The Prince Albert Northern Bears and Northern Junior Bears gather at the Art Hauser Centre in September 2018 to announce Prince Albert was the host for the 2020 Esso Cup. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Jeff D'Andrea

Esso Cup

‘Heartbreaking’: Esso Cup committee chair announces event is cancelled

Mar 13, 2020 | 1:11 PM

The Prince Albert Northern Bears were named hosts for the 2020 Esso Cup back on Sept. 28, 2018. Members of the Bears and the event committee flooded the Johnny Bower Lobby of the Art Hauser Centre to proudly announce they would be hosting and playing in the top female Midget AAA tournament in the country.

Nobody in that lobby could have foreseen the events would be cancelled outright due to a pandemic.

On Thursday basically every sporting season or event was either paused, postponed or cancelled due to concerns surrounding COVID-19. At 6:40 p.m., Hockey Canada laid down its ban hammer and cancelled all of its sanctioned events which includes the Esso Cup. Then 22 minutes later, the Saskatchewan Hockey Association announced all of its activities would be cancelled as well, meaning the Bears’ playoff journey ended before it even began.

“It was really crushing. With the two years of hard work that our committee has put into this event, being 38 days away to be hosting this great event, it was crushing,” Esso Cup hosting committee chair Robin Wildey said. “It’s disappointing but we all support Hockey Canada’s decision. It’s like what we said, the players’ safety and everybody’s involved in this event, it’s a top priority for all of us. In the end, we all understand it. We just have to move on, but it was heartbreaking.”

It was going to be the first Esso Cup in Prince Albert, since the tournament started in 2009. It was also just the third such tournament to be held in Saskatchewan.

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“We all had this common goal of making sure that the event in Prince Albert was going to be the most memorable, in recent memory,” Wildey said. “We want to make sure that the first national championship coming to be P.A. would be done right and done to the best of our ability.”

Wildey volunteered with the Bears for the past 10 years, before leaving the team to take over as the chairman of the hosting committee.

“It did mean a lot to me to grow the game in P.A. I’ll never stop talking about how the female game has grown over the years,” Wildey said. “The chance for us to showcase that to the people of P.A. and Saskatchewan was a really good motivator for us to get this thing going.”

Wildey said although the committee had cancellation insurance, there will still be a significant financial impact. Hotels were booked up solid as of last week, catering companies were all prepared, and restaurants were ready for all the new visitors.

As of the future for the Esso Cup and the possibility of coming back to Prince Albert, that’s still very much in the air.

The 2021 Esso Cup has already been scheduled to be in Lloydminster, Alta., but there is a possibility that could be bumped back a year for Prince Albert to hold the event.

That happened with the 2020 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship in Halifax and Truro, Nova Scotia. It was cancelled due to the coronavirus, but the event will go on in 2021.

Wildey said there will be a conference call with Hockey Canada on Monday to figure out the future of the Esso Cup, and its possibility of coming to Prince Albert after all.

“We’re hoping that we get another chance at this,” Wildey said.

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Jeff.dandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_paNOW