The B.C. Hockey Conference (BCHC) will make its debut this September and Cloverdale HC’s former general manager will be at the helm for one of the teams. Brien Gemmell—former GM for Cloverdale’s PJHL expansion franchise—will be the head coach and assistant GM for the Richmond Sockeyes for the 2026-27 BCHC campaign. The BCHC is B.C. Hockey’s attempt to bring a Hockey Canada-sanctioned Junior A league back to the province after the BCHL left sanctioned hockey and went out on their own in 2023. Gemmell told
the Cloverdale Reporter he’s excited to be getting back behind the bench, but also excited for the prospect of leading the Sockeyes into a new era as a Junior A hockey team. “I wanted to get back behind the bench and this opportunity arose,” said Gemmell, the longtime athletic director at Cloverdale’s Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School. “I had a great time in Cloverdale and I’m proud of what I could help the team accomplish there.” (He guided the club to a very respectable 24-18-0-2 regular
season record—good for 5th place. He also oversaw the club win their very first playoff series in franchise history.) He said he’s looking forward to the challenges the new league will bring. “It’s going to be really interesting,” Gemmell noted. “I think this league is going to be a lot better than people think it’ll be, initially, right out of the gate.” He said the teams from the PJHL and KIJHL that have all moved up to the BCHC are working really hard to put
a competitive product on the ice for Game 1 of the new season. The BCHC will have 22 teams made up of former Junior B teams from the PJHL and KIJHL. While the PJHL will continue as an eight team Junior B league with its remaining teams—including Cloverdale HC—the KIJHL is now a defunct league. After the BCHC formed, the remaining eight teams in KIJHL left at the end of March to form the independent WIJHL. That league is has since added two expansion teams.
“The hopes are that we can—somewhere down the line, in a few years—be on par with what the old BCHL used to be,” Gemmell explained. “That’s not to say the BCHL is bad, they’re just not sanctioned hockey under Hockey Canada. We want to be the top sanctioned hockey league in B.C. That’s the goal.” He said the whole league has the same focus. “How do we become the best league in B.C?” He thinks that will happen when teams and the league put the
right people in the right seats. “We’ve set up a network of scouts across Western Canada,” Gemmell revealed. “We’ve set up a network of scouts in B.C. We’re just basically building a program that represents what Junior A hockey should look like. We’re not there quite yet, but we’re getting there.” He said keeping a handle on what’s needed can be tough sometimes because junior hockey is always changing. “It evolves—in terms of what the needs are of the kids, in terms of what the
needs are of the program,” he explained. “We’re a part of the Western Canadian development model. So, it needs to be aligned with the WHL. And that’s a big deal now because we want to be a development league for players going to the Western League—now especially with the changes to NCAA (eligibility).” Gemmell noted several things about the league are still taking shape, including how both the schedule will look and how travel will look—whether it’s balanced or not, whether they’d have regular bus
travel to different teams’ barns in the Interior for a series of road games, or whether they’ll play a “showcase” schedule. (Showcases, pioneered by the NAHL, are events where a bunch of teams will play out of one venue over a weekend, playing up to 4 different league games against different teams at one location.) “I don’t know what that will look like yet,” he added. “All I know is there’ll be some sort of interlock where we will travel up and teams will travel
down. I don’t know if we’ll see every team every year, or if it will be alternating, or something else. I’m not sure how that’s going to look.” He said he won’t be involved in that decision making. “That’ll be up to the board of governors to decide on how that will work.” For more info on the BCHC, visit bchchockey.ca. For more info on Cloverdale HC and the PJHL, visit cloverdalehc.com and pjhl.net. BCHC TEAMS (Junior A) Former league noted after team name. K:
Kootenay International Junior Hockey League, P: Pacific Junior Hockey League, E: expansion team. Interior Division Kamloops Storm (K) Merritt Centennials (K) Osoyoos Coyotes (K) Princeton Posse (K) Quesnel River Rush (K) Revelstoke Grizzlies (K) Summerland Jets (E) Williams Lake Mustangs (K) Kootenay Division Beaver Valley Nitehawks (K) Columbia Valley Rockies (K) Fernie Ghostriders (K) Grand Forks Border Bruins (K) Kimberley Dynamiters (K) Nelson Leafs (K) Mainland Division Burnaby Steelers (P) Chilliwack Jets (P) Coastal Tsunami (P) Delta Ice Hawks (P) Langley Trappers (P) Port Coquitlam
Trailblazers (P) Richmond Sockeyes (P) Ridge Meadows Flames (P) PJHL TEAMS (Junior B) White Rock Whalers Surrey Knights Mission City Outlaws Abbotsford Pilots Cloverdale HC Port Moody Panthers North Vancouver Wolf Pack Aldergrove Ironmen
Brien Gemmell, Cloverdale HC, Richmond Sockeyes, BCHC, B.C. Hockey Conference, Junior A, PJHL, KIJHL, WIJHL, Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School