ESTEVAN - The organizers of the 2022 Centennial Cup national Junior A hockey championship, presented by Tim Hortons, are pleased with the progress they have made, and now the national showcase is just five months away.
The tournament is slated for May 20-29, 2022, at Affinity Place. The host Estevan Bruins will be joined by four league champions from across the country in a tournament that will put the national hockey spotlight on the Energy City.
Cory Prokop, who co-chairs the tournament committee alongside Greg Hoffort and Mayor Roy Ludwig, said the focus has been on ticket sales, and they’re “relatively pleased” with the sales thus far. Approximately 800-900 ticket packages have been sold.
The committee has been making a push for season ticket holders to purchase their passes before the end of the year, to secure their specific seats for the event.
“Moving into the new year, we’ll likely come up with a couple of different packages to focus on specific games during the tournament … for visiting teams with tickets to their games,” Prokop told the Mercury.
The committee wanted to be around 1,000 tournament passes by the end of the year.
Hockey Canada is very pleased with the progress Estevan has made to date.
“I think we’re considerably ahead of other communities that have hosted this event in the past, as far as ticket sales are concerned. I think right now we’re happy, but we would love to have the event sold out for the entire week that the tournament is here in Estevan,” said Prokop.
Individual tickets likely won’t be on sale until the event starts and they know the availability of the remaining seats.
“Things are moving along quite nicely. We have our regular calls with Hockey Canada and work through issues here and there,” said Prokop.
There was also a meeting with the facilities people from the City of Estevan a couple of weeks ago, and they’re working through plans for the various facilities that will be used for the event.
People he talks to are excited for the event.
Prokop noted they haven’t reached out to other provinces and leagues yet about tickets. There will be a link on Hockey Canada’s website for information on the tournament. Once those links are in place, and there’s a greater push outside of the community, he expects more tickets will be sold.
“I’d hate to see local people not be able to get a ticket package for the tournament when they really wanted it. The sooner they can secure those and pay for those and lock them up, the better,” said Prokop.
A ticket package is $200 for 13 games, and given the calibre of hockey, he doesn’t believe it’s overly expensive. It amounts to a little more than $15 per game, which is comparable for a regular season Bruins’ game.
It has helped that the Bruins have had a strong start to the season, and were (?) heading into the final two games before the Christmas break.
“If the way the team stays on track the way they have been playing, I think history shows that will contribute to the last minute (ticket sales) but if we continue to have a strong, exciting team, there will be more people lining up for these ticket packages,” said Prokop.
The City of Estevan stepped forward with $75,000 in sponsorship support that will be spent in each of 2021 and 2022, and other sponsorship agreements in place will help cover the cost of the tournament. Profits will be based on ticket sales.
A new overhead scoreboard at Affinity Place is slated to be the legacy project for the event. Prokop said it would be a nice item to remember this event. They need to be at 1,000 tournament ticket packages sold to proceed with ordering the legacy item from the supplier in Regina. Then it could be here in April and installed before the tournament.
“That’s what we’re hoping to go with as far as getting that legacy item installed and being able to showcase it for the event, and just make an already beautiful facility that much more exciting to go and watch hockey in, or any other event,” said Prokop, who cited curling events, trade shows and concerts as other events where it could be used.
The host committee has other tasks as well. They need to work with the different committee heads and get them working on their portfolios, ranging from facilities to media relations to special events happening during the week.
Details for those special events have yet to be announced, but Prokop suggested some things could happen in the community to create a little more excitement in town, and show the entire city is behind the tournament.
There will also be a call for volunteers, as a substantial amount of manpower will be needed to make this happen.
Prokop believes Estevan showed when it hosted the 2016 Crescent Point Western Canada Cup that it could host a large-scale event, and make it profitable, and he would like to see this run in a similar fashion to keep Estevan on Hockey Canada’s radar for future events.
