Thompson still hockey backwater

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/05/2012 (5127 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FLIN FLON — Glenn Laycock has a dream. And like many dreams born in northern Manitoba, it revolves around ice, sticks and pucks.

He’s part of a group of determined hockey fans in Thompson attempting to bring the Manitoba Junior Hockey League back to the Nickel City.

C.A. Nesbitt Arena “would be packed,” Laycock recently told the Thompson Citizen. “We’d have the outside communities that are in here and they would go to games and all of that.”

There seems little doubt junior A hockey would fly in Thompson. It is by far the largest community in the North, a region where the sport is religion and which has a catchment area of 37 towns and reserves.

Indeed, it has long baffled northern hockey fans that The Pas and Flin Flon — each with less than half the population of Thompson — enjoy a greater calibre of shinny.

Think of it like this: Thompson has the Manitoba Moose while The Pas and Flin Flon have the Winnipeg Jets. Thompson’s Norman Northstars are in the triple-A category, the top level of youth hockey, while its two neighbours have teams one step higher, in junior A leagues.

The Flin Flon Bombers of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League are world-famous, having churned out Philly Flyers legends Bobby Clarke and Reggie Leach and made maroon one of the sport’s feared colours.

Ninety minutes south, the Opaskwayak Cree Nation Blizzard are a phenomenon in The Pas and its neighbouring reserve. Founded in 1996, the team already has five league championships and counts current Nashville Predator Jordin Toottoo among its alumni.

But Thompson, until recently Manitoba’s third-largest city, has been out of the junior A fold for nearly three decades.

A team called the Thompson King Miners joined the MJHL in 1975 before folding in 1978, at least in part because of the city’s remoteness compared to the rest of the south-dominated league.

From 1978 to 1985, the King Miners played in the NorMan Junior Hockey League — a junior B league that quickly turned junior A — until both the league and the franchise folded.

Since then there has been talk and at least one attempt to upgrade organized hockey in Thompson, but success has eluded the “Hub of the North” like a puck slipping through a goalie’s pads.

That isn’t stopping Laycock, a former King Miner, and his group. According to the Citizen, they hope to see MJHL play return in 2013-14.

Community support will be key, and in that regard, Thompson is not lacking. A recent poll on the Citizen website found a plurality (43.1 per cent) think reinstating the MJHL is a terrific idea.

The next largest group (33.3 per cent), however, believe the league will never award Thompson a franchise.

Such pessimism stems largely from Thompson’s isolation. It’s a good eight-hour drive from Winnipeg, the league’s central point, and no other clubs are found along that lengthy trip down Highway 6.

Teams in places like Winnipeg, Selkirk and Winkler would likely, at least in private, resist all of the added travel and accommodation bills a Thompson franchise would entail.

And the travel issue would work both ways. So far removed, Thompson would have to generate significantly more revenue than its MJHL counterparts in order to stay afloat. (The Bombers and Blizzard can relate.)

At this point, MJHL commissioner Kim Davis, a former NHLer from Flin Flon, says it is too early to rule anything in — or out — when it comes to Thompson.

“I have spoken with interested citizens of Thompson over the past several years and recently as well,” he said in an e-mail. “Until such time as an application from any group comes forward, I am not going to speculate or give credence to hypothetical queries. Really, though, it boils down to a community understanding the current environment and then crafting an application that addresses the issues in order to have success.”

Not lost in all of this is what an MJHL club would mean for the Northstars — so beloved they are the subject of their own cable access show. The franchise has become a vital training ground for some of the north’s top young players.

No one, least of all those pondering an MJHL bid, want to see the Northstars fall out of the sky. That wouldn’t necessarily happen; in fact, it is easy to envision a winning partnership in which the triple-A team feeds the junior A squad talent.

Thompsonites who love hockey need to get behind this opportunity. The MJHL needs to seriously consider expanding into this robust hockey market.

High-level hockey belongs in northern Manitoba, and Thompson is no exception.

Jonathon Naylor is editor of The Reminder newspaper in Flin Flon.

jonathon_naylor@hotmail.com