Many questions about future of SIJHL

Losing a team right after a season has started is never a good thing for any league.

But when you lose a second team a couple of months later, then a number of questions have to be asked, especially when it comes to the Superior International Junior Hockey League.
Back in October, the Sioux Lookout Flyers suspended operations for the remainder of this year just three games into a new campaign, with a lack of players among the multitude of reasons mentioned for the team closing up shop for the time being.

Now, just three months later, the Duluth Clydesdales have been revoked from the league after finding themselves in a precarious situation when it came to a lack of players and had their last three games cancelled as a result, which is what happened to the Flyers prior to the end of their campaign.
Prior to that, however, no one seemed to have any idea what is happening next with the franchise, with rumours and hearsay spreading throughout the internet.

Over the weekend, there were rumours that the team had either folded or that or that they were suspended from play by the league itself.

Then, following the cancellation of Tuesday’s contest in Thunder Bay against the North Stars, the Clydesdales said that the league had voted them to be eliminated from the league, while the SIJHL remained quiet on the matter until a press release was posted on the league website later that night.

All in all, it’s an utter mess.

From the Clydesdales side of things, the organization has said in an interview with the Junior Hockey News blog and in a post on the SIJHL’s message board that they had enough players to meet the league’s roster requirements and that players were also committed to finish out the remainder of what had been a rough campaign for the 2-32-0-1 club.

While the year has been a tough one for the squad, the Clydesdales had shown some improvement in recent games, and it is disappointing for those involved with the team, including the players who gave all that they had night after night and fans of the franchise who supported them through the rough times.

At the present time, the team is planning to appeal the decision and then possibly play an independent schedule for remainder of the season with a mixture of opponents from other junior leagues before finding a league to compete in for the 2013/14 campaign.

The bigger questions for me though comes with the SIJHL itself, especially when it comes to it’s future.
While I didn’t expect the league to make statements day in and day out on what the situation was with the Clydesdales, the fact that the continued rumours about the club’s future grew such over the last few days without an official quote from the league itself other than small blurbs from commissioner Ron Whitehead was quite alarming.

Since most fans aren’t visiting message boards or blogs on a daily basis, at least some sort of statement on the SIJHL’s official website would have been beneficial for all parties.
However, what’s more worrisome is that the league now finds themselves down to five teams for the final stages of the regular season, which will lead to some changes for the final few scheduled games of the campaign and the post-season.

While the league has been competitive this year, other than the runaway leaders in the Minnesota Wilderness, how viable is the SIJHL going to be with just five teams?
Now granted, the Flyers might return to the league when the 2013/14 season comes around, but I find it hard to see a team that nearly shut down due to financial issues in 2011 being able to come back after a season away.
And although the league has stated they might return to the Duluth area with a team in the future, I personally think it’s quite hard for a Junior ‘A’ club to succeed in that city where high school hockey and the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs are king.

Over the past few years, teams in Thunder Bay, Marathon, Schreiber, and where I work in Fort Frances have gone away from the SIJHL but the league has continued on.
But given the current economic climate that we are living in, and the ever present possibility that the American teams (the Wilderness and Minnesota Iron Rangers) could move on to another league under the USA Hockey banner, it might become harder and harder to see the SIJHL continuing under it’s current form.
And what that means for the three teams in Canada (the Dryden Ice Dogs, Fort Frances Lakers, and Thunder Bay North Stars) is anybody’s guess.

By: Lucas Punkari, Sports Reporter, Fort Frances Times.