DANKOCHIK’S DRAFTINGS: MJHL musings after the regular season

The worries I had about the Manitoba Junior Hockey League standings in January came true, with very little to play for in the final months of the regular season.

No playoff seeding battle was close, as at least five points separated every team this season, and more than 10 points separated playoff teams from non-playoff teams. It would be great to shave off a few games from the regular season schedule, but the league is at the mercy of what players, their advisors and scouts think.

The format of the league needs to be what will attract the best players, which are more important to generate fan interest than a friendlier schedule, especially in hockey where the post-season matters way more than the regular season. If players and scouts want more games, then the MJHL should give them what they want.

The lack of standings battles really laid out the difference between the good and bad teams in the league this season. The Winnipeg Blues, Winnipeg Monarchs and Norman Blizzard all finished with a goal difference well under minus-100.

It definitely made some late-season decisions on what games I was going to on a given night pretty easy, as I grew sick of watching the Blues and Monarchs especially. A late season MJHL game with little impact on the standings will lose out to playoff games at lower levels, or even Providence Pilots games. The two East Division teams often play in Steinbach and Niverville.

The Winnipeg Blues may be my biggest disappointment this season, as I had hoped they would challenge for a playoff spot. After a decent start to the season, they fell off in the second half.

I thought the Monarchs played as well as you could have anticipated them to. An 11-win season will set a new program high for them, after worse years playing as the Winnipeg Freeze. They put together plenty of good opening periods against Steinbach and Niverville before fading to superior talent over the course of a 60-minute game.

It was great to see first-year head coach Zach Franko sit down for a 10-minute post season interview following the Monarchs’ final games of the season, posted on the team’s social media pages. That kind of thing is critical if the Winnipeg teams are going to return to competitiveness.

Swan Valley had a rough season as well, but I was impressed with the way they played down the stretch. Even as results didn’t matter in the standings, they played a hard-nosed brand of hockey and were tough to play against from the games I watched.

Norman will finish at the bottom of the standings after winning a championship last season, which shouldn’t be a massive surprise given the turnover in players, with most of that Turnbull Cup roster leaving for higher tiers. I expected a bit more from them pre-season, but it was clear from the first games of the season they weren’t able to replace that production.

For the second consecutive year, Selkirk started out hot, racking up a 10-1-1 record, mostly against lower-level competition. They could only manage 10 regulation wins after that hot start, finishing 29 points behind Winkler. I doubted them from the beginning of the season, despite their record, and was proven correct over the course of 58 games.

I am definitely anticipating a more entertaining post-season than regular season, at least when it comes to competitiveness.

The series I’m most excited for has to be Niverville and Winkler. The Flyers have looked like one of the league’s top teams since the roster deadline, and will be matched up with the league’s best regular season team in a re-match from last season’s quarterfinals. Any junior A fan has to be salivating at watching that match-up.