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Okotoks awarded Midget AAA franchise

A changing of the guard has Okotoks as the newest members of the Alberta Midget Hockey League.
Turner Valley’s Tyson Scott controls the puck for the Foothills CFR Chemicals Bisons in the AMHL final. The Bisons will no longer ice a team after the Foothills draw
Turner Valley’s Tyson Scott controls the puck for the Foothills CFR Chemicals Bisons in the AMHL final. The Bisons will no longer ice a team after the Foothills draw zone was split into two giving Okotoks and Airdrie its own teams.

A changing of the guard has Okotoks as the newest members of the Alberta Midget Hockey League.

Okotoks was officially awarded its own Midget AAA franchise to play in the 2017-18 season after Hockey Alberta opted to split the sprawling regional draw zone in two.

The re-zoning gives Okotoks and Airdrie its own teams and spells the end for the Foothills CFR Chemicals Bisons in Strathmore.

“Our reasons for doing this are we had twice the draw zone, we have too many kids leaving home and now we’re comparable to every other draw zone in the province,” said Randy Partaker, the Okotoks Oilers Athletic Association (OOAA) director of long-term planning. “It puts more competitive balance right across the league, it gives more players opportunities. We’re going to develop more players and it’s a good thing for the association.

“If you go through small-town Saskatchewan or Manitoba, you drive into those towns and they have the big sign up front saying ‘home of this NHLer.’ We don’t have that in Okotoks. We’ve had a hole in our development model for a little while. Hopefully now that hole is filled. For our whole zone, more kids are going to get opportunities and hopefully we can move more kids onto the next level after this.”

A major impetus for the move was the fact several players in the zone had to go elsewhere across the province to play AAA hockey. Last season there were 32 players from the zone, 12 from Okotoks and 20 from Airdrie, who plied their trade outside of the region.

“We have more than a team playing elsewhere and that doesn’t include all the players who chose not to try out,” Partaker said. “We could easily make a second team.”

Many AAA calibre players were being squeezed out to not only different regions, but into lower levels.

Wheatland, based out of Strathmore, has iced the best Midget AA team over the last three seasons while Okotoks has fielded two competitive teams in the South Central Alberta Hockey League over the last two years.

“The depth is there,” Partaker said. “It just makes sense. It’s natural evolution of the draw zones. When they first made this zone it was under half the size that it is now.”

Calculations showed the Bisons draw at approximately 800 players compared to Medicine Hat or Lethbridge, which hover close to the 300 mark each.

“With those numbers supporting it, they’ve seen how we’ve turned around programs like our Bantam AAA Raiders,” said Travis Thiessen, OOAA’s director of Foothills AAA hockey. “I think that gave them confidence in awarding the franchise knowing that we’ve got a strong group of volunteers behind it and we’ve got good development programs and good players coming up that will make a competitive team.”

For local officials it was a case of supply and demand with the limited roster spots available on a regional Bisons team forcing dozens of skaters to look elsewhere.

“The focus isn’t one team per se, but it’s on our draw zone and our members, the Midget aged kids in particular and doing what’s right for them,” Thiessen said. “The development model says yes we need another team in our draw. It comes down to what’s in the best interest for the CFR Chemicals Bisons versus what’s in the best interest of the players in our draw zone.”

The zone is expected to match that of the Rocky Mountain Bantam AAA Raiders encompassing Okotoks, MD of Foothills, Turner Valley, Black Diamond, High River, Strathmore, Chestermere, Siksika and extending east to Hussar.

The new boundaries put the team close to the 400 player range.

“It equals it out right across the province,” Partaker said. “We should be competitive right off the bat. We now have the same size draw zone as any other zone in the province. There should be no horrible seasons for these teams.

“Essentially, we have more than one team playing AAA hockey, all we’re doing is bringing these kids home.”

Okotoks being awarded its own franchise and the zone being split marks the end of an era.

The Bisons established themselves as one of the top programs in Alberta as three-time defending South Division champions and provincial and regional victors dating back to its historic 2015 season. The team also cultivated strong fan support in Strathmore where the Bisons were the most popular sports team in the town of roughly 14,000.

“The heat we’ve been getting is why would you break up a winning program that’s had success over the past few years?” Partaker said. “My response to that is, it’s not about breaking up a winning program. It’s about development, it’s about giving as many players as possible the opportunity to play at the highest level.

“We’ve had over twice the overall draw zone that any other team has had. That’s where a lot of that winning has come from over the last few years.”

Airdrie has carded the Bisons and allowed them to play in Strathmore since they were founded in the early 1990s. Airdrie and Strathmore will no longer be under the same draw zone.

“We looked at all the different boundaries. Airdrie, they had the opportunity where they could have left the team in Strathmore,” Partaker said. “They were very interested in hosting that team and it just made sense to go along with the same exact same boundaries as the Bantam AAA boundaries.”

An announcement on Okotoks’ official name as well as the hiring of its team and coaching staff is expected in the near future.

Check westernwheel.com for further developments.


Remy Greer

About the Author: Remy Greer

Remy Greer is the assistant editor and sports reporter for westernwheel.ca and the Western Wheel newspaper. For story tips contact [email protected]
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