The Yorkton Terrier’s return to the playoffs was a short-lived one as they were swept three straight in their best-of-five series with LaRonge.
The result might not be wholly unexpected. Yorkton did finish the regular season with only the 10th best record in the loop, becoming the final team in the playoff mix. The team recorded only 49 points on the season, nine of those coming via the assigned point in losses in overtime and shoot-outs. They had 20 wins against 38 losses.
So going in against the seventh place Ice Wolves it was an uphill battle.
The Terriers however never managed to find any traction on the hill dropping the series opener 9-2, followed by a 5-2 loss in LaRonge in Game 2, and then a 7-0 drubbing on home ice Sunday.
Of course the so-called ’Survivor Series’, the system that was devised to allow 10-teams to make the playoffs in a league with only 12 teams, is not exactly about creating amazing hockey.
Nor should anyone expect it to be the kind of hockey from which a league champion might emerge.
We can love our Terriers as our home team, but a team with only 20-wins in the regular season should not suddenly emerge as a league championship contender in March.
The series are instead, as Kevin O’Leary might say, about the money.
Junior hockey is an expensive proposition these days. Sticks are expensive, hotels, buses, billets, ice rentals. It all ends up costing tens of thousands of dollars; far more than teams can generate in regular season ticket sales. That is why we see our local Terriers running house lotteries and seeding fields of canola just to keep the team on the ice.
The SJHL hopes the added round will make a difference.
Yorkton had a single game with 686 fans, so if they were all adults they generated $10,290. Of course they also had a bus trip to LaRonge, two nights in a hotel and other costs to factor in. In the end the margin will not be the dollars that keep a franchise in the red.
Crowds in LaRonge were more woeful, with the three games averaging only 603.
Kindersley and Notre Dame averaged a whopping 620 through their first three games.
The truth of the matter is that fans are savvy enough to recognize the made up series at the bottom of the standings as just that. The teams that win will be on the ice again for fans to dole out the cash to watch.
The teams that lost, well, they were destined, to be quite frank about it.
Yes we need to support our Junior teams or they will be gone, and that would be a loss in terms of community pride and spirit.
But fans are already buying regular season tickets, lottery tickets, awards banquet tickets, sportsman dinner tickets, programs, 50/50s and more.
Maybe the line just gets drawn at the made-up series with a 10th place team involved.
The league would be better off expanding the season by a couple of games against natural rivals, Terrier fans love action against Melville, and then getting back to a more traditional playoff format.
