GOJHL Limiting 20-Year-Olds
Gus Ford was one of Chatham’s 9 overage players this season – Photo by Kelsey Vermeersch/ CKSN.ca
Recognizing the GOJHL exists as a developmental league, GOJHL members voted to limit a team’s 20-year-old players to 9 cards. Should a team sign an OHL player, they will count as two of these overage cards. OHL players will count as only one card if they are an alumni, and returning to, the GOJHL.
This season, the Chatham Maroons would have sat at the upper limit of this new rule, with 9 20-year-old players rostered. The graduating group, which included Gus Ford, Ryan Fraser, Connor MacKinnon, Ian Faubert, Mark Fratancargeli, Declan Conway, Michael Levesque, Parker Butler, and Chris Corgan, were still not enough to get the Chatham Maroons through to the GOJHL Western Conference Final.
The remaining two teams in the GOJHL Western Conference, the London Nationals, and Leamington Flyers, have 9 and 10, 1995 born players respectively.
One team, the three time reigning Sutherland Cup champion Caledonia Corvairs stand to be the most impacted by the rule, who have 18 1995 born players, several of whom with OHL experience last season, adding to what would be their total under the new rule.