The puck was dropped on the Capital Region Junior Hockey League’s inaugural season this past weekend as the St. Malo Warriors, who are celebrating their 25th season, defeated the Selkirk Fishermen 5-3.

The CRJHL was created when the Warriors, Fishermen, Lundar Falcons, North Winnipeg Satelites and Arborg Ice Dawgs left the Keystone Junior Hockey League.

“It’s very unfortunate,” said St. Malo head coach & general manager Ralph Collette. “A lot of our hockey players work or go to college or school so we needed to make a decision on being more of a local league. We want to be approximately an hour-and-a-half outside of Winnipeg. The think it’s going to be an advantage for drawing players and I think we’ve done that already because our training camp numbers were quite a bit higher and we’re very pleased.”

The Peguis Juniors, OCN Storm, Cross Lake Islanders, Norway House North Stars and Fisher River Hawks were the other five teams who made up the KJHL.

“It was a very tough decision because we have a lot of history and a lot of kids that never experienced going up north,” Collette said. “It was really fun for them to see what it was all about, living up north. They treated us like gold and we really enjoyed it but it came a time that the travel was just too much. Coming home from road trips at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. and kids having to go to school or go to work – it was just not viable anymore.”

Collette says the CRJHL will be entertaining.

“We know the five teams that we do have will be very, very competitive. In the exhibition season the scores were relatively quite close. We expect it’s going to be a battle all the way to the playoffs. Selkirk is always a pretty good powerhouse team. They have a pretty big draw and they do a pretty good with their team. It’s a 100-year-old franchise. They’re always tough. North Winnipeg is always a tough hockey club for sure. Lundar is on it’s way up and so is Arborg.”

“We want to put up a good show this year and really show our calibre which we always know has been really, really good,” added the Warriors bench boss. “We want to showcase it a little bit more and hopefully next year we have possibly two new expansion teams.”