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Maroons looking ahead after GOJHL cancels 2020-21 season

Now that the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League has officially cancelled the 2020-21 campaign, eyes turn to next season.

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Now that the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League has officially cancelled the 2020-21 campaign, eyes turn to next season.

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The bad news is the 2021-22 season has as many question marks as this one.

“Everything’s really honestly up in the air, even more so I think than last year,” Sarnia Legionnaires general manager Tom Norris said. “Last year, everybody thought it was going to be a go (in 2020-21) and now everybody’s kind of leery about everything.”

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The GOJHL announced the “difficult and unfortunate decision” to cancel the season Monday, saying in a news release the latest provincial stay-at-home order means “there simply is no way of completing any kind of meaningful season.”

The junior B league hasn’t played any games since March 2020.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to all Ontarians for so many reasons,” GOJHL commissioner Brent Garbutt said in a statement. “Our front-line workers have certainly endured the greatest challenges and losses but our devoted athletes, coaches and staff who live for the game have lost as well.

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“At this time, we will focus our attention on planning for a successful return in the 2021-22 season, knowing full-well that we are not yet out of this pandemic and there will be more obstacles to overcome in the future.”

Even as a 2020-21 season became more and more unlikely, the Chatham Maroons were focused on hitting the ice, head coach and general manager Tyler Roeszler said.

“We knew it was probably going to be difficult the further that we got along into February and March, that it was going to be difficult to have a season this year,” he said. “But there wasn’t a lot of discussion about it. It was more just getting the players back on the ice and having fun and competing again.”

They were skating until the latest provincewide lockdown began.

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“Our players wanted to be on the ice, they wanted to be skating, they wanted to be around each other,” Roeszler said. “Our practices were as intense as our practices are during the season just because, our players, that was their only outlet for competition.

“It wasn’t an issue keeping the players motivated, that’s for sure. They love playing hockey, so any opportunity they got to do that, they went full out.”

All recreational facilities are closed until at least May 6 because of the stay-at-home order. Many municipalities have already removed ice from their arenas or soon will.

The situation is even more frustrating than a year ago, Norris said.

“People are starting to get worried already for September, for next year, about what’s going to happen,” he said. “This time last year, we all thought, ‘We’ll do our spring camps in the summer and everything will be all set to go for September.’ And then in maybe July or August, it was like, ‘We’ll just push it back till October.’

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“I think this time around people are saying, ‘When’s it going to end?’”

The Maroons won’t hold a spring camp this year and may not be able to have main camp in August, Roeszler said.

For the past year, only signed players have been allowed on the ice. Teams must be ready again to build rosters without camps.

“They’re signing players and making sure that they have as close to a full roster as possible heading into the summer and September,” Roeszler said. “That’s the biggest difference – we don’t have the luxury of having those camps.”

Some 20-year-olds who didn’t get to play their final junior season this year are circulating an online petition asking to play next season, but Norris isn’t optimistic about their chances.

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“It doesn’t sound like Hockey Canada’s going for it. I think that’s the hurdle,” he said. “Hockey Canada has basically said, ‘Too bad.’”

Hockey Canada officials are more concerned with younger juniors who lost a year of development than graduating players eligible to join the senior ranks next season, he said.

The Maroons say goodbye to brothers Brett and Kyle Fisher, the only 2000-born veterans skating with the team this season.

“Our view is that hopefully we can get things as under control as possible over the spring and summer and try to have something … come September when our normal season starts,” Roeszler said. “But it’s up in the air at this point. For us, it’s recruiting, it’s operating as normal as possible trying to get ready for September.”

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