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PJHL switches to tournament style provincial championship

February 17, 2022   ·   0 Comments

The Provincial Junior Hockey League has announced it will be turning to a tournament style championship for 2022.

The provincial Schmalz Cup is the Junior C hockey championship in Ontario.

The tournament will pit four conference champions in a round-robin format to determine rankings for the semi-finals.

Semi-finals will be played on May 14.

The championship final game will be played on Sunday, May 15.

After the recent “pause” in hockey across the Province due to government restrictions, the PJHL had to make a decision to either extend the regular season or pick up where it left off and finish with a short season.

In the Carruthers Division, in which the Alliston Hornets play, the season was extended so each team would complete 30 games before heading into the playoffs. Teams would be seeded based on the final standings after those 30 games.

In a normal season, Divisions would play-off to determine a division champion.

Those champions would then mean other division champions to determine a conference champion.

The conference champions would then play to determine which to teams would go to the Schmalz Cup.

This year, because of the regular season being extended into March, it was decided to create the tournament style play to avoid the Schmalz Cup being played too late in the year when ice may not even be available.

PJHL Commissioner Terrence Whiteside confirmed that the change is for the 2022 season only, and that “any permanent change will require approval of the membership.”

The Alliston Hornets are currently in second place in the Division and have a reasonable chance of winning the league this season.

By Brian Lockhart
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

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