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Those involved tried to stay optimistic, but coming down to the final days, the writing was seemingly on the wall.
On Tuesday morning, the Ontario Hockey League announced the cancellation of the 2020-21 season.
When he first heard the news from general manager Kyle Raftis, Soo Greyhounds coach John Dean said, “it brings that sinking feeling in your stomach and reality sets in that there’s no season.”
Dean also spoke of the feelings players have felt through the process.
“They’re going through all of the trials and tribulations that you would expect of young men chasing their dreams,” Dean said.
“Guys have gone through frustration. They’ve gone through stress and moments of motivation. I talked with our staff today and to a man, we said ‘what an incredible response from our guys.’ We ask these guys to show up for Zoom calls to discuss systems on days when we’re not sure if there’s going to be a hockey season and they show up on time and participated and are consistent with their efforts in their 0ff-ice conditioning. I’m impressed with our group and that’s why it’s tough. Our guys really prepared themselves for all the potential outcomes and the one outcome you can’t prepare for is the one that says no season.”
“It’s toughest on the players,” Raftis added. “As a staff, you can make the plans, but to see those guys putting in the work and getting ready (for the season), everyone had a different reason to prove something for themselves on and off the ice as a player.”
With an official decision made on the fate of the season, Dean said the current approach will look similar to a normal season.
“Our guys have been prepping for a whole host of potential options of what a season might look like,” Dean said. “Given what’s going on in the world, it’s stressful on these kids. They’ve had a long 13 or 14 months. We’re treating this like a regular off-season. We’re suggesting everyone takes a break from their regular routine and then the goal will be can we get together more often than we normally would in an off-season? Do we see each other and get that team vibe going again?”
Dean added that much of that will come down to what COVID restrictions and the OHL will allow.
“There’s an opportunity here for us to reignite that flame and get guys thinking about the team again a little bit more than we normally would over the course of an off-season,” Dean said.
Dean said the team met regularly online with the players, as often as three times a week in some cases, “making sure we were surviving this mentally as a group.”
“As we could sense that things might come to a point where we might play and did get that feeling, we amplified it and started (meeting) two or three times a week,” Dean said.
The announcement came after the league was seemingly close to a return this season and prepared to make an announcement before COVID-19 cases began to rise in the province and eventually led to a stay-at-home order.
“We received permission from the chief medical officer and from the premier of the province that we could return and play,” OHL Commissioner David Branch said.
“On the eve of that announcement, the COVID-19 conditions dramatically worsened. It resulted in not being able to proceed with that announcement and since then, we’ve had an extended stay-at-home order and the increasing severity of the variants, we just couldn’t safely return to play this season.”
The return would have meant four hub cities and financial help from the provincial government.
“Part of that meant we would have to see our teams and our players in a protective environment, a hub.” Branch said. “We moved forward and developed a concept of four hubs around the province, working with the province for them the be placed in zones where conditions were deemed to be as safe as possible and to house our players in hotel rooms, feed them, and have them fully immersed in the proper protocols for COVID testing.”
Branch said player safety as part of any potential return was “top of mind.”
Branch added that the player safety issue was a question regularly brought up in discussions on a potential return saying that the long-term effect of the virus is a question “we often asked ourselves.”
“I don’t think anyone really knows,” Branch added. “I can only hope that when we look back and players get on with their lives, they’ll come to understand even moreso that their best interests were looked after.”
Asked about the financial impacts of being off the ice for well over a year on teams and their viability, Branch said “we anticipate everyone being back.”
Tuesday’s announcement meant an end to a season in which the Greyhounds had high hopes.
“You look how last year ended and we were always on the optimistic side that something was going to happen,” Raftis said.
“Going through the early stages of a Memorial Cup bid and then have the year get cancelled without being started, it’s tough. We have an older team too, there’s kind of some uncertainty with what’s going to happen for them moving forward, whether they’re moving into their OA year or graduating from the league. It’s tough. Everybody plays hockey because they love it. With our group, whether it was meetings or conversations, I give the players and staff a ton of credit. Everybody was really dug in and doing everything they could.”
In a year in which the organization was bidding on the Memorial Cup and had high expectations going into the season Raftis said there’s always excitement heading into a new year when it comes to player development in general. With Tuesday’s announcement, it means unanswered questions.
“Not even being able to assess where they were at and seeing that development start with them is tough,” Raftis said. “When it’s a team with higher expectations like we had this year, there’s always going to leave that ‘What ifs?’ in the back of your mind that we’re never going to be able to answer.”
Appreciative of the work it took to get close to a potential return, Dean also said that “knowing how close we were does make it a little more difficult because you feel like there was a path there that might have worked for everybody.”
With players who would have entered the 2020-21 season as overage players having aged out of the league following Tuesday’s announcement, Branch did say that there have been discussions on how the league could approach the circumstances for overage players next season.
“We have invited our GM’s to file any particular thoughts that they feel we should consider on a different way of conducting our regulations and other such matters, given that pandemic,” Branch said. “It has come up and we’ll be talking about that.”
Raftis said he would be open to the discussion of potentially adding an overage player or reworking the overage rule following Tuesday’s decision.
“I would definitely be open to it,” Raftis said.
“A lot of times, your OA’s and your older players set that tone and are great ambassadors for your team in terms of bringing in younger players and whatever it might be. That can really set a tone for a team. For a lot of those guys, you want that last chance to show what you can do as a player. Some guys hit that maturity in their game a little bit later. Whether it works out or not, everybody wants that opportunity. A lot of these players, regardless of their age, lost an opportunity this year, and that’s the tough part for everybody.”