The Okotoks Oilers have big plans to bring national and provincial level events to the community.
The Alberta Junior Hockey League team presented before Okotoks Town Council on Jan. 23, outlining its bids to host the 2024 or 2025 National Jr. A Championship and 2023 AJHL Showcase.
“The requests we're making today are not centred around a singular or these two events, but in really establishing Okotoks as a destination for junior hockey events,” said Tyler King, Oilers assistant general manager, business operations, during a presentation to council.
“We want this attempt we’re making this year to bring the AJHL Showcase and the National Junior A Championship to Okotoks, in potentially back-to-back years, to be the beginning of a trend of Okotoks establishing itself as a place where those events are well-suited to be held.”
King’s presentation highlighted the local economic impact and how support from council to help cover the costs associated with rental fees for both the Okotoks Centennial Arenas and multi-purpose rooms for the nationals would help a bid be more attractive to those selecting the host site. The Oilers also asked for a $25,000 sponsorship to be used over three years.
At the meeting, Okotoks council unanimously passed a motion put forward by Coun. Brent Robinson to enter into a partnership agreement with the Jr. A team for the National Jr. A Championship. Council's vote on the sponsorship was a 3-3 tie and did not pass.
"What council approved is definitely going to be a big boost to the bid," said King, in a phone interview. "Facility costs can be a huge obstacle to organizing and undertaking as big as what the Centennial Cup (nationals) have become because of how many more games there are. It was definitely a huge help to waive the facility fees for it.
"It's going to be a real steep financial challenge to make this event work, I think, but we've got a lot of various groups from Okotoks, Calgary and the southern Alberta region that are supporting this bid and I think our natural advantages we have here are going to put us in a good situation."
The AJHL Showcase, an annual scouting extravaganza for the league featuring all 16 teams playing two games at one-site over four days in September, is voted on by AJHL teams.
“The way we’re phrasing our bid for the Showcase is around making sure all the other teams in our league feel it will be worth the drive down to Okotoks,” King said.
The National Jr. A Championship is determined by a selection committee appointed by Hockey Canada. The May event features the champions from nine CJHL leagues as well as the host team.
There are a couple of factors in applying for both 2024 and 2025 nationals.
"From our perspective we wanted to make sure that we were flexible in our application for a few reasons," King said. "We think it shows that we really want this event to come to the community and we can adapt to whatever circumstances we have to and I think we're in a good position to host it in either year both from a community and facility perspective and, frankly, from a roster perspective.
"If we host it next year that's fantastic because we have some of the best '04 born players in the country that would be coming back and making up the bulk of our roster. And 2025 would be good too because it would give you a little bit of extra time to really get everything in place both team wise and operationally to make sure it's as good as it could possibly be."
King said the other competing bids for the Showcase are the Calgary Canucks and Blackfalds Bulldogs, who hosted the event in the fall of 2022.
There are seven other teams biding for the national competition, including the AJHL’s Bulldogs, Bandits, Bonnyville Pontiacs as well as Kindersley in Saskatchewan, Wellington and Oakville in Ontario and Truro, Nova Scotia.
King, formerly with Hockey Canada and the Brooks Bandits, has considerable experience with the event as he chaired Brooks’ National Junior A Championship in 2019, the tournament’s most financially successful iteration.
He also was integral to the 2022 Telus and Esso Cup events held in Okotoks last May, the first time Hockey Canada has ever hosted two national tournaments concurrently at the same site.
“If we establish Okotoks as a destination for these kinds of events, give us that national exposure, it increases community pride and I think it’s a great sign of Okotoks’ continuing growth and the type of town that it wants to be 10, 15 years down the road,” he said.
“We build a resume with these smaller events now so that larger Okotoks of the future is in an even better position to host those larger events that people who move here are going to want to have here.”
