It’s hockey time again in the CIHL - despite scheduling delays and Moose loss. The new season starts in Smithers on Friday, Oct. 5.

The Central Interior Men’s AA Senior Hockey League is finally poised, after some significant delays, to launch its 2007-08 regular season with a game between the Smithers Steelheads and last year’s new team, the Hazelton Wolverines in the Smithers Arena on Friday, October 5. The league will open competition on two other fronts on Saturday, October 6, when the Williams Lake Stampeders, last year’s regular season title winners, will travel to 100 Mile House to take on their nearest local east division rival, the Bears – and in Houston where the Steelheads will take on its local rival, the Houston Luckies. The Central Interior Hockey League executive committee apologizes to all teams and fans for the lengthy delay in producing a final schedule for the new season. The delay was the result of a number of circumstances topped off by the late decision by the Mackenzie Moose organization to pull out of league play for this season. The Moose, despite best efforts, were unable to guarantee their ability to ice a competitive team for the season. Rich Clair of the Terrace River Kings stepped into the breach to work on reformatting the schedule, but found himself essentially starting from scratch. There may be an occasional “hiccup” in the schedule yet, but individual clubs will sort these out between the teams. The CIHL website will make every effort to ensure that information is passed along as soon as any additional changes are known. The schedule arrived at sees the Houston Luckies move, reluctantly, into the east division for this season, to be discussed at the 2008 annual meeting. Some teams, like the CIHL playoff champions and two-time Coy Cup winners, the Kitimat Ice Demons will not play their first games of the season until October 20, when they will host the Houston Luckies for a pair of games, before heading off to Williams Lake, the following weekend for two games against the Stampeders. Smithers will be playing its fourth game in Terrace on the Ice Demons’ opening night while the Williams Lake Stampeders will also be on the ice that same weekend for its fourth game. This means that it could be a few weeks before anyone can form a really good idea of divisional placings. But most of the slack in the schedule is expected to have been made up by mid-December. Check the schedule for individual clubs on team websites, or see the entire schedule on this CIHL site. The site will be updated weekly. The league will see additional changes this season, with a shootout being introduced to resolve ties in regular season games. The regular season will revert to 16 games, with each team playing eight home and eight away. All teams will have at least one cross-division set of games in its schedule. In addition, plans were made to change the playoff format, but this is being revisited in the light of the need to have playoffs completed in time for the Coy Cup, which is scheduled to drop the puck in Terrace on March 4, 2008. The league will announce a consensus decision on the playoff format in the next few days...