The British Columbia Hockey League has been in the news lately, and sometimes it’s a little confusing what they are trying to accomplish.
Widely considered either the second or third best junior A league, or at least junior leagues that develop players for college, the BCHL announced this spring they would be withdrawing from the CJHL, the umbrella organization over the junior A leagues in Canada. Lest they be called a rebel league, they also announced they still wanted to play for the Centennial Cup, the CJHL championship, as well as stay part of Hockey Canada.
In other words, have your cake and eat it too.
Nobody seems quite sure just what the end purpose is of all this. If you are already viewed by many as the best league in your country at this level, what is to be gained? Immediately talk centered around the USHL, the top producer of college players in North America. Some suggested this would help the BCHL compete with the USHL, some suggested the BCHL champs would meet the USHL champs for the Clark Cup.
Some even suggested it could lead to a USHL/BCHL merger. Trust me, it won’t. The USHL has nothing to gain by growing the footprint more than 1,000 miles west of where the teams are located, not to mention they operate under two different national systems.
Then comes news this week the BCHL has amended their fighting policy to be the most stringent of any junior league in North America, news that is sure to go over like a lead balloon in Alberta and any other prairie markets they were coveting franchises in. The league did not play a full season by any means last year, but they instituted a rule where a player is suspended on his second fighting major of the season, increasing with subsequent fighting majors.
Players given an instigator or aggressor penalty are suspended starting with the first fight, and whether or not such penalty should be assessed can be reviewed at the time on TV by on ice officials. The change this year is Department of Player Safety, which the BCHL has chosen the rather unfortunate acronym of DOPS (as opposed to the usual DPS), is now also allowed to review if there is an instigator or aggressor and assign the penalty the next day.
Nowhere in this does it say the accumulation of majors does not count if a player is instigated upon. Basically, if a player is instigated upon, he only has one chance in the season to defend himself. After that, he has to sit there and take it.
And exactly how does this make the game safer?
I’m not sure either. I remember when the USHL had a game misconduct, or in USHL terms, a game ejection, with a fighting major. It was a pretty common tactic for a lesser skilled player from a lesser skilled team to find a higher skilled player from a higher skilled team and drop the gloves and start pummeling him. This usually happened behind the play when the linesmen were not near, and eventually the skilled player would have to protect himself. But he would be gone from the game in the process.
In 1998, the USHL dropped the game ejection and made fighting a five minute major like most leagues. The story at the time was the move was made for purposes of getting insurance, as the game was safer with fighting. Between the higher level of stickwork and the situation described above, it makes sense. Whether the story was true was impossible to verify, and I’m not sure anyone would remember today anyway.
But the fighting did not go up when the penalties were reduced. The difference was, they were usually fair fights between willing combatants who were prepared to fight.
The BCHL policy makes it way too easy for skilled players to be a target. And this is a league where top teams like Penticton could compete in the USHL or WHL, but the bottom teams would be middle of the pack in the NA3HL.
How this policy is supposed to make it easier to recruit players to the BCHL is confusing. It would seem to be the worst of both worlds, a solution that inconveniences everybody. Either sticking with five minutes or adding a game misconduct to every fight seems like a better solution.
Once again, the BCHL is trying to have it’s cake and eat it too. And we all know that never works.
