This year's Yukon Native Hockey Tournament will be open to pro players

Competition could be a little more fierce this year at one of Yukon's biggest annual hockey tournaments.

Organizers of the Kilrich Yukon Native Hockey tournament, which happens in March, have announced some rule changes for this year, including opening the A division — the most competitive division — to professional or formerly professional players. In the past, pro players have been barred from competing.

Karee Vallevand, who's on the board of the Yukon First Nations Hockey Association, says that restriction was limiting the number of players and teams who enter the A division.

"The board decided after some consultation, let's just open it up," said Vallevand.

"It's so competitive, there's so many amazing players across Canada, Indigenous players, and non[-Indigenous]. So it would be great to get that level of play up here."

Mike Tuton, another board member, says he doesn't think allowing professional players will mean fewer opportunities for local players to compete.

"I mean, it's fair across the board to go and build a high-quality team," he said.

Vallevand and Tuton said it will also mean that organizers will not have to deal with protests lodged by teams about players on other teams. Vallevand said at last year's tournament, there were four formal protests.

"It was all around former professional players. And it's just, it's so hard to track them," she said.

Also this year, there are new rules for teams in the women's division, which Tuton says is "growing like wildfire."

Teams in that division will now only be allowed to have two non-Indigenous players on their rosters. Before now, each women's team was only required to have at least six Indigenous players, and the rest could be non-Indigenous.

Professional or formerly professional players are still not allowed in the women's division.

Vallevand says the women's division has become a "huge draw" in the tournament.

"We had six teams last year in the women's division and we had to turn one team away because we just couldn't we couldn't fit them in — which is unfortunate."

When it comes to gender inclusion in the women's division, Tuton say the rules are still a "work in progress."

"It's a pretty delicate issue and we didn't want to come in and enforce our own rules, we really want to hear back from, you know, other tournaments, other leagues, what are they doing? How are they doing to address this? What do the players want?" Tuton said.

"Because we just don't want to get it wrong."

Vallevand says the rule now is that "any person that lives as a female and identifies as a female are eligible to play in the women's division."

"We will look at it in a case-by-case basis and go from there. We don't want to exclude anybody. That's our bottom line," she said.

Tournament registration opens on Feb. 2, and the event happens March 26 to 29, in Whitehorse.