Well a month or so ago the OHA in Ontario (112 teams) decided they were going full face shields next season. Read that story here
Then on August 14th BC's Peninsula Panthers of the Jr B VIJHL declared that they were going to make all their players wear full cages this season as well. Read all about that and their arguments for it here
Read into this anyway you want, but me being a conspiracy theorist I see a big red flag when I see the Panthers brought in BC Hockey CEO Barry Petrachenko to help grandstand their big we're the first Western Canadian team with full cages announcement.
This in my opinion is a harbinger of things to come... the freight train has no brakes Casey Jones.
So lets clear up a few things, first of all at my age (months from retirement) I don't care, they can do what ever the hell they want, and I get the arguments from both sides... and I'll still attend the games.
However, all the younger players and coaches I know are foaming at the mouth about this. We hear... Cages are for animalz in the zoo, if I was a player I would demand a trade right away, they won't get any good players, I wouldn't want my players playing them and their high sticks that we see enough of when we go to the US, way more stick work elbows etc.
So as we said in a previous post, this will be like a science experiment, will the good players leave, will the good recruits go somewhere else, will it be a recruiting advantage and the good recruits flock to Peninsula, insurance is probably cheaper there, and the parents will mostly like it.
Frank Zappa was wrong it can happen here, Frank who??
We wore full face masks in Yorkton when I played in 89-90. We finished second in the league losing out to Nipiwan. We didn't like it at first because the other teams heckled us all the time. Then we went to the finals. Needless to say the rest of the league shut up. On today's game they aren't even allowed to hit or fight anymore. What difference does it make if they now wear a bubble or a cage? So they don't get to feel like a pro? Work harder, become a pro. Or take your mask off in beer league. At the end of the day it's not about your mask it's about your team, working hard and winning for them. Put your ego away, it has no place on the ice.
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