After two seasons of junior B hockey success, the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation (PBCN) Selects will not resume play for the coming season.
The league the Selects played in, the Keystone Junior Hockey League (KJHL), announced their schedule Sept. 13, featuring five teams and not including either the Selects or the Waywayseecappo Wild - both teams played last season. No announcements about the Selects’ future have been made publicly, but no dates for a team training camp have been made, no ice has been booked for possible training, practices or games for the team this season in either Flin Flon or Creighton and staff members and volunteers have not been contacted for the coming year.
The team’s social media channels have also changed - the team’s Facebook page has been rebranded into a North American hockey news page. All posts made on the page relating to the Selects remain on the page as of press time, but the group has been renamed. The team’s official Twitter page, set up when the squad began play in 2022, is still up but is not active - it has not seen any activity since June.
In a statement issued earlier this week, the KJHL announced officially that both the Selects and the Wild would not be playing this season, calling their absences a one-year leave of absence and saying that both teams will be back next season.
"Due to unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances, the Waywayseecappo Wild and the PBCN Selects will be taking a leave of absence for one year and will be back next season," reads the KJHL statement.
"Business will go on as usual and the KJHL will operate with five teams - the OCN Storm, Peguis Juniors, NCN Flames, Norway House North Stars and Cross Lake Islanders."
Requests for comment to PBCN by The Reminder have not been answered.
Playing out of the Whitney Forum and representing the eight PBCN communities, the Selects had winning records in both of their seasons, going 19-11-0-4 in their inaugural season en route to a semifinal finish. Last year, the Selects had a 26-10-0-0 record and made it to the Keystone Cup final, where the club lost to eventual league champions Peguis in a four-game sweep.
The Selects also brought the Central Canada Cup to the Whitney Forum last spring, the first large-scale junior hockey tournament held in Flin Flon since the 2001 RBC Cup. There, the Selects reached the semifinals before losing 4-1 to the eventual champions, Alberta’s St. Paul Canadiens.
Two of the Selects’ biggest organisational forces were former Denare Beach PBCN band councillor Marvin “Chuck” Morin and head coach and general manager Gatlin Church. Morin was a team governor and a band liaison for the Selects, while Church, the team’s inaugural coach, signed a one-year contract in the summer of 2023 with the team with an option for a second year. Morin was defeated in PBCN’s elections last spring, while Church has left the team and taken on a new role as the general manager of the junior A Kenora Islanders in northern Ontario’s SIJHL. When reached for comment, Church confirmed that he had relocated to Kenora for the new job and no longer had any employment or ties to the Selects.
According to the KJHL's website, Church has a one-year suspension from the league - the website lists “abuse, harassment, maltreatment along with conduct detrimental to the KJHL” as the reason for the suspension.
Several of the team’s potential returnees have left for other teams. Top scorer and team MVP Embry Roberts has joined the Prince Albert Timberjaks of Saskatchewan’s PJHL, joining former Selects players Jase Martin and Leon Natomagan. Cranberry Portage forward Harlan Jacobson is now with the Pacific Junior Hockey League’s North Vancouver Wolf Pack.
