The President of the Lakehead Junior Hockey League (LJHL) is already looking at plans for the 2024 Showcase Tournament.
The LJHL wrapped up 2023 at the Fort William First Nation Arena with the event, which originally started off in November as a six-team event involving an Under-18 ‘AA’ All-Star team from the Thunder Bay Minor Hockey Association (TBMHA).
According to Josh Gribben, the league had to pivot from their involvement just weeks ahead of the event after a certain number of Under-18 players indicated that they just weren't interested in taking part or the team didn't have enough players that could commit to being involved.
The LJHL also dropped the Nipigon Elks days before the event, with Gribben explaining “I think the reason that Nipigon [couldn’t put] a team [together] was essentially [due to] commitment from their players or player availability. Some of their players were tied up with other [things] such as exams or family travel. That was kind of a last-minute thing. [However] when Nipigon wasn't able to take part in [the event], it helped us balance the schedule for our other four teams.”
“Our team decided to be not a part of the tournament due to the fact that school exams were during that same weekend,” stated Elks Captain Carter Hargreaves. “Our team was intrigued to play in the tournament, but school is [a higher priority] for most players on our team.”
The Thunder Bay Northern Hawks won the inaugural Showcase Tournament Championship with a 6-0 victory over the Thunder Bay Bandits on December 17th.
All four teams in the event finished with a 1-1 record in the round robin, but the first tie-breaker involved the team(s) with the least amount of penalty minutes, which meant the Northern Hawks and Bandits qualified for the final.
Gribben did acknowledge that moving the event to a different time might make sense next year.
“We are super grateful for the players and coaches who took the time away and put their best foot forward,” he mentioned. “[That said] we need to revisit the weekend that we do [this event] on. A lot of these players are university or college students, and a lot of them still have things going on at this time of the year. So, it's a very busy time. I think that there will be a good hard look at what weekend will work best for this moving into 2024.”
Regular season play will resume on Thursday, Jan. 4.