GRANBY, Québec - The seven teams of the Ligue nord-américaine de hockey will play 42 games in 2010-2011, two less than last season, and each club will meet six times.

This is one of the few announcements that were made following the LNAH’s annual meeting in Rivière-du-Loup.   

The governors voted to abolish the round-robin tournament, which stood for the playoffs’ first round last season. The round-robin tournament was clearly a non-winner among owners and, most of all, fans.

Again, each and every team will make the playoffs. But next season, the regular season champion will rest during the first round while the other six clubs will battle in a best-of-five matchups (two vs. seven, three vs. six, four vs. five). Semi-finals and the final series will be best of seven.

Finally, the salary cap, which was CA$7,000 per game last season, will “slightly decrease”, as commissioner Michel Godin said.

The first game of the 2010-2011 season will take place in Saint-Georges on September 30^th when Futura Cup champion CRS Express will battle the Sherbrooke Saint-François, the league finalist team.

NOTES: Sherbrooke’s Jean-François Boutin (34 goals and 80 points in 43 games) was named LNAH’s most valuable player. Éric Dandenault, also from Sherbrooke, received the coach of the year award… Christian Deschênes, who played in Thetford Mines last season and who is the general manager of the new Sorel-Tracy team, wants to have as many players as possible from the Sorel-Tracy region in the line-up. And believe it or not, he made a deal to acquire himself! We saw some players-coaches before but we didn’t see too many player-GM… The Rivière-du-Loup and the Saguenay teams both have new ownership. Rivière-du-Loup dropped the name CIMT and will call itself 3L next season… The LNAH’s draft will be held in Trois-Rivières on June 19^th.     

Contact Michel.Tasse@prohockeynews.com