Lucas Punkari
The Superior International Junior Hockey League is heading back to Spooner, Wis. this season with a new-look Wisconsin Wilderness.
“We don’t normally deal in franchises per se but to keep it simple, once it was announced that there would be a NAHL team moving into Cloquet, Mn., the Minnesota Wilderness franchise there was shut down,” SIJHL commissioner Ron Whitehead explained.
“Therefore, we took the Duluth Clydesdales’ franchise that we had revoked earlier [last] season and moved it to Spooner, though they have no connection to the old team that was there before except for using the old name,” he noted.
“We’re expecting them to be just as good and as popular as the old team was.”
After the Wilderness franchise, which won the last three SIJHL titles before departing the league, moved from Spooner to Cloquet last summer, the town was without a Junior ‘A’ club for the 2012/13 campaign, although it did host a special “showcase” series between the Fort Frances Lakers and Minnesota Wilderness.
The return to Spooner gives the SIJHL six teams once again. It was down to five at the end of this past season when the Clydesdales and Sioux Lookout Flyers both came a screeching halt during the campaign.
“It’s very important for us to have six teams as we have always said that if we get down to four teams, we may have to fold the league,” Whitehead stressed.
“You need to have a fairly extensive schedule in a league such is this, and you can’t play that many games with just a few teams,” he noted.
The new-look Wilderness also will give the SIJHL two American teams once again as they and the Minnesota Iron Rangers, based in Hoyt Lakes, will vie with the Lakers, Dryden Ice Dogs, Thunder Bay North Stars, and the new English River Miners for the Bill Salonen Cup.
“It’s important, from a historical point of view, to have those American teams as we’ve had the involvement from those clubs since the league started 13 seasons ago,” Whitehead said.
“Plus, from a cost point of view, it makes more economic sense to build and expand on the American side as it helps with the travel costs,” he added.
All six teams worked on the 2013/14 SIJHL schedule here Sunday, with an official release of this year’s slate of games expected in the coming weeks.
“The teams publish the schedule amongst themselves and share it with their arenas to make sure that there are no mistakes,” Whitehead said.
“After they do that, the final copy will be hammered out and released to the public,” he noted.
