In Ontario Canada pay to play hockey is nothing new at the Junior A or Tier II level. It has been commonplace for the last five years.
Not everyone has embraced this change of tradition, and there has been a foolhardy resistance to this business model. Teams in multiple leagues have placed themselves on the brink of financial collapse with this resistance.
This is no longer the case in the Maritimes Junior Hockey League, as they become the first league outside of Ontario to publicly embrace a new model.
The MJHL is now officially charging a “league fee”.
The system will be implemented over three years. For the 2016-17 season, all 16, 17 and 18-year-old players that are new to the league will be required to pay a registration fee to the league. For the 2017-18 season, all 16, 17 and 18-year-old players will be required to pay this fee.
Finally, the registration fee will apply to all players aged 16-19 before the start of the 2018-19 season.
Twenty-year-old players will not be subject to the fee.
The Maritimes Junior Hockey League is known to be a league that has one of the best corporate financial support systems in Canada. While the addition of fee’s does not reflect on the strength or weakness of that corporate support it does make a statement on the rising costs to play hockey.
The Maritimes will not be the last Canadian league to add player fee’s. Recently rumors have indicated that some teams west of Ontario have begun charging fee’s to players who are not top end recruits. Those rumors have yet to be confirmed by seeing payment receipts, but some teams are not providing receipts to avoid being talked about publicly.
TJHN will update this story as more information becomes available.
