Team Yukon holds Canada Winter Games hockey tryouts

Team Yukon held tryouts for the male and female hockey teams July 29-31 at the Canada Games Centre (CGC) in Whitehorse.

Hockey Yukon President Krista Strand said there were two scouts evaluating the hopefuls for the two Canada Games teams. One was Greg Hermiston, a Hockey Canada regional scout.

“The other one we brought up was Kyle Allen and he’s a B.C. Hockey scout,” said Strand. “So we have those two scouts – or evaluators – who have come to help us with the process. With the evaluation piece, they’re using a Hockey Canada ranking system to allow the kids to all be ranked throughout the four ice times that they have and then we’ll have four to five evaluators providing that information, so then we can have that data and look at the players to help determine the best team for Yukon.”

Strand said the tryout camp was the first in a series of camps for the Canada Games and Arctic Winter Games.

“This is the first weekend for Canada Winter Games evaluations, because we have both Canada Winter Games and Arctic Winter Games in the same year this year, there is a little bit of overlap happening. So Sept. 2-4 is going to be an Arctic Winter Games evaluation. From this evaluation and the September evaluation, the top 25 players will be
determined and will be invited to come back to the final evaluation in October, where they will go through three games and from there the five teams, two Canada Winter Games teams and three Arctic Winter Games teams will be identified at that point.

“It’s a busy year.”

“For girls we currently have 19 here today and I think boys we’re at 28,” Strand added.

“Canada Winter games is typically a U16 age group. So 2007’s is the primary age but because we are a small jurisdiction, we are allowed three overage players, so we’re allowed to bring three 2006 players to Canada Games … we have opened up the trials to include 2008 and 2009’s as well for the males.

“For the females, it’s 2004 to 2010 and we’re allowed our three over-agers, which is actually our three 2004 kids.”

Boys team coach Derek Klassen said the first day of tryouts was good.

“Good tempo. It was good to see a lot of the kids. Obviously, a lot of us have been around them for…