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Locally, the creation of the B.C. Major Midget League in 2004, which has been complemented in the last few years by minor midget and now major bantam leagues, made for a more focused pathway for elite players. That allowed local associations to redirect their energies back toward grassroots development.

“Locally, too many minor hockey associations had put too much money already into elite players, hiring elite coaches who were getting paid a good salary to coach, but I felt like that meant house hockey kids were being neglected,” Jimmy Ghuman said. Associations are betting at taking care of their whole pathway now, he feels.

Ghuman spent 14 years coaching rep hockey, including stints with the BCMML’s North East Chiefs and Team B.C. Now he’s back in the grassroots, helping out with his six-year-old son’s hockey initiation program in North Vancouver.

The efforts made to make hockey initiation’s focus all about fun and skill development, aided by deploying paid skill coaches to work with the parent coaches at the youngest age groups, have paid off, he said.

“The talent we have now coming out of minor hockey are more skilled than we saw 10 years ago,” Ghuman said.

There’s a reality that while B.C. Hockey and its members are hopeful they can return on their usual schedule at the beginning of September, there’s a likelihood of having to wait until October or November.

“When we do get back to playing hockey and gathering in arenas, in communities, if it’s a little delayed, then perhaps we have to look at our seasonal structure,” Petrachenko said. “Maybe it’s an opportunity to get more players involved on a shorter term session, that sort of thing, who maybe wouldn’t normally register for a full season of hockey but might be interested to try for a couple of months. And on that tight time frame, things that we haven’t been able to offer in the past might become options and we just want to be ready for that sort of thing when we get back.

“We’re always trying to make the game better and we are going to come into a time frame here in the next few weeks where we’ve done our planning for our standard programming and we’re going to be able to get into some really interesting discussions about what the game can look like when we come back.”

Ghuman was intrigued to hear that Petrachenko and his colleagues were pondering new approaches to scheduling.

“We can have a lasting impact for generations. It could work out better,” he said. “We should always being thinking outside the box.”

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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