Due to circumstances beyond their control, the Sarnia Silver Stick committee has made the difficult decision to cancel this year's finals, set for February 25-27.
The event was originally scheduled for January 13-15, but was postponed a week prior due to COVID restrictions.
Tournament Director Mark Colbran said many issues surfaced with the new dates, supplied by Alliance Hockey, including a lack of experienced volunteers and qualified officials, as well as concerns over ice availability.
He said the decision was not made lightly, and said they did everything they could to try and make something work.
"There's a referee shortage, and it's huge," said Colbran. "Last year, the Bluewater Referees Association had 115 referees and this year they're down to 45. The Bluewater Referees could only, possibly, cover 70 per cent of the games at full capacity, otherwise we were going to have to go down from a three man to a two man system. That's just not conducive to what Silver Stick is supposed to be. With rescheduling the event, we were also forced to work around already permitted ice rentals."
Colbran said they explored other dates as well.
"Originally, we were going to try for April but then we ran into hotel issues where all of the local hotels were booked from March 1 right until the end of April," he said.
Colbran said all tournament entry fees, and deposits for accommodations will be refunded.
He's hopeful they can bring the event back in 2023, bigger and better than ever.
Impacted divisions include the boys U-11 'A' and 'AAA', U-13 'A' and 'AA', U-15 'A' and 'AA', and U-18 'AAA', although some have made the decision to go to Newmarket and play in the tournament there.
The finals in Sarnia, Mooretown and Forest as well as regionals in Alvinston, Lambton Shores, Petrolia, and Watford were all cancelled in 2020-21 due to the COVID pandemic.
At that time, Tourism Sarnia-Lambton estimated the postponement represented a loss of more than $5 million dollars for the local economy.