So can you kind of talk about maybe it's a, it's a myth more than a fact, or, uh, what's your take on, uh, hockey in the north and its development of players?

So for me, one of the most important criteria to play here, Jacob, for us is you have to wanna be here.

And I don't wanna say we're, we're different or we're, we're less than people from southern Ontario, but the people in the north definitely have a northern Ontario mentality and, and sometimes it's, it's not easy to live here when it's minus 40 and, and you're from Windsor or, or St. Catherine's or, or wherever the case may be, where you've never seen that temperature.

So that, that's a bit of a challenge and, and a lot of times, uh, the players that we're, we're trying to recruit, they've already been away from home for three or four years, and that's one of the obstacles we face is they say, "Oh, we'd like to live closer.

We'd like to go to school closer to home." And you know what? I can understand that, and again, it goes back to, hey, I want somebody that wants to be here because somebody that isn't full in isn't gonna help us.

So, uh, for those reasons, I think if we can grab some kids from northern Ontario that are able to play in the league, and, and that's another big step, um, that's a benefit for us.

You know, in saying that, with this new NCAA rule, uh, the NCAA school's taking most of the major junior kids sure has blocked the path of the normal tier two player that used to get an NCAA scholarship, and the number of them looking for places to play is, is, is absolutely incredible and, and, and there's good players not finding spots this year and, and I'll tell you, I had at least 75 emails from different kids all across Canada saying they'd like to come to Nipissing and play hockey and, and unfortunately this year we did lose a lot of guys and, uh, uh, we did add maybe a guy more than, than, than we needed.

Meaning, we're doing everything we can to make sure that, that we can help them, you know, get to the highest level in terms of performance possible when the puck drops.