Fellow hockey enthusiasts
We are just over two weeks away from the start of the 2022 season.
This week has brought some surprises and caused some sleepless nights making tough decisions.
Our struggle began when Hurley backed out to skate Wednesday nights. Lockhart then decided to back out because they didn’t want to skate against Frozen Wings.
Work began to recruit teams into the league or form a new team from free agents.
The challenge with the free agent team is the talent pool to create a competitive team. As I’ve learned in running the weekly skates the weakest skaters have as much effect on the teams’ competitiveness as the best skaters. The free agent team was going to struggle to win a game.
Michelle from the rink was wanting one of my sheets back and the pressure was on. Would we have four or five teams?
Also, the 40 A league was at five teams and she suggested that we might bring a team from there to our league to balance things out. I didn’t see that as a good plan.
Just this week Tim Jankowski approached me to bring much of the Old Fokkers team back into the league. Their roster is strong and should compete well with the rest of the teams.
That changed things. All of the teams’ rosters looked competitive. Even the Marauder’s lineup looked good and they had great confidence in their goalie.
As most of you know, Jeff Rouse has helped over the years with my weekly skate. He approached me to come back into the league with a revised roster to better suit the 40 B league. He has a few skaters who have been off the ice for over a decade. They still have a strong lineup and we now have six teams ready to compete in the fall.
The challenge is that we have about eight players left out in the wind and team rosters are full to over full.
Should a seventh team appear we could build the eight, but I’d have a tough time finding the ice time as the rink is quite busy.
I apologize to the free agents for not finding a place for them. Big thanks to Rich Jolly and Michael Williams for offering to run the new team. Unfortunately, we don’t have a spot now.
That is the update.
The team managers’ meeting will be at 3 pm on Sunday 18th in Skaters Bar. We will review rosters and discuss options.
One option would be to go to seven teams which creates a bye-week and extends the season duration to get the 25 games in.
Let me know what you think. This is going to be some competitive hockey this season.
Keep your head up and stick on the ice.
