As some may be aware, Ice Hockey Victoria conducted a number of meetings over a number of months with club representatives last year in an effort to solve a number of challenges the sport faced. After these consultations, a restructure of the Winter season was tabled by the executive using the feedback gathered at these meetings. As such, Winter will run with 4 Divisions with Premier League (formally Premier A) becoming the only checking division.

The divisions will be as follows:

Premier League
Senior A
Senior B
Senior C

The removal of checking from the 2nd tier is in line with IIHF trends including countries such as Canada and USA who often only have checking at the top levels. Further to this, it provides a more progressive and simpler pathway for players and adds higher levels for our growing women’s membership to compete in.

A FAQ has been published here answer further questions and as always, the executive is open to positive and constructive feedback with their details found on the website under the Governance section.

The Melbourne Glaciers are currently training to prepare for their first games of the new-format Australian Junior Ice Hockey League. The schedule was released yesterday.

In 2016, Ice Hockey Australia announced changes to the AJIHL which allowed the league to expand into 2 additional states and 1 territory. Joining the regular season competition were the Brisbane Blitz, Adelaide Generals and Canberra Junior Brave. The previous year, these 3 teams existed in a AJIHL Tier 2 tournament, where the winner would be awarded the wildcard spot directly into the AJIHL playoffs. This season, these teams now enter the main regular season competition for the first time.

To accommodate the growth into more cities within Australia, the League travel format was divided into a multiple weekend tournament format and the league taking on a conference structure.

The Melbourne Glaciers will continue to represent Victorian junior talent in the AJIHL with the Melbourne Whalers not taking part in this season. In Western Australia, the same thing has taken place where the Perth Sharks will be the only team to compete in the AJIHL this season and the Perth Pelicans will also not take part this year.

With all of our Victorian talent now consolidated into a single team, we hope that this year will be the year that the AJIHL Champions Trophy will be brought back to Victoria for the first time.

The Glaciers begin by meeting the Adelaide Generals in Cockburn Ice Arena on the 26th of January @3pm.

Schedule listed below:

January 26th

*times in ( AWST )

Game 7
@3:00pm – Adelaide Generals vs Melbourne Glaciers (Cockburn Ice Arena)

January 27th

Game 8
@8:00am – Melbourne Glaciers vs Perth Sharks (Cockburn Ice Arena)

Game 9
@6:15pm – Perth Sharks vs Adelaide Generals (Cockburn Ice Arena)

January 28th

Game 10
@8:00am – Adelaide Generals vs Melbourne Glaciers (Cockburn Ice Arena)

Game 11
@4:45pm – Melbourne Glaciers vs Perth Sharks (Xtreme Ice Arena)

January 28th

Game 12
@7:00am – Perth Sharks vs Adelaide Generals (Perth Ice Arena)

Image: Richard Costello