PJHL will move to tournament style championship for 2022

February 17, 2022 · 0 Comments

Written By Brian Lockhart

The Provincial Junior Hockey League has announced it will be turning to a tournament style championship for 2022 instead of the usual playoff format.

The PJHL’s season wraps up with the provincial Schmalz Cup every year where the two Junior C teams still standing meet for a seven game final series to determine the provincial championship.

In the Carruthers Division the season was extended so each team would complete 30 games before heading into the playoffs. Teams would be seeded based on the final standings after those 30 games.

In a normal season, Divisions would play-off to determine a division champion.

Those teams would then meet other division winners to determine a conference champion.

The conference champions would then play to determine which teams would go to the Schmalz Cup.

This year, because of the regular season being extended into March, it was decided to create the tournament style play to avoid the Schmalz Cup being played too late in the year when ice may not even be available.

PJHL Commissioner, Terrence Whiteside confirmed that the change is for the 2022 season only, and that ‘any permanent change will require approval of the membership.’

The final tournament will pit four conference champions in a round-robin format to determine rankings for the semi-finals.

Semi-finals will be played on May 14.

The championship final game will be played on Sunday, May 15.

All games in the final tournament will be played at the University of Guelph.

After the recent ‘pause’ in hockey across the province due to government restrictions, the PJHL had to make a decision to either extend the regular season or pick up where it left off and finish with a short season.

In the Carruthers Division of the PJHL, the Stayner Siskins are in first place. They are followed by the Alliston Hornets in second, the Schomberg Cougars in third place, and the Orillia Terriers in fourth place.