Hockey Alberta’s decision Tuesday to cancel all remaining games for the 2020-21 season was disappointing news for hockey families across the province.
The decision also caught the Lethbridge Minor Hockey Association off guard.
On Jan. 26, Hockey Alberta released a statement saying it was looking for answers from the province by Feb. 1, but Lethbridge Minor Hockey Association general manager Keith Hitchcock says it was surprised how quickly a call was made.
“It did catch us off guard because it did set a sense of panic into the situation.
“This came out and the wording of it made it look like minor hockey was done,” Hitchcock said.
The statement released by the provincial organization left the door open for some to potentially hit the ice when the Alberta government gives the green light.
“Hockey Alberta continues to focus on working with our members to explore all options that could comprise a spring development season when Step 2 of the government of Alberta’s A Path Forward (announced on Friday) comes into effect,” the statement said.
Hitchcock says there’s still plenty of questions surrounding what the next few months will look like.
“There’s not a lot of detail to it,” he said.
“We have full intentions of working with the practice side of it and the skill side of it, with one-on-one in February and teams in March, and then some sort of competitive… we’ll build that competition part of it in April.”
To start, LMHA will offer one-one-one training with private instructors for $300 for three 30-minute sessions; Hitchcock says parents won’t be expected to pay, because the charge will be applied to existing credits on families’ accounts.
Lethbridge Minor Hockey carefully tracked ice times throughout the season and is currently calculating what each account is owed in credits or refunds.
“Hang in there. We’re going to have a program and it’s going to be the program that’s allowed by Alberta Health Services,” Hitchcock said.
Fourteen leagues are impacted by the end-of-play announcement, with elite players being affected most.
Lethbridge’s U-18 AAA Hurricanes played just five games before play was paused in November.
“We were clicking really well, we had some pretty good team chemistry and I was pretty excited for the outcome of the season,” said Hurricanes forward Rylen Roersma. “Very disappointing, but nothing you can do about it.”
Roersma says he feels the worst for the veteran players on his team, with some looking to make one last push to extend their hockey careers.
“It’s basically putting everybody’s hopes and dreams on hold for a little bit,” said the 16-year-old.
“A lot of players were looking forward to showcasing themselves this year.”
Parents are also feeling the weight of the decision.
Dino Caputo coaches his daughter’s team, the Southern Express U-15 AA, and says while the girls on his squad will get another shot, some are the end of the minor hockey road.
“She’s going to have an opportunity to play hockey again, but my son, this is his last year of minor hockey,” Caputo said.
“You see so many young men and women work so hard to achieve certain goals, and now all of a sudden they just don’t even get a chance.”
Caputo says the news wasn’t entirely shocking but it was a hard pill to swallow with a team that had completely bought in.
“You spend all this time preparing and going through tryouts, making your team,” he said. “All of a sudden now for it to be cancelled, the biggest frustration I think for everyone is what’s going to happen, what’s next?”
Hockey Alberta says Junior B, C and female and senior leagues have set Feb. 8 as their target to determine if returning to league play is sustainable.