Highlights
- 1978 – The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Queens Own Cameron Highlanders, 402 Air Squadron Bears, Fort Garry Horse, members of the local DND military reserve units, got together for some exhibition games.
- 1979 – Early January saw a decision to make it official, and begun to play within the rules of a League. The Winnipeg Reserves Hockey Association was born.
- 1981 – The addition of the 735 Communication Regiment and games with the Winnipeg based 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry at the time, made for a good base of what it took to organize a league.
- 1992 – After many years as a Military League with some name changes (Canadian Forces Reserve Hockey League, Winnipeg Hockey League) along with some new rules, we became the Winnipeg Central Hockey League.
- 2002 – There was also a brief amalgamation with the River City Hockey League. Who had operated for approximately 4 years. We were then known as the River City Central Hockey League. This partnership ended the following season and reverted back to Winnipeg Central Hockey League.
- 2008 – This season saw us starting our first Spring League, that ran until 2011.
- 2023 – After a 12 year absence we brought back our Spring League. Transcona East End was our home base from April to end of June.
- 2023/24 – Our 45th season is now upon us, and we have seen some great teams join our League, a number of them are still here to this day. Currently the 402 Bears lead the League with the most Championships at 7.
The WCHL endeavors to offers, everything that an adult hockey League needs.
- Non-contact, slap shot League
- Hosted over 100 teams and thousands of players
- Affiliation with the CARHA (carhahockey.ca) allows us to offer teams some basic insurance coverage.
- Season starts on October 2, 2023 and runs to end of February, with playoffs in March.
- Playoffs are 2 best of 3 series and final best of 5 series. To a maximum of 11 games.
- Individual prizes & awards. (league finalists)
- Something that is unique to our League, is the fact that we play using ice across the City. Teams have an opportunity, to book ice in their neighborhood.
- We also provide ice for teams that do not own ice contracts.
- Over the years we have managed to have no games, starting later than 10:15 pm.
- We try to keep everyone competitive with each other, by seeding teams in proper caliber.
