Introducing the Chinook Hockey League

RED DEER, ALBRTA, CANADA – For over 35 years Ray Marsh has presided over Western Canada’s longest running competitive Senior Men’s hockey league. Tending and tilling the Chinook Hockey League’s growth, season to season. Sometimes, he might feel like a farmer; watching this precious field of fragile amateur hockey clubs as though they were crops. There have been droughts. Hockey is Canada’s favorite winter flower but in Central Alberta there is not always enough fertile ground for every plant to prosper. With the arrival of the Edmonton Oilers in the mid 70’s and Junior hockey’s constant thirst for fresh markets of its own, a once bountiful spread of amateur senior teams in the golden era of the 60’s,?nearly blew away on the prairie wind. The noble reality of ‘playing for the love of the game’ wilted into idealist’s pipe dream under the stress of modernized hockey markets. Senior hockey went dormant in the gardens. Fortunately for everyone it never completely died. The amateur circuits were ground down into glorified beer leagues for awhile, just a competitive weed remained. Then, in 1999, the Stony Plain Eagles brought the Allan Cup back to Alberta, for the first time since the 1966 Drumheller Miners. New fertilizer on the ice! Curious young hockey fans wanted to know what was the big deal about the Allan Cup? The timeless stories about the Whitby Dunlops in the 50’s, Jean Beliveau, the legendary Trail Smoke-Eaters, Olympians, The Bentley Brothers, Al Rollins and how they all once played to sold out arena’s, smash hits in their time. Stony Plain helped serve reminder that senior hockey was something to behold. Hockey people, once again, wanted a share in the rich history of the Allan Cup. They needed a competitive, reliable and well organized league to co-operate with them. That’s when they found Ray Marsh still right where he had always been as the President of the Chinook Hockey League. The wise old tiller of teams brought out his hockey taped hoe and helped seed expansion: In Bentley; Alberta, a tiny village 1 hour south of Edmonton. Potentially mistaken for the middle of nowhere, until some research reveals the endless lists of professional players born and raised within a radius of the region. Mecca’s aren’t always big places. In 2000, the Bentley Generals were born… in a manger. Three seasons after Bentley was baptized on frozen water, another expansion team came on board in Fort Saskatchewan. A bedroom community of Edmonton, whose economy had been super-boosted with oil money pouring in from the north. The Chiefs took to the ice in 2004. That same year, the still infant stages of the Bentley Generals made some noise when they upset Stony Plain and then Trail Smoke-Eaters for the right to represent Canada’s Pacific Reigon at the Allan Cup Tournament in St-George de Beauce Quebec. The Gens’ were eventually stopped soundly by the powerhouse from St George but that didn’t block the little team?out of Central Alberta from peaking the levels curiosity back home. Whispers went around the rink: ‘They are playing for the love of the game, like they used to.’ The very next year a perfect storm hit the amateur hockey horizon. The NHLPA pulled the pin on the season for 2004-05. While the big name players and sport media types bantered and bickered back and forth…the old school fans got up from their TV’s and their computer monitors, grabbed their winter coats and went back to the rinks they’d once abandoned. What did they find? Theo Fleury and the Horse Lake Thunder. AWOL from the NHL, Fleury was a shell of his former self when he accepted an extremely shady offer to lace up his skates with an amateur team, custom built to buy themselves all the way to the Allan Cup. The sacrilegious escapades of the Horse Lake team made headlines all over Canada. Rumors of six-figure pay-outs going under tables to stack a titanic team featuring Fleury, Gino Odjick and Sasha Lakovic helped drive gate sales past presumed impossible figures. When the Horse Lake Thunder rolled into Red Deer Alberta there were lights, camera’s, controversy, some brutally savage hockey and six thousand plusfans filled the Red Deer Rebels (WHL) home (Enmax Centrium) to witness it all. The little town of Bentley was right in the middle of the rampage, representing the Chinook Hockey League in a futile attempt to thwart the Thunder from compromising the integrity of the Allan Cup. A trophy which has written in its century old constitution it be reserved for purely amateur players. Fleury struggled to find his game legs at times and his enemies on both sides side of the glass were more than happy to let him know. At other times, he found flashes of magic; frustrating opponents with cocky dangles, drunken mischief and the occasional spear.?Theo was arguably the biggest story in hockey that winter but it all came crashing down in Lloydminster Saskatchewan that April. The Thunder were shocked by a scrapped together team from Thunder Bay who made a 20 hour bus ride to that Allan Cup Tournament and eliminated the Thunder when they were within one game from winning the 2005 Allan Cup. Fleury talked a lot of trash in his now infamous post-game presser. The broken soul was down and out in those days but he did put senior hockey front and centre, told the nation exactly that, before completing his heart-breaking fall from grace. The Thunder? They never returned but the Chinook Hockey League was back the very next year with a whole new interest level looking on. Kelly Buchberger retired from the NHL during the lock-out and the Bentley Generals hoped to be benefactors. ‘Bucky’s’ decision to join the Gens was supposed to put the Gens and their devoted fan base; ‘The Army’, over the top. Thousands of fans filled the rink in Fort Sask. the spring of 2006. The Fort Sask Chiefs bounced Bucky and his Bentley Generals from Allan Cup playoffs before losing in the quarter-finals of the Allan Cup in Powell River BC. Ray Marsh turned 80 in 2007. ‘The Silver Fox Farmer of the Chinook Hockey League’s’ heart was filled with pride when his prize-worthy foliage hosted the grand tournament that spring in Stony Plain. The Eagles along with the Generals both had strong teams but neither could stop the Lloydminster Border Kings from winning their 2nd National Championship. In 2008, Ray was in Brantford along with The Army, hoping for the Generals to bring it home in front of a TSN audience. Brent Gretzky played for the home-town team and father, Walter, was there to see the Brantford Blast win the 100th Allan Cup. Finally, in 2009 The Bentley Generals broke through. The Army watched in amazement as Brian Sutter coached that Gen’s team to a 23-1 regular season record, before winning back to back best of 7 series which went the maximum against Fort Sask. and then Stony Plain. A far cry from a glorified beer league these days. All 3 teams went at each other, rosters brimming with former NHLers, AHLers and snipers fresh out of the NCAA and Major Jr networks. From out of the Chinook League the Gens rolled past Fort St John in the McKenzie Cup, a best of 5 series between BC and Alberta. In Steinbach Manitoba, the Bentley Generals became just the 3rd Alberta team to ever win an Allan Cup. The best senior team in Canada calls the ChHL home: The Bentley Generals hold the prestige of being defending Allan Cup Champions. Amateur hockey’s holy grail. Brian Sutter has returned as Coach. The Gens’ are leading the league. Hotly pursued by rivals from Stony Plain and Fort Sask, along with Lloydminster. The Chinook League operates as a double tier league for the time being. Four of six current members are enlisted as ‘AAA’ teams, amongst 15 ‘AAA’ teams in existence through-out the country. The two other ChHl members are ‘AA’, over-matched by the ‘AAA’ powerhouses, these ‘AA’ tier teams do not range out of Alberta at play-off time. On Saturday nights, caravans of hi-beamed cars come crushing into snow-covered parking lots of small town rinks in hockey’s heartland. Just like they did a half century ago. Looking over rosters of these Senior Mens AAA teams, they compliment Ray Marsh on the green thumb touch he’s used to grow the league into what it’s become. His league and its membership has helped lead senior hockey and the Allan Cup back from obscurity. The 2010 Allan Cup Tournament is slated April 19th-24rth?in Fort St. John BC. TSN will be there, as will the winner of the Chinook Hockey League and five more of Canada’s top amateur men’s teams. Like every year, it’s sure to be another geographical miracle. Teams entered from as far east as Clarenville; Newfoundland, as far west as Powell River; BC and as far north as…Whitehorse; Yukon. They have hockey there. It’s true. The Whitehorse Huskies are back on the map for the first time since they won it all in 1993. Not much grows up in the arctic. Ray Marsh will tell you amateur hockey can grow anywhere with the right people involved. Contact Wade.Giesbrecht@prohockeynews.com