The Pontiac’s only semi-professional hockey team will make a return to the ice this fall in Fort Coulonge, joining the Eastern Ontario Super Hockey League (EOSHL) this season after a nearly five-year hiatus.

Founded in 2018, the Pontiac Senior Comets played in the Quebec Senior AA league and was preparing for the league finals when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the league to stop play.

Owner Sébastien Bonnerot tried to get the team back onto the ice, but he said Fort Coulonge’s relatively remote location proved a logistical challenge.

“We need to play in a two-hour radius [ . . . ] to be able to survive the travel cost and recruit players.”

In 2023, the Comets were finally admitted to a league, the EOSHL, and it looked like they were going to make their return.

But a preseason league meeting put the Coulonge team in a division with teams from Kingston and Deseronto, both over three hours away, and Barry’s Bay, an hour and a half away.

Bonnerot pulled the team from the league, saying travelling those distances would have made operating the team financially difficult.

This April, Bonnerot got his big break when the Bytown Royals, a team based in Ottawa’s Gloucester area, was put up for sale.

When the league called him with the news, he and his now-co-owner, Danick Boisvert, pulled the trigger.

“This assures us we’ll be in the right division,” he said, adding they will be in a division with teams from Arnprior, Manotick, and Low, Que. — all under two hours’ drive from Fort Coulonge.

Now, under Bonnerot and Boisvert’s ownership, the team will move from Ottawa to Fort Coulonge, playing its games under the Pontiac Senior Comets name.

With the season less than a month away, the co-owners have been working frantically in preparation.

“I think we’ve done more in the last two weeks than in the last three years,” Bonnerot said.

The co-owners are in the process of hiring an operations team so that they can focus on building the team, including trading and signing players.

Bonnerot said it makes sense to have a team in Fort Coulonge because the infrastructure already exists for it.

“We already have a relationship with the rink,” he said about the Centre de Loisir des Draveurs, which bears the name of the company he works for, Century 21.

“I renovated the entire lobby two years ago in the hope that one day we would see a team again. So a lot of this stuff is already made and done and ready for hockey,” he said.

When Bonnerot first got on board with the team in 2018, they focused on signing as much local hockey talent as possible.

But eventually, the team had to recruit outside the Pontiac, a region with only 14,000 inhabitants.

“You have to reach a certain number of players that are competitive enough to play in the league.”

He said the lack of local talent hurt the team’s revenues.

“We had less local presence and that really hurt in terms of attendance and transport.”

He said the owners want to get back to that original recipe of having local representation as much as possible, including involving local minor hockey associations.

Collin Hines, president of the Shawville District Minor Hockey Association, said having a semi-professional team in the area gives kids a pipeline to work toward in their hockey journey.

“It gives the kids [ . . . ] a role model or example that they can set their own goals for,” he said.

“It’s a good opportunity for the younger kids to see what some hard work and good effort, what potential they could have.”

Bonnerot said it’s hard to be profitable in semi-professional hockey leagues like these, so he views the team more as a service to the community.

“What you’re trying to do is put as competitive a team as you can on the ice and not lose money. So I don’t consider this a business; I consider this a community event.”

Jon Zinck, co-owner of the EOSHL, said the league is happy to have a team back in Fort Coulonge.

“We know that Fort Coulonge is a hockey town. They’ll have packed barns every game.”

Fort Coulonge is now the second EOSHL team based in Quebec, after Low’s Paugan Falls Rapids, which is entering its second season in the league.

League owner Zinck said they are hopeful a rivalry can develop between the two Quebec teams.

“People in Quebec love hockey and they love rivalries,” he said. “We feel like they will be fun games to watch.”

The owners are going through the roster this week, trying to make sure they will have enough players for opening day. The team needs to sign 30 players to field a team.

Bonnerot said the team is still looking for high-level players who can compete against junior- or university-level talent.

There will be an open skate in September, and anyone wishing to try out can get in touch through the team’s Facebook page, Pontiac Senior Comets.

The team will play its first home game on Saturday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. against the Manotick Mariners at Fort Coulonge’s Centre des Draveurs arena.

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