The rules in Junior A hockey in Canada are very clear on one thing: you can only have eight 20-year-olds in your lineup on any given night. This means teams will be able to dress a maximum of eight players born in 2001 for the season ahead. For the Estevan Bruins, that's going to present a bit of a problem. 

Of the players who finished the season with the Bruins last year, seven were born in 2001. Griffin Asham-Moroz, Erik Boers, Brady Nicholas, Caleb Petrie, and Mason Strutt up front, Dayton Deics on defense, and Emerik Demers in goal are all entering their 20-year-old year. 

That equation gets even more complicated with the recent additions the Bruins have made. Forwards Eric Houk, Mikol Sartor, and Joey Moffatt have all been added to the Bruins list in the last two weeks. With the possibility of still more players returning from the WHL, it's shaping up to be an interesting dilemma for the coaching staff.

"The pieces are coming together and we'll take it one day at a time and continue to build," said head coach and GM Jason Tatarnic. "We'll see where we're at in the next month and the month after that. We'll keep moving forward and keep evaluating our team. That's all we can do."

In addition to those players, the Bruins retain the SJHL rights to several WHLers including forward Eric Pearce, defenseman Nolan Jones, and goaltender Boston Bilous from last year. They've also acquired the rights to another 2001-born WHL forward, Carter Massier, from the Melville Millionaires. 

"There are players that do become available from the Western Hockey League and we wanted to make sure we had their SJHL rights, so we had to make trades with other teams," Tatarnic said. "It kind of gives us options. So we'll have to kind of wait and see who becomes available. Maybe some guys become available, maybe some guys don't become available at all, so it's kind of a waiting game for us."

In that regard, a longer training camp will be hugely helpful as they try to evaluate a host of players competing for one of the most desirable spots on any Junior A team in the country: playing as a 20-year-old on a national championship hosting team. 

"That was part of the decision with opening our camp pretty early," Tatarnic said. "It gives players ample time to show what they have and it gives us time to make decisions, so it was definitely part of the process."

SJHL training camps are scheduled to begin at the start of September, while the season will begin three weeks later on Friday, September 24.