As the tide continues to shift throughout junior hockey, the Western Hockey League is setting into motion a couple of changes to benefit its players.
According to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman, the WHL is set to make two drastic changes which would impact the quality of life for players in the league — extending the duration of the season and altering policies around air travel.
"You have to make choices now that will benefit your players, and these are two big ones by the WHL that they are trying to use to show they can make themselves an even better developmental league," Friedman said of the changes on the Saturday Headlines segment on Hockey Night in Canada.
Firstly, in order to ease the burden of the WHL's 68-game regular season, the league is adding a week to the calendar, allowing more space between games while retaining the number of games played.
In particular, the league wants to target weekday games, allowing for more of the WHL calendar to take place on weekends.
"So that will decompress things. Same amount of games over seven more days," Friedman explained. "It will decrease the number of games during the weekdays, especially. That's one thing they're gonna do, they're gonna be more focused on rest and recovery."
The bigger order of business, perhaps, is that the league will now allow air travel under certain circumstances.
Because of how spread out the teams are in the league — spanning from Victoria, B.C., in the west to Brandon, Man., in the east, and Prince George, B.C., in the north to Portland, Ore., in the south — travel times by chartered bus could last up to 23 hours.
In particular, the league wanted to target the long trips over the Rockies, which all teams have to take at least once a year.
"They are going to allow air travel in certain situations," Friedman said. "Basically, the way it's gonna go is they're going to really try to ease the burden for that one big trip each team makes over the Rockies every year. Going back and forth, they're opening it up to air travel."
As it stands, the CHL does allow teams to fly to games during championship series, but competitive balance forces teams to use buses for regular-season showdowns.
The NCAA, where many top players are flocking to for their major junior hockey, has no such restrictions around air travel, and top teams frequently fly for games, particularly over longer distances.
"This is a different world now, you have to show players that you're willing to go the extra mile so they can develop and go to the next level — which is what all the players want," Friedman said.
