SPORTS FLASHBACK 2005: The ‘Grandfather Clause’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/04/2024 (390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few years down the road, Peter Guenther’s son Jeff will probably learn that not all the teams in a local hockey league can make it with strictly local talent and the best teams will then gravitate to another league, where the hockey is more competitive and puts more fans in the stands.

In the meantime, the first rule of the new Carillon Senior Hockey League will become to be known as “the grandfather clause.” Not that it will refer to the more common usage of the term, indicating existing conditions, which are not subject to the introduction of new rules.

This grandfather clause will mean just what it says. If a player’s grandfather lived in the area, that player will qualify as a “local” in the Carillon Senior Hockey League.

The opportunity to play for one’s “home” community is a real bonus. Spending weekends with family and friends is a great way to keep small communities alive. There is also the connection for a community’s young adults, who for the most part earn their livelihood elsewhere.

What starts out as an apparently solid definition of what constitutes a local hockey player soon becomes a little fuzzy around the edges. If a player is local for one team in the league, he should he be eligible to play for another team, even if it is beyond the five-mile limit. So the interpretation of the five-mile rule is stretched to mean within five miles of every team in the league.

Over the years, a few HTHL teams gravitated to the top of the standings and the rest were seen as providing an inferior brand of hockey. Rather than bringing in imports to balance the talent, the HTHL chose to allow the top teams to leave. The Manitoba Eastern Hockey League and later the Central Amateur Senior Hockey League evolved from this kind of hockey development.

The game of hockey is cyclical, and once a team reaches the pinnacle of success on the ice it often has trouble maintaining fan support for anything less than the best.

History often repeats itself and two decades after its heyday, the HTHL was shrinking by the year until there were not enough teams to form a league. The option was to fold the HTHL and the three remaining teams could find a new league to play in.

But is anything really new? The number of similarities between the “new” Carillon Senior Hockey League and what things were like for the “new” Hanover Tache Hockey League nearly 50 years ago are uncanny.

Peter Guenther thought at the time The Carillon League was allowing too many outsiders in to play hockey and it was destroying the community aspect of the sport.

Back in 1957 Henry Penner became the first president of the fledgling HTHL after The Carillon League folded, and it rested on his shoulders to make sure the rule on local players would be enforced.

Dick Penner, who took over the reins of the new Carillon Senior Hockey League, after the HTHL folded, finds he faces a similar responsibility.

Really good news for the new league is the inclusion of the La Broquerie Habs. La Broquerie has always loved its hockey and young hockey players in the community can’t wait to pull on a Habs jersey.

Inclusion of the La Broquerie Habs takes much of the sting out of the demise of the HTHL and will go a long way to ensure continued success for the new CSHL.

But they are not completely bidding the HTHL good-bye. The winner of the CSHL championship will have their team name engraved on the L.A. Barkman Memorial Trophy, under a plaque added with the league’s new name.

It could be said the first 49 winners of the Carillon Senior Hockey League’s trophy have been “grandfathered” in.