The Date is August 3rd, 2020 And You Can No Longer Register Your Hockey Team For Winter In Edmonton
Stanley Cup in October? How about them apples. No one would have predicted this at the start of the NHL season last year. But yet here we are, strange times indeed.
Everyone has had to adjust to the new realities, and we are no different. Ideally we would have opened registration on May 1st, which is what we usually do, but at that time we literally had no understanding of what hockey may look like in the winter.
Our understanding is a little better now, though there is plenty of uncertainty still. We are planning to start the winter season on time, the week of September 1st.
What does this mean?
We need about 30 days before the start of the season to prepare for the launch, this includes making up the divisions (it takes a while to get all teams to submit their skill survey so we can place them in the best possible division), finalizing the ice times for the season (we need to know how many teams will play so we can match the booked ice times for the season to the number of teams playing) and all other related tasks.
Once we have all this information we can prepare the schedule draft ice matrix to share with the team GMs. And finally we’ll hold the schedule draft and build the schedule. (if you want to know about how the schedule draft works, contact us).
Based on these timelines we have to cut off team registration on August 3rd, 2020.
Sure, we are aware of the potential futility of all this (regulations could change again) but we think things are moving in the right direction, and other jurisdictions do not have cohort restrictions in place right now.
Either way, if we are not able to start the season the way we normally do we will take care of all our teams and players, much like we did when we had to abruptly and prematurely finish last winter hockey season and cancel the summer hockey season all together.
There are three possible outcomes for this winter hockey season. We are readying contingency plans to address two of them, but essentially they are either the season goes ahead as planned, season needs to be modified because there are new regulations and restrictions placed on us, or the season is cancelled.
If the season is modified or cancelled, and we are not able to deliver the league experience to you as we are planning, we will offer teams the option to play the modified season under the new regulations or receive a full refund.
If the season is cancelled we will refund all registration fees (you will have the option to keep it as credit on account if you wish). In other words your money is safe with us, we guarantee it.
If your team is registered already, awesome, thank you for being on top of it!
And if you still need to register, please do so now. Why? Because right now monthly payments are interest free for your players on most plans.
Links to Pages You Want To Read
The NCHL – A Better Way To Play!
P.S.
If you are a player, please bug your team GM to register your team so you can set yourself up for winter. Otherwise see how you can become a FreeAgent and still have a team to play for this winter.