Last week I wrote a piece on Tom Frye, who honed his playing skills in the Western Ontario Junior Hockey League (now part of the GOJHL). At the time Tom was competing in the “Western Junior B,” Port Huron, Michigan native Jamie Jones – with whom I played and later coached – was playing his junior hockey with the Detroit Jr. Red Wings in the North American Hockey League (NAHL). An excellent player with a natural goal-scorer’s touch who received much interest from Division I colleges for his services, after junior hockey Jamie pursued non-hockey endeavors. Like Tom, Jamie has had a highly successful career in business.
As Jamie reminded me, during his playing career the winners of the NAHL and the United States Hockey League (USHL) played for the national championship at the end of the season (this doesn’t happen anymore, as the Tier I Junior A USHL and the Tier II Junior A NAHL have distinct national championship tournaments). During Jamie’s tenure, the Jr. Wings – as well as the Compuware hockey club – represented the NAHL and competed with USHL teams for the national championship at season’s end.
Interestingly enough, during the preseason the Jr. Wings would play several Western Junior B teams, with Tom’s Sarnia Ransom Bees being one of those teams (the Jr. Wings also played Chatham and Windsor). In describing how the leagues matched up, Jamie told me things were “pretty even” between the Jr. Wings and their Western Junior B counterparts. Although this time period is in the rear-view mirror, it nonetheless echoes to a large extent my sentiments when viewing and assessing the present-day quality of these leagues: the NAHL and GOJHL are very similar, and because of its Tier I status the USHL clubs tend to be somewhat deeper.
As an aside, the comparability of these leagues is complimentary to all three of them, and further shows the long history of their quality: (1) In 1987-88, the head coach of Compuware was Andy Weidenbach (long-time head coach at Cranbrook High School and skating coach for the professional Red Wings), and the head coach of the Rochester Monarchs, the eventual national champion from the USHL, was Kevin Constantine (future NHL head coach); (2) the leading forward for the Jr. Wings was Denny Felsner (future player at University of Michigan and the St. Louis Blues; some of you Port Huron-ites may remember Brian Felsner from his Port Huron Flags days, who is Denny’s brother and was a very good player in his own right); and (3) the NHL alumni from the Western Junior B I mentioned in my prior post profiling Tom. (3) After the 1987-88 season, the premier player for Compuware was Pro Hockey Hall-of-Famer Eric Lindros (some of you may have heard of him!).
Thank you for these helpful insights Jonesy!