The Superior International and Lakehead Junior Hockey League’s are confident that the season will resume the first full weekend of January.

Despite the emerging Omicron variant of COVID-19, both Commissioner Darrin Nicholas (SIJHL) and President Josh Gribben (LJHL) tell Acadia News that they haven’t been given guidance to postpone the return of hockey in 2022.

“We should be able to pick up action on January 6th,” added Gribben. “Now there may be spectator limits and those sorts of things that we will have to deal with, but outside of capacity limits and maybe some dressing room restrictions we should be able to begin the 2022 portion of our season on time.”

The Lakehead League will hit the ice on Thursday, January 6th as the Thunder Bay Northern Hawks will play the Thunder Bay Bandits at the Tournament Centre.

The Superior International League has three games on Friday, January 7th as the Dryden GM Ice Dogs face off with the Thunder Bay North Stars, the Kam River Fighting Walleye welcome in the Red Lake Miners and the Wisconsin Lumberjacks meet the Fort Frances Lakers.

Both leagues escaped COVID-19 related postponements in 2021 with the Junior ‘A’ league having a false positive emerging from the Lumberjacks and having some games rescheduled due to the American border closure that concluded on November 8th.

“Those games have been slotted into the back end of the schedule,” said Nicholas. “We’re just trying to iron out a couple of ice slots that we need to have confirmation on, but as of now yes we’re still going to be able to have every team’s schedule finished as long as we can get into the rinks.”

Going forward, Nicholas confirms plans are moving ahead to host the Dudley Hewitt Cup in May unless further health guidance comes down.

Gribben mentioned should his league run into postponements, there is time in March to make up the games while keeping them on schedule for the start of the playoffs.