'Better player and fan experience': NOJHL making changes for the upcoming season (2024)

At the recent owner’s meetings, the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League announcedsweeping changes for the upcoming season.

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The regular-season schedule will be reduced from 58 games to 50, changes also coming to the overtime format. The league announced the changes via email on Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a better fan and player experience, to be able to play all the teams in your league a (fairly) equal number of times and not have a heavily loaded schedule with the teams closer in your region,” Thunderbirds owner and head coach Cole Jarrett told The Sault Star.

The former two-division set-up will be replaced with one division of a dozen teams. The top eight will make the post-season. Each team will enter a travel pod based on distance.

“Blind River, Elliot Lake and Soo Michigan are in our pod,” Jarrett said. “We play them three times at home and three away. Everybody (outside our pod) we play two times at home and two away.”

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Espanola, Sudbury, Powassan and French River makes up one pod. Kirkland Lake, Iroquois Falls, Timmins and Hearst is the third travel pod.

“We will be able to build on the rivalries we have developed over the last few years,” Jarrett said. “And we get to see Timmins, Hearst, Kirland Lake and all the other teams more often. Overall, it will be a better experience for our players, our fans and all the fans around the league. All in all, that was a positive (change).”

Each team will play twice during the league’s showcase event, which goes Oct. 1 and 2 at Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex in Sudbury.

Jarrett noted there will be an increase in travel, therefore an increase in cost to operate the team, but the changes take precedence over the cost of operating a team.

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Times they are a changing

The shootout was eliminated, and the length of three-on-three overtime was increased from five to seven minutes. If the game is without a winner after seven minutes the game is declared a tie.

“We all play out of municipal rinks, and we all book a certain amount of time to get the games in,” Jarrett said. “Automatically, we know how long the games will be now, instead of having a shootout go on for an extra 10 minutes, or whatever it is, eating into another groups ice time.”

Jarrett noted the removal of the shootout was not a reaction to the notion that shootouts are primarily a skills competition.

“I don’t think it was necessarily considered that the shootout is not real hockey, like that is nothow a game should end,” Jarrett said. “That wasn’t part of the conversation. It was more logistics wise and wanting to see the game end in the three-on-three.”

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The change to a seven-minute three-on-three was based on favourable analytical results from other leagues across North America.

The framework of a complete team

Fourteen players have signed on the dotted line for next season.

“No doubt, we will be young,” Jarrett said. “We are excited about that, for sure. I think we have a bunch of players that are hungry to prove they can play, belong and excel at this level. And by the sounds of the players are super committed and willing to put the work in. That is great.”

Harley Wardell, Callum McAuley, Adam Kukko, Maverick Fletcher and Jonathan Sonnedecker are the returnees for next season.

Other signees include Jake Mandeville, Rex Rhodes, Makai Mantarri, Keegan Fox and Colin Chestnut. Sebastian Dos Reis, Cam Cowan, Lucas DiBerardino and Griffin Albert of the Soo Jr. Greyhounds AAA U18 club also pledged allegiance to the birds.

The club is still on the hunt for at least one more goaltender, Fletcher the only netminder on the roster. Thunderbirds GM Jamie Henderson is hoping to have the entire roster ready to go by the end of the month, at the latest.

“For us, we haven’t started with a full roster, or even close to it in the three seasons we have been doing this,” Jarrett said. “It will be a nice change to get everybody up to speed right away and hopefully that will help with a better start than the last two seasons.

“Henderson is excited, so I am excited.”

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