On a snowy November night the Yorkton Novice Hockey League opened shop on a night that proved the merits of a hometown league with less than desired driving conditions making parents grateful for the short distance to the FAA.
After years in the Major Hockey League the Yorkton Minor Hockey program decided to open its own five team league in order to cut on travel as well as shift a focus on growing players with practice and fundamental time over a focus on game experience. Seven weeks of practice time led to the league's first game last Wednesday as two of the league's teams got the honor of playing in the potential new league's first ever game.
Novice hockey organizer Ryan Hoffman mentioned this idea has floated around for years and finally a survey showed that over 80% of parents showed interest in doing a homegrown league at the novice level.
"Sport Canada studies have shown that this level is crucial for the growth of fundamentals and we have been focusing over the last couple of years to increase practice time so we made some changes and started the league after seven weeks of practice," said Hoffman.
Each team will play a twelve game league schedule until February followed by a brief playoffs schedule giving teams ample game time in addition to the new focus on practice time.
The all Yorkton format now gives coaches and players the benefit of working together and improving skills at a progressive rate rather than the typical model of splitting teams up where the focus of development is sometimes lost to winning as teams key players often see added ice time in the spirit of competition.
Hoffman also hopes this change will attract more kids into the game saying, "Obviously you want kids and parents first experiences with the sport to be as enjoyable as possible and with our talented group of coaches and parents and our new model hopefully we can entice a few more players and families into the sport we love."
The YNHL will run from now until spring and will be reviewed at the end of the season to see if the model will be brought into the long term picture or tweaks need to be made. For now, Yorkton is making an important leap into determining just what route to take in developing its next generation of hockey heroes at one of its most crucial developmental levels.
