No one came into the 2020-21 Alberta Junior Hockey League regular season expecting any guarantees.
In fact, this year has been entirely irregular given the way COVID-19 led to a premature end to the playoffs in March. And now, a tightening of provincial regulations has stopped the beginning of the new schedule in its tracks.
While teams began skating together in September, the beginning of the season was delayed until Nov. 13. But things have been paused before any team could play more than four games.
“Looking through this whole process, every week feels like its own individual month,” said AJHL commissioner Ryan Bartoshyk. “We’ve been able to navigate since Sept. 1 with the start of our development season and, fortunately enough, we were able to move onto some competition and play hockey in its intended fashion.
“So, I’m very grateful with where we got and it was definitely a privilege to be playing, and that’s what I communicated to our league, our athletes and our coaches. But, obviously, at this point we’ve got to respect the guidelines and take a pause for a bit.”
The AJHL didn’t wait for anyone to provide the blueprints for them to follow as they beat both the Western Hockey League and the NHL back to the ice.
“We put in the groundwork in the summer months to build relationships with the premier’s office and the Alberta government, Alberta Health (Services) and all of our stakeholders just to be prepared,” Bartoshyk said. “The reality is we’re back at that point today.”
The shutdown was due entirely to blanket regulations across Alberta, not because of anything the league did wrong. While there were a couple of isolated cases of COVID-19 in South Division players, all necessary protocols were followed and play was able to continue right up until the government amped up its restrictions on Nov. 24.
“We had some individual cases pop up within our teams, similarly to what’s happening in Red Deer with the world juniors where there are protocols in place and quarantines,” Bartoshyk said. “That’s why we had those protocols and guidelines in place since Day 1.
“We respect all the guidelines and we’ll re-evaluate where we’re at in three weeks here. We need to be proactive if we’re allowed to play again, we’re ready to do so.”
The hope is to have another crack at resuming the schedule in the new year through whatever provincial exemptions may be required. But nothing’s been taken for granted to this point.
“Even when we started back in August, we were pretty fortunate to be on the ice as long as we have been. It’s just too bad because things have been going pretty well, for the most part for the league,” said Sherwood Park Crusaders head coach Adam Manah. “For the team, we haven’t had any confirmed cases throughout the first three months or so.
“It’s just unfortunate that now we’ve got to be on pause and everybody’s got to take a breather, because from a coaching perspective, we put in a lot of time with the guys and now the break is going to basically put us back at reset when we get back, hopefully, after New Year’s.”
Being first out of the gate in the province, the AJHL attracted a significant number of WHL players on loan who were looking to get back into the swing of things while their own league was initially eyeing a start date of Jan. 8, 2021.
But it hasn’t exactly been easy for everyone.
“We have young guys, we have veteran guys, the younger guys are in school,” Manah said. “So, just from guys having to jump from bubble to bubble coming to the rink and making sure everybody follows the guidelines of not only the arena, but AHS and the AJHL.
“That was the most – you don’t want to call it mentally exhausting – thing for the staff and players, as well as the rink staff. We just wanted to make sure everybody followed the guidelines in place and making sure that we were keeping everybody as safe as possible.”
In doing so, the AJHL teams showed themselves, if not everybody else, that it can be done, even in the face of adversity the likes for which they only had months to prepare.
“The good thing is it’s maybe better than the first lockdown because the gyms are still open, guys can get one-on-one training,” Manah said. “So, it’s maybe not a blessing in disguise, but for our guys, at least they can still have that component where they can do their thing off the ice and I believe they can continue to do one-on-one training on the ice.
“We’re trying to take the positives and the silver lining out of it and hopefully guys can make sure they stay as ready as possible for when we do return, whenever that time comes.”
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge
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