With thousands of young hockey players and hundreds of games, the largest hockey tournament in Northern Ontario is about to hit the ice this coming weekend in Sudbury.
It's the annual Sudbury Silver Stick hockey tournament, which kicks off at noon Thursday, at the Countryside No.1 arena with the U10A division Sudbury Wolves taking on the North Bay Trappers.
The action will be underway for the next four days and then it takes a break until the closing weekend in November when more players hit the ice on Nov. 27 with the final games happening on Sunday, Nov. 30.
Tournament director Peter Michelutti said it makes this November likely the most exciting month of hockey in the city so far this year. He was presiding at a kickoff luncheon for the tournament held in Sudbury on Tuesday.
"This is so important for Sudbury,” Michelutti said. “There are 4,400 hotel rooms that are rented out over two weekends. The restaurants are just jam packed. The city tells me it's about $11 million of tourism revenue coming into the city over these two weekends," said Michelutti.
Along with the economic boost, Michelutti said the winners at the Sudbury Silver Stick get the opportunity to advance to higher levels of hockey in each age group across North America, as other Silver Stick tournaments are being played across Canada and in many U.S. cities.
In Sudbury, the games will be played Nov. 13-16 and Nov. 27-30, with players ages ranging from U18AA all the way down to U10 A-division hockey. All the games are free to the public with full details available on the Sudbury Silver Stick 2025 website.
The website also includes game details at the local arenas, which include the Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex, the Carmichael Arena, the McClelland Community Centre and Arena in Copper Cliff, the T.M. Davies Community Centre and Arena in Walden, the George Armstrong Community Centre and Arena in Garson, the Toe Blake Memorial Arena in Coniston, and at the Chelmsford Community Centre and Arena.
Michelutti said the event is bringing in hundreds of players, coaches and family members from throughout Northern Ontario, central Ontario and the Ottawa Valley.
Teams for the tournament are visiting from Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, North Bay, Kapuskasing, Kirkland Lake, Hearst, Iroquois Falls, Temiskaming Shores, West Nipissing, Marathon, Barrie, Collingwood, Ottawa Valley, Whitby and Oshawa.
As much as he is excited for the new few weeks of hockey, Michelutti said Sudbury needs to step up with better facilities as other communities are itching and ready to step in and take over some of the tournament action if Sudbury cannot host more teams.
"Well, we're way behind the race with that,” he said. “Like we've got teams down south like Whitby running a tournament. They’ve got seven rink pads at one building. We’ve got Newmarket. They’ve got a three-pad rink, and two two-pad rinks. Toronto, it has four four-pad rinks," said Michelutti.
"We're behind the times; like North Bay has put in a bid to have some of our tournaments move to North Bay. Timmins has asked to have some of our tournaments moved to Timmins because we're really, we're back in the 1960s. We haven't kept up. We're not in the 2000s yet. We need the city to get us more rinks, because if not, we're going to lose our tournaments," said Michelutti.
When asked if he believed the city was moving in the right direction by building a new downtown ice rink and event centre, Michelutti said no.
"No, it's not going to help us. We need a three-pad rink built. If they would put a three-pad rink there instead of a big arena, they could put an 8000-seat arena there with two other pads on the side. It would be beautiful, or build another double rink somewhere else. That would help."
Len Gillis is a reporter at Sudbury.com.