Pandemic forces cancellation of Little NHL tournament for third consecutive year
By Sam Laskaris
NIPISSING FIRST NATION – It remains to be seen whether Nipissing First Nation will indeed get the opportunity to host the Little Native Hockey League tournament in the near future.
The event, which is often simply called the Little NHL, has traditionally been the largest Indigenous youth hockey tournament in Ontario. But because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 edition, which had been scheduled to run in Mississauga from Mar. 13-17, was officially cancelled on Jan. 14.
This marked the third consecutive year COVID-19 concerns have forced the cancellation of the tournament.
Officials from Nipissing First Nation have been trying to serve as tournament hosts since 2020.
“It’s disheartening and frustrating that we had to cancel for a third time,” said Nipissing First Nation Chief Scott McLeod.
Though the 2023 tournament is also scheduled to be staged in Mississauga, tournament officials have yet to announce which First Nation will host that event.
“The [Little NHL] executive has made it clear that Nipissing still has the first right of refusal to be the hosts,” Chief McLeod said. “We just need some time to think about it.”
Chief McLeod said he would be in favour of having his First Nation try once again to stage the event, which in recent years had been attracting more than 200 squads from across the province, in 2023.
“But I’m not the one who has to do all the work,” Chief McLeod said.
Chief McLeod added it might be some point this spring before representatives from his First Nation decide whether they are interested in hosting next year’s Little NHL.
“I can’t speculate at this time,” he said. “Right now, our volunteers and our committee, they’re fatigued. They’ve been trying to plan this now for a couple of years and it’s just worn them out.”
Chief McLeod also said there’s still plenty of details that have to be sorted out in the immediate future.
“We’re working on the cancellation right now,” he said, adding the responsibilities Nipissing volunteers need to do include cancel arena bookings, deal with sponsors, and answer various questions from representatives whose teams had registered for this team’s tournament. “There’s a lot of work that comes with that.”
Though the official decision to cancel this year’s event came this past Friday, Chief McLeod said Nipissing representatives had more or less decided to pull the plug on the tourney prior to the Christmas holidays.
“It takes a lot of work to cancel,” he said. “So, our decision before the holidays was one that where it’s not really looking good but let’s not make the decision today because we don’t want the staff to work through the holidays.”
Additionally, Chief McLeod said there was a slim chance the pandemic outlook would improve in January to the point where organizers would decide that they would still like to try hosting the event in March.
“When we came back after the holidays, it wasn’t getting better,” Chief McLeod said of rising COVID-19 cases throughout the province. “In fact, in most ways, it’s still getting worse.”
Marian Jacko, the president of the Little NHL executive, said there have been mixed reactions since the announcement of this year’s cancellation.
“The response is sort of ranging from real sheer disappointment to people thinking, ‘No, you could have done it,’” she said. “On the other end of the spectrum, you have people saying this was the best decision because we can’t jeopardize the health and safety of community members.”
Jacko added tournament officials were not only considering the health and safety of tournament participants when deciding the fate of the event.
“It’s not only the players we have to think about,” she said. “We have to think about their families. Not only their parents but also their grandparents and Elders that like to come to the tournament to watch hockey. We have to take all those factors into consideration.”
The Little NHL tournament was first held in 1971 in the town of Little Current, located on Manitoulin Island.
Since the tourney has been cancelled in each of the past three years, organizers are now hoping the 49th edition of the event will be held in 2023.
Instead of awarding the 50th anniversary of the event to a First Nation, the Little NHL executive plans to host the milestone tourney itself, now hopefully in 2024.