Lack of players forces Penbay Mariners to fold Junior hockey team debuted in ’03

The Brewer-based Penbay Mariners, who went 28-12-3 as a first-year Junior hockey independent a year ago, ran out of players and folded last month.

The Mariners were playing in the Continental Hockey Association this season but general manager Lou Janicki said he had to shut the team down after five players didn’t show up for a four-game CHA trip to Philadelphia on Thanksgiving weekend, leaving them with just seven skaters and two goalies.

Janicki said the team was 2-10-2 overall, 1-6-1 in league play.

“We had a meeting on the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend and we realized we couldn’t hold it together,” said Janicki. “We won’t ever have Junior hockey here again.”

Junior hockey is for players 15-20 years of age who seek a situation more conducive to their development than high school hockey. High school teams play limited schedules. Maine high school teams are allowed to play only 20 countable games.

Penbay players had to pay $4,000 to play an entire season.

Janicki said there were a lot of reasons behind the low numbers.

“We couldn’t get the same commitment from the players that we received last year. Last year, we had players who were looking to move on the college level. So their commitment was extremely strong,” said Janicki who added that this year’s players weren’t as driven to play at the college level.

“We rostered 25 players last year and we only lost six. This year we rostered 38 but they’ve come and gone,” said Janicki. “Some guys couldn’t play at this level and we had a lot of kids from the University of Maine and Husson College who were only interested in playing on a part-time basis. We had a lot of interest [from the players] for the home games but we had trouble getting kids for road games due to school conflicts.”

The closest road games were Exeter, N.H. and Staten Island, N.Y.

Seven players from last year’s team are playing in Exeter this season, he said.

He also said Junior hockey has “exploded” and the significant increase in the number of teams has significantly reduced the player pool.

“Junior hockey grew by 50 percent. The competition for players is much greater,” said Janicki who pointed out that several established Junior hockey teams have added developmental teams to serve as feeder programs.

Janicki said he was probably “too optimistic” after last year.

“I thought it would grow but it didn’t happen. Two-thirds of the kids last year weren’t from this area and it was more difficult to recruit kids from out of state this year.

“I don’t think we did anything bad here. Junior hockey is very intense and very difficult. You need the majority of your kids to be from the local area in order for it to succeed and there aren’t enough kids here,” said Janicki.