The Carillon Senior Hockey League has suspended the season.

President Stacey Neufeld says it was a difficult decision for the executive team but it was a decision that had to be made.

CSHL President Stacey Neufeld"With COVID and all of the restrictions and needing to be double vaxxed, some teams are going to have issues with players that didn't want to get double vaxxed and we weren't going to run a three-team league this year. We have done that in the past and guys don't want to be playing each other 10 times each and so we made the decision as an executive to suspend this season for this year and hopefully be up and running next year."

Neufeld says they may have been able to get four teams committed to playing this year but they didn’t want to be routinely cancelling games because people couldn’t make it or have teams that could only show up with nine skaters.

"There were teams that were confirmed that said, 'we don't want to be running a short league.' Some of them were going to apply with the South East League for the season. We knew that it was a risk we were taking if we would shut ours down, they might go to the southeast and stay there because once they commit to a place to play, that is where they stay, that type of thing."

The South Eastern Manitoba Hockey League has teams in Morden, Winkler, Carman, Notre Dame, Altona, Warren and Portage.