{"id":23447,"date":"2019-04-04T19:41:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23447"},"modified":"2019-04-04T19:41:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:41:23","slug":"battle-of-yonge-street-over-after-sale-of-hurricanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/battle-of-yonge-street-over-after-sale-of-hurricanes\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of Yonge Street over after sale of Hurricanes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Battle of Yonge Street is\nover, yet in this fight there is no winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After more than forty years\nservicing the Newmarket area with high-level junior hockey, the Hurricanes have\npacked up and moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than two days after the\nHurricanes lost game seven of their round two OJHL playoff series to the\nMarkham Royals, co-owner Anthony Cella announced the sale of the franchise to\nbuyers in Milton, where the team will take on the name of the Milton Menace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sad day when a storied\nfranchise like the Newmarket Hurricanes pack up and leave,\u201d said Matt Milne, a\nformer assistant coach with the Aurora Tigers and player with the Hurricanes.\n\u201cMany years ago the Hurricanes meant something to the residents of Newmarket\u2026It\nwas the place to play and it used to be the thing to do on Thursday nights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent incarnation of the\nNewmarket program began in 1987, aptly named the \u201887s\u2019 before taking on the\nHurricanes moniker in 1997. Yet the Aurora-Newmarket rivalry dates back all the\nway to 1975, when the Seneca Flyers moved to Newmarket in the Ontario\nProvincial Junior Hockey League, of which the Tigers were members since its\nfounding three years prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spurred on by their geographical\nproximity, the rivalry was already embedded between the two squads thanks to\nthe 1974 playoffs, when the Tigers bested the Flyers in six games in the OPJHL\nquarterfinal series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until 1985, the Flyers\npenultimate year of existence, when the two rivals met again in the postseason,\nwhere the Aurora team once again came out on top four games to three in the\nleague\u2019s semifinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a time of unease and\nturmoil among Ontario junior hockey leagues, some shakeups led the Newmarket\nfranchise to a one-year hiatus before returning to six seasons of junior B as\nthe 87s. They rejoined the junior A ranks in 1993-94, and in poetic\ncircumstance, were victorious over the Tigers in their first season as the\nHurricanes in the 1998 postseason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2000\u2019s era saw a postseason\nrivalry akin to that of the NHL\u2019s Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators at\nthe time, in the height of the Battle of Yonge Street rivalry: Newmarket and\nAurora saw each other in the playoffs five of seven years between 2002-08, with\nthe Tigers coming out the victors in all five, including division championships\nin 2002, 2004, and 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the sides have only seen\nregular season action since 2008, the rivalry has continued to be deeply\nembedded among fans and players alike: though the Hurricanes\nattendance numbers sat at just over an average of 200 a night, the number crept\nup significantly with their rivals in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adversely, the Tigers average\nattendance in 2018-19 sat just under 270, good for fifth in the league among\nthose who provided numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Tigers organization is\nsaddened to hear (Newmarket Hurricanes) are leaving after thirty-one years of\nthe Battle of Yonge Street,\u201d added the Tigers organization in a tweet. \u201cWe will\nmiss our Thursday night and Sunday afternoon battles with you at Ray Twinney.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Tigers organization is saddened to hear\n(Newmarket Hurricanes) are leaving after thirty-one years of the Battle of\nYonge Street,\u201d added the Tigers organization in a tweet. \u201cWe will miss our\nThursday night and Sunday afternoon battles with you at Ray Twinney.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Battle of Yonge Street is over, yet in this fight there is no winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-66b","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 19:33:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}