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NORTHWEST TERRITORIES/NUNAVUT
Senior men's hockey in the North is about to get a big boost as the Northern Hockey Challenge is slated to begin its inaugural season on Jan. 25.

The event will consist of seven teams for the first season - Yellowknife, Inuvik and Hay River in the NWT, Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet and Repulse Bay from Nunavut and Kuujjuaq from Nunavik.

The initiative is being supported by First Air, and it was actually the airline's idea to launch it, said First Air president and CEO Chris Ferris.

"The whole thing was initiated when we thought there wasn't going to be a National Hockey League season," he said. "Knowing that there's some pretty good quality hockey players up North, the thought was that if there wasn't going to be NHL hockey, let's make sure there's a good tournament up North, kind of like the old territorial challenge tournaments that people talk about from the past."

Ferris wouldn't say exactly what type of support First Air is providing, but he did say the airline has removed a lot of barriers for teams to travel and get to games.

The idea right now is a test run, according to commissioner Darrell Greer.

The teams from the NWT will make up the Western Division and the Nunavut and Nunavik squads will comprise the Eastern Division. Each team will be playing a home-and-home series with the other communities in their division. Games will be played on weekends.

Once the round-robin is complete, the top two teams from each division will advance to the playoffs and will each play a best-of-five series to determine the west and east champions respectively. The two teams left standing will play another best-of-five to crown the overall champion.

Greer said the plan right now is to have the overall champion represent the North at the North American Senior Hockey Championships in Calgary later this year.

He also said every team will receive brand new uniforms as part of the deal. As well, First Air will be flying in two of its employees to every home opener, along with the creation of a "booster club," of sorts.

"There'll be thundersticks, crests, banners hung in all the arenas," Greer said. "First Air wants to make this a big thing."

Each team will be allowed to sign up to 20 players from anywhere inside their territory and, in addition, three players can be signed from anywhere in the country who can register as affiliate players, with all players having to be registered with Hockey Canada or CanLan, Greer added

"If this thing takes off, our plan is to become an official Northern league," he said. "We already have some communities from the west looking to join next year and we would hopefully expand our schedule and become official."

Ferris said the re-establishment of a travelling event as opposed to a one-weekend event was something First Air was more than happy to get behind and support.

"We turned it over to the reps in some communities and (they) took the ball and ran with it," he said. "We had the idea, but we didn't want to be the league office, so to speak. Darrell (Greer) being the commissioner, he's done a lot of work on this. We wanted to make sure this was going to be a quality event with quality teams out on the ice and watch something which I think could turn into one of the premier events in the North on an ongoing basis."

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