Sask. Hockey Association reacts to teams playing in Manitoba tournament

The Saskatchewan Hockey Association (SHA) is disappointed to hear five teams from Saskatchewan elected to participate in a Manitoba hockey tournament

Four teams from the Wheatland Hockey Association and the Parkland Junior Maulers from Yorkton participated in the North American Hockey Classic.

The privately run hockey tournament took place from July 16-19 at several arenas throughout Winnipeg.

SHA President Kelly McClintock said the hockey tournament was not sanctioned by the Manitoba Hockey Association.

He said he was made aware of the teams wanting to go the Wednesday prior to the tournament.

While McClintock said he wasn’t able to contact someone with the Maulers team, he did speak to the manager of the Wheatland Hockey Association.

“I said, ‘I can’t sanction you and I can’t say anything that you can’t go but the provincial government is telling you not to go,’ and I asked him, ‘Do you want hockey in the fall?’ and he said, ‘Absolutely,'” McClintock said.

“I don’t want to put anything in jeopardy. All sports are working with the government to fight this thing so we can have our kids and have our sports for people to participate in.”

The province has said inter-provincial travel is banned if it is for a contact sports tournament.

“This isn’t something that somebody can say, ‘We didn’t know about it,’ because it’s been fairly well-publicized by the government in the reopening plan so to go to the tournament where there’s 60 people and spectators and the stands and everything. That ignorance to what is going on isn’t an avenue they should go down,” McClintock said.

980 CJME has reached out to the provincial government to confirm if there was a miscommunication between the team and the government’s COVID-19 response team.

He said one of the biggest disappointments was the reported lengths the team took to try and keep it under wraps.

CBC Saskatchewan reported the Wheatland teams changed their names, didn’t fill out the score sheets correctly by referring to players by initials and issued a social-media ban for parents at the tournament.

“The unfortunate part in all of it is just the deceptiveness that they utilized to go,” McClintock said.

He said the teams who played in the tournament are made up of players from different communities across the province.

“That’s a significant amount of potential exposure and I just said I don’t want to jeopardize our start time in the fall. They chose to go,” McClintock said.

He noted since it wasn’t an SHA-sanctioned event, there probably won’t be any sort of sanctions against the parents or players.

“I would say if there’s people that are the organizers of those teams and those coaches if they are involved in our programming, our board has the right to take some action against them. A lot of the parents and kids are going to be getting the direction from the people organizing it,” McClintock said.

The Junior Regina Pats were also scheduled to participate in the event, but chose not to go after speaking with McClintock about it.

“It was a pretty simple decision for us. The government response team is working on opening up the province and we want to do everything we can to support that because reopening the province and getting not just kids back to playing hockey but hopefully our team back to playing hockey is paramount,” said Regina Pats COO Stacey Cattell. The Pats are the affiliate of the junior Pats team.

“It was the eleventh hour and I know that took a lot of parents by surprise but we just made the right decision and the right decision is follow what the government is doing.”

Minor team says they followed guidance, didn’t make attendance a secret

While the Wheatland teams changed their team name and instituted a social media ban, the Yorkton Junior Maulers say the team didn’t try to keep anything a secret.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Maulers indicated it sought direction from the provincial government and followed all necessary protocols.

“Our group followed all guidelines and protocols provided to us by the Province of Saskatchewan, the Province of Manitoba, each arena, and the Return to Play Guidelines set out by the NAHC,” the statement reads in part.

“The Parkland Junior Maulers attended this tournament with no secrecy. We attended this tournament following all guidelines and openly shared information including our attendance on social media.”

The statement refers to communication with the Saskatchewan government that indicated the team could travel to Manitoba for the tournament, as long as it followed that province’s guidelines.

At the end of the statement, the Maulers said the team wouldn’t be participating in any tournaments in the near future.

“Our players are looking forward to attending camps this summer and the start of the new hockey season in the fall.”

—With files from 980 CJME’s Alex Dormuth.