of Kamloops under GM Stu McGregor have tried to accommodate the geographically-challenged Cougars and agreed to play them twice Oct. 2 in 100 Mile House. Former Spruce Kings head coach Dave Dupas is the GM of the Okanagan Rockets in Kelowna and he told Sprague his team is willing to come to Prince George for exhibition games.
With no opponents in close proximity, the saving grace for the Cougars, at least from a competitive standpoint early in the season, is the Cohort Cup to be hosted over four weekends this fall by the Fraser Valley Thunderbirds in Abbotsford. All five Lower Mainland teams and the Cougars are involved. Each weekend, four of those teams will play each other and the four trips to Abbotsford will give the Cariboo Cats a dozen games before Christmas, including five against the Greater Vancouver Canadians. The top teams will meet for the Cup in a final the weekend before Christmas.
“It’s something for us to look forward to, it’s some games,” said U-18 Cougars head coach Tyler Brough.
“It’s sounding like we’re going to do something similar (to the Cohort Cup) after Christmas within our league, whether they’re continuing to the exhibition games or regular season games, that’s yet to be seen. We’ll see how this pandemic goes and hopefully there will be some big improvements throughout the province.”
There’s still much uncertainty about whether there will be a league regular season and much will depend on how rampant the spread of COVID-19 is this winter. The Cohort Cup will be awarded in December and will provide an alternative to the Mac’s Invitational Tournament in Calgary, traditionally held right after Christmas, which has been canceled.
Last year, the Cougars got healthy just before the tournament began and advanced all the way to the semifinal round at the Mac’s and they were making a strong postseason push when the playoffs got canceled just before they boarded the bus for the opening round against Fraser Valley Thunderbirds. That playoff matchup would have been a rematch of the 2018 league championship series in which Cariboo swept the T-birds in two straight games.
The league will learn if there will be a Telus Cup major midget national championship when Hockey Canada makes its decision on Jan. 18.
Sprague said it will cost each of the three Prince George-based male triple-A teams – the U-18, U-16, U-15 boys - $40,000 to play in their respective Cohort Cup tournaments.
The female U-18 Northern Capitals are not part of the Cohort Cup. They have games this weekend in Williams Lake against the Fraser Valley Rush and are trying to line up more games against league opponents and academy teams.
The Northern Bobcats double-A U-18 and U-15 teams fall under the minor hockey umbrella and will have the Northern Trackers of Fort St. John to play against.
The city’s travel teams have been practicing twice a week at the Kin Centre since the start of September and plan to increase that to three ice times per week this week, as soon as more ice becomes available with the opening of at CN Centre and Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
