Cape Breton community named Kraft Hockeyville finalist

The Canada Games Complex would become the home of girls hockey on Cape Breton Island if Sydney becomes Kraft Hockeyville in 2022.

The final four communities in the contest were recently announced.

Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu in Quebec, Douro-Dummer in Ontario, Princeton in British Columbia and Sydney, Nova Scotia.

The winning community will be awarded $250,000 for arena upgrades and an NHL preseason game.

The Cape Breton Blizzard Female Hockey Association are the ones working hard to make Sydney the 2022 winner of Kraft Hockeyville.

The Blizzard are based in Cape Breton Regional Municipality but don't have a home arena.

Christina Lamey, President of the Cape Breton Blizzard Female Hockey Association says if they win Kraft Hockeyville, the Canada Games Complex would go under renovations and become the first arena in Canada to be filled with girls hockey teams.

"The Cape Breton Blizzard Female Hockey Association was founded in 2020 and we have doubled in size in the last two years so we have outgrown the space that's available for us locally.

It's a historic and systemic discrimination issue where ice times in arenas is given to those who had precedence in it.

We're as big as any local minor hockey association but we have no hours of ice time in any local arenas."

Winning this contest would help with the issue and reopen the Canada Games Complex which hasn't had ice on since the beginning of the pandemic.

Voting for Kraft Hockeyville starts at 10 a.m. Atlantic on May 6th.