It’s the opinion of 100 Mile House Wranglers coach Dale Hladun that the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League (KIJHL) is the strongest of the three Junior B leagues in British Columbia.
However, its clubs are at a real disadvantage when it’s time to prove it. Because by that time, the coach says, those clubs are “beat to hell”.
Following their respective post seasons, champions from the KIJHL, Pacific Junior Hockey League (PJHL) and Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League (VIJHL), plus one host team, meet every year in the Cyclone Taylor Cup – B.C.’s Junior B hockey championship. The winner of that tournament gets to the Keystone Cup, the Western Canadian Junior B championship. (This year a B.C. team, the Campbell River Storm of the VIJHL, won gold, defeating the North Edmonton Red Wings in Cold Lake, Alta. on April 19. Before that, Campbell River eliminated the 2014-15 KIJHL champion Kimberley Dynamiters in the Cyclone Taylor Cup finals in early April.)
Hockey playoffs are a notoriously long and gruelling grind. KIJHL teams are in extra tough compared to their provincial counterparts in that its championship club has to play one extra series – potentially seven more games in only nine days – before it even reaches the province’s championship tournament.
“That’s one thing I don’t like about our league,” says Hladun after Kimberley was eliminated by Campbell River. “We have so many playoff games in such a small amount of time. The only way to win is if you luckily didn’t have any injuries or you have a lot of affiliates.”
The Wranglers made it to the second divisional round of the playoffs in each of their first two seasons. It’s meant a lot of hockey in a short amount of time following a long 52-game regular season, traveling in a league with 20 teams stretched hundreds of kilometres apart. For their part, the PJHL has ten teams and the VIJHL has nine. The PJHL played a 44-game regular season last year and the VIJHL played 48.
“I think our league has to review what we put these kids through at the end of the year,” Hladun adds.
In planning the season, KIJHL schedule-makers – the 20 team presidents – have to work back from when the Cyclone Taylor Cup is scheduled, usually the first or second week of April. KIJHL president Bill Ohlhausen admits it’s a tough grind for the players. He emphasizes though that it’s team governors that make the schedule every year. He just chairs the meetings.
“Fifty two games is a lot of games,” the president says. “Our league is so far flung. We’re talking about 100 Mile to Spokane, Washington, from Princeton over to Invermere. It’s quite a distance [teams need to travel].”
Ohlhausen says one suggestion he’s heard is shortening playoff rounds to best-of-fives instead of best-of-sevens. It’s something that comes up at league meetings, but team governors turn the idea down, he explains.
Wranglers president Tom Bachynski says there are a lot of ideas out there. Another one is sending two KIJHL teams to the Cyclone Taylor Cup instead of one. A league champion could perhaps be determined from a head-to-head game there, which would do away with the fourth and final series and put the KIJHL in line with its provincial rivals.
But just getting through the post season is an exhausting task.
“I think as a league we need to determine just how important going to [the Cyclone Taylor Cup] is,” Bachynski says. “I think the teams that make the finals are basically playing another season in 40 days. I can’t think that’s good on any growing body.”
Travel and expenses are another big part of life in the KIJHL. The Wranglers bus clocked 19,500 kilometres last season. Not all teams fill the rink like the Wranglers do, and don’t recoup expenses, especially as travel gets longer deeper in the playoffs. Bachynski questions the current schedule as it is. 100 Mile House is located on the outer northern boundary of the league. Often, games in the middle of winter in far places from here like the Kootenays are played in near empty rinks. It begs the question: are the long, often treacherous road trips worth the time, money and risk?
“Being involved in the league for the past three years, [I see] there’s a definite fear to change, and that’s a shame,” the Wranglers president says. “Is that hockey experience worth it? To travel that distance and play in front of an almost empty arena? Or would it be better to play an additional two games with, say, the Okanagan Conference, where the travel is considerably less. Where you can start to build a relationship with fans back and forth and start to fill the arenas… So you can build a sort of rivalry like we have with [Doug Birks division opponents] Kamloops, Sicamous and Chase.”
“We’re in the entertainment business,” Bachynski adds. “We have to do what’s best for our entertainers and the people we entertain. I’m not sure we’re hitting all the cylinders right at this moment.”
All that said, KIJHL teams have had some success at the provincial and western Canadian level in recent years. The Beaver Valley Nitehawks (in 2014) and the Revelstoke Grizzlies (in 2010) went on to win the Keystone Cup, after advancing as Cyclone Taylor Cup champions. Junior hockey is a demanding game even without the extra logistical burdens presented by vast leagues like the KIJHL. The league’s 20 governors have a lot to consider in trying to satisfy players and fans and the organizations they belong to.
“We our the strongest league in my opinion,” says coach Hladun. “But we’re beat to hell.”
