The upcoming start of the Yukon Road Hockey League's second season is creating quite a buzz.

League organizer Brad Holm said he has heard rumblings of anticipation since Christmas.

"As far as I've heard, there's going to be quite the turnout,” he said, adding that numbers should jump from last year.

"We're hoping to get between 75 and 96 – our cap – which would be 16 players per team. There's still going to be six teams.”

The league attracted 63 – 10-11 players per team – last season.

League registration will run at 1 p.m. at the Canada Games Centre on May 14-15.

The minimum age is 18 years old.

Cost per player is $40, which will buy you 10 regular-season games and a possible 10 playoff games, in which first will play fourth and second will play third in a best-of-five first-round series before the gold and bronze medal series.

Registration, which jumped from $30 last season, will go towards renting the facility and possibly buying new goalie equipment, Holm said.

The draft will be held on May 18 at the Roadhouse.

The regular season will go from May 23 to June 26 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays at 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., with each team playing twice per week.

The playoffs will run from June 27 to July 24 (no games on July 10 because of the Atlin Arts and Music Festival and on July 17 due to the Dawson City Music Festival).

Anyone interested in refereeing – and making $20 per game – can sign up this weekend.

Rather than expand the number of teams, organizers are moving the operation from last year's venue – a small asphalt court in Crestview – to the Takhini Broomball Arena.

"It's a little rough on the shoes and the sticks and the ball bounces a bit, but it was sufficient for what we were doing last year,” Holm said of the Crestview venue, adding that the broomball rink is a much larger, smoother surface that will warrant more line changes.

"It's more legitimate hockey; you go out there, you run around for three minutes and you change. Whereas up at Crestview, a guy could stay on for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, because it was a fairly small court, so you could coast around a bit.”

Moving to the broomball rink will also warrant two referees per game versus last year's one, the duties for which were shared between six players.

Holm said the open floor will make for a less physical style of hockey, though called the league "fairly competitive.”

"In Crestview there was a smaller court, so you would get three or four guys jumbled up in a corner. But for the most part, it's people who have all played hockey before, or some sort of contact sport.

"It's not full contact; you can't open-ice hit a guy, but if a guy's against the boards, you can bump and try to push him off the puck. It's physical in that sense, but people aren't out there trying to take each other's heads off,” Holm said.

Holm's Mechanical, ORC, Kopper King, Aurora Construction, Higher Level Exploration and Skookum Asphalt Ltd. have already signed on as sponsors for this season.

The league has grown into quite an animal since it was conceived last year.

Holm, who goes to school at UVic, and his buddies had been playing steadily for the proceeding five years, so they decided to take a page from "down south,” where they'd heard rumblings of big road hockey leagues that are fairly competitive, well-organized – and fun.

"As we started to play, three games in, people started hearing about the league, and word of mouth spread around town, people were contacting me wanting to play,” Holm said.

Last year's end-of-the-year banquet took place at the KK, where the league handed out awards – the Art Ross, the Hart, etc.

Rather than trophies, award winners were given shots.