The Timmins Minor Hockey Association won't be offering AAA in Timmins next season.
In mid-April, the TMHA ended its AAA hockey programs.
After finding out, the Timmins Rock Junior A hockey club made a pitch to use the TMHA’s major bantam card for the next hockey season.
Timmins Rock board president Ted Gooch said a partnership would allow the Rock to run a bantam program for the 2019/2020 hockey season. At the same time, the junior club would apply to the Northern Ontario Hockey Association to run a AAA program.
The Rock presented to the TMHA board April 28.
The TMHA board voted against the decision.
“We’re extremely disappointed in the recent decisions and we hope that we can overcome this hurdle and keep these kids in the north playing at the highest level to continue to develop their game,” Gooch said.
At this point, TMHA president Jamie Roach said the "board decided that their (the Rock) vision and values in terms of how they want to proceed with this, didn’t align with ours."
AAA hockey is the most competitive level of minor hockey in Canada.
The TMHA offered the program for peewee and bantam.
Discontinuing the program was a hard decision for the board, according to Roach.
“These are parents and community people and they live and work here. The politics of hockey is difficult, there’s no question,” Roach said.
On the ice, however, he said there has been an “extended period” of minimal success. He also noted the declining population.
“The pool available to draw from is significantly smaller than it was 15 and certainly 20 years ago,” he said.
Historically, Roach said there have been players from as far away as Kapuskasing or Hearst, but there’s no consistency.
“There’s a cascade. We’ve been historically unsuccessful on many, many fronts, this is not strictly about wins and losses,” he said.
The cascade effect, he explained, means reduced competitiveness at the AA and A levels as well.
This isn’t the first year the TMHA has talked about ending the AAA program.
The issue was in front of the board two years ago.
“At the time, the decision was made to continue, we’ve circled back and see things a little bit differently. I completely get where the frustration comes from, I understand that,” said Roach.
This past season, the TMHA didn’t ice a major bantam team.
That leave of absence, said Roach, is due to a lack of players, and a “lack of interest from the players we did have”.
Moving forward, the Rock still plan to work toward their vision for minor hockey.
There will be at least a one-year gap before AAA minor hockey could return to the ice, though.
Not having it impacts the Rock and the Timmins Majors, who Gooch said draft from the major bantam program.
As a junior club, he said they inevitably face kids leaving to play down south.
“And really, there’s no need for it. We can have this development system and have these kids stay in the north and go on to play junior hockey,” he said. “It’s very important to us to have this development system here and keep these kids in the north and playing hockey at the highest possible level.”
He said the Rock’s vision is about player development and creating a true club system.
“We have a lot of kids starting at the age of seven and up that play novice and atom that absolutely idolize the Timmins Rock junior program and its players come to our games and support us. And to have a AAA program where these kids will strive at peewee to jump into the Rock system and play with the Timmins Rock logo on their jersey will instill more pride,” he said.
If the Rock proposal for a new AAA system is successful, Gooch said other teams in the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League (NOJHL) will also benefit.
“We don’t have a hidden agenda where this is strictly just to improve the Timmins Rock, it’s to improve hockey as a whole and keep things competitive and keep these kids developing at the best places they can,” he said.
So far, he said there’s been support from parents and coaches in the three hockey associations in town, as well as other teams in the NOJHL.
“Those that really have reached out, I want to thank them for their support, and our next plan will be to have some talks with the NOHA to see if there’s anything we can do to expedite the application process or if there’s an option there,” he said.
Roach said the TMHA wishes the Rock the best.
“The Rock’s a great organization and we wish them nothing but success both in terms of Junior A and should they wish to take on this endeavour and make the move into minor hockey. That’s an internal choice for the Rock and we just decided as a board that our decision on stepping away from AAA was final,” he said. “There was nothing in the Rock’s presentation to sway us from that.”
Next season, Roach said the TMHA will offer AA programming from atom through to bantam. The association also has house league and TimBits hockey.