DANKOCHIK’S DRAFTINGS: Looking back on a busy hockey season
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The first thing I do when the Manitoba Junior Hockey League announces their schedule for the year is to combine the Niverville Nighthawks and Steinbach Pistons schedules into one combined calendar and print them out.
Those pages make up the print portion of my event tracker for the year, and let me tell you, it was a busy hockey season for me. I break down my year into two sections. Hockey season begins with the first Manitoba Junior Hockey League regular season game of the year and baseball season begins when I cover my first baseball game of the year.
I attended or watched 174 events this hockey season, the most in my three years working as The Carillon’s sports editor. A massive number which was a little overkill, especially as hockey playoffs ramped up in February/March this year. In those two months combined, I attended 65 different events, averaging more than one per day.
That 174 even understates the total games I attended, with Providence Pilots double-headers counted as a single event in my yearly tracker.
The sport breakdown has remained the same across all of my three years as sports editor, with hockey games/events making up 64% or 65% of the total events covered. Without a massive playoff run from the Steinbach Pistons, the number of MJHL games took a slight downgrade, with only 22% of the total events this season.
The year came with more coverage of the Capital Region Junior Hockey League, as the La Broquerie Habs increased the number of teams in the league in our coverage area and the St Malo Warriors played a seven-game final. With an Eastman Selects team going on a long run, winning the U18 league championships, coverage of minor sports also increased.
Coverage of women’s/co-ed events reached a new high this year as well, with over one-third of events covered. With no women’s equivalent to junior A, junior B, junior C or top tier high school hockey playing games in our region, balancing women’s sports coverage in the paper is important to track.
My email is always open for feedback, especially in terms of what our readers would like to see in the sports section.
