DANKOCHIK’S DRAFTINGS: Nighthawks’ Centennial Cup run caps off Carillon’s hockey season

The end of an extra long hockey season came to an end for The Carillon in memorable fashion, with the Niverville Nighthawks claiming the Centennial Cup in P.E.I. May 17. The season began in Niverville with the Nighthawks home opener Sept. 19.

I track the events I attend in two chunks of the year (labelled hockey and baseball in my spreadsheet), which start with the first Manitoba Junior Hockey League regular season game of the year, and end either with the Turnbull Cup final or the Centennial Cup, if needed.

With the Nighthawks and Steinbach Pistons out in the first round of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League playoffs last year, our hockey season was extended quite a bit compared to 2024/2025. Those playoff runs fuelled an overall increase of MJHL coverage from 22% of events covered to 31%.

The other big impact on the stats came from the Eastman Selects male U18 AAA program move from Beausejour to Steinbach. The male team’s new proximity meant they became a more prominant team for us to get out to.

Those factors (Selects move and Nighthawks run) meant a slight drop in our percentage of women’s events, down to just below 30%.

High School and minor coverage made up more than a third of the rest of our coverage over the hockey season. The SRSS Sabres and Steinbach Pistons were tied for teams I saw the most of this season, 15% of our events attended. The Eastman Selects and Niverville Nighthawks were the other two teams above 10%.

In total, we were in attendance at 177 events this season over 240 days, the vast majority of which (72.9%) were hockey.

There was no rest for the sports section this year. After arriving in the early morning hours of May 19, we were at a SRSS Rugby match to kick off our “baseball” schedule.

If you see me out at a ball game, feel free to come up and say hi or let me know what you’d like to see more of in the paper.