Newmarket will once again have an Ontario Junior Hockey League (OJHL) team after a six-year absence.
After hosting games in the town, the Toronto Junior A Canadiens formally announced June 29 that it will make the move to Newmarket for the 2025-26 season. The team will play out of the Ray Twinney Recreation Complex when the season starts in September.
President and general manager Rick Varone once played in the OJHL in Newmarket and said the community supported hockey well then.
“I just feel like the town deserves a Junior A team. The Ray Twinney Recreation Complex deserves a junior A team," he said. "We felt this was the right time for our organization.”
The team has been gauging the move for several months, playing two games in Newmarket to test the waters, once in November 2024 and another in January. Varone has said the move was being considered in hopes of getting more attendance to the games.
The OJHL is a high-level junior hockey team with players developed and feeding into leagues like the NCAA and Ontario Hockey League.
The OJHL also includes the Collingwood Blues, the Stouffville Spirit, the King Rebellion and the Aurora Tigers.
Newmarket lost its OJHL team, the Hurricanes, in 2019 after 31 years in the community. That team moved to Milton, with owners saying it did not garner enough support in the town at the time.
Varone said the games in Newmarket last season went well, with more than 600 people attending each game. He said ownership hopes that, between the absence of Junior A and all the community outreach they will be doing, the community will support the new team well.
“We really want to be part of this community,” he said. “We’re hoping the things we do in the community are going to help the town realize that we want to be part of it, and we’re hoping they want to be part of us.”
The team said it would release more details about its name, logo, schedule updates and community engagement opportunities in the coming weeks.
Varone said there is plenty of work ahead, including renovations for dressing rooms at the Ray Twinney Recreation Complex. He further said they expect to play home games at the arena around 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays.
“I’m hoping that we can bring Junior A hockey to what it once was in Newmarket,” he said. “We can do something special here.”