After a hiatus from the Mississippi Valley Club Hockey Association, Edwardsville hockey’s varsity team rejoins the league.
Following a fifth consecutive conference title in 2016, the varsity team made the switch to play for the Mid-States Club Hockey Association at the start of the 2017 season, with the top junior varsity team instead playing in the MVCHA league.
But after seven years, the team has decided to switch back to MVCHA for several reasons.
“We wanted to play our traditional rivals like O’Fallon, Granite City and Alton. We’re going to get a chance to do that and we’re excited about that,” coach Jason Walker said to the Intelligencer.
Making the switch allows the Tigers to continue playing exhibition matches against Mid-States teams, along with the standard conference games.
“The big thing for us is that we wanted to do both,” said Walker. “We tried to figure out how to have a hybrid schedule so we [could] play the traditional Southwestern conference and play our traditional rivals around here, and we wanted to still play Missouri teams.”
Having the varsity team play both MVCHA and Mid-States games could benefit the varsity team while playing at higher levels.
“We’ve played at a national level and most of the teams that play at a national level have a bigger schedule than us,” Walker said. “It’s just a way for us to play more games and like I said, play more teams at home and play hard teams away.”
The team is able to add more players to their roster, too. With the Mid-States roster, the team was only able to have 20 players on the roster. With a new MVCHA roster, the team can have up to 30 players on varsity.
“[The change] definitely allows the younger guys to get some experience on varsity,” junior Dean Schlarman said.
The switch could potentially create an opportunity for newer players and aid their growth by giving them experience playing varsity.
“It allows us to have more flexibility and carry more players,” said Walker. “More players are going to be able to play at the varsity level which is good.”
The hockey team will play all nine Mid-States exhibition games on Friday nights through January and the profits will be donated to Hockey Fights Cancer, an organization founded by the NHL in support of cancer patients and their families.
Despite the changes to the schedule and roster, this season is a highly anticipated one for the Tigers.
“I think we’re going to be one of the better teams in the league. The last six years we’ve played in that league we’ve won it, so we have extremely high expectations,” said Walker.
The Tigers will play their first game of the season against Belleville on Nov. 9 at 8:30 p.m., at the R.P. Lumber Center.
