I may be totally off base, happy to admit it if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the Midget teams outside of Ottawa do not have top talent year 2000 kids (they are playing minor midget), and there are lots of opportunities to play Junior tier one or two for the 99 and 98 birth year players. The U18 teams here are tied to the junior teams but perhaps the teams are more similar that I originally thought. The "major midget" teams used to be a bit of a joke in the Ottawa area and maybe I have wrongly assumed that it was the same in other parts of the province.
Lots of Northern teams have 2000 birth years on their rosters. Sudbury had a Minor Midget team but not all the top players in the NOHA played on it, some stayed home and played GNMHL. For years the GNMHL was a very good Midget League but with introduction of more Junior teams (both NOJHL and the GMHL rogue league) it has been watered down lately. There are not many Jr B teams though in the NOHA.
In the GTHL there are not alot (if any) Jr B teams within the City of Toronto so lots of very good 99's and 98's play Major Midget so they can stay at home. Some GTHL Mj Midget teams have 5-7 OHL drafted players on their roster. GTHL has always had a very strong Major Midget program.
The inclusion of all three years of Midget in the HEO league along with less 16 year olds playing Jr B has definitely made the league stronger, Kanata was the 4th place team, my guess is any of the top 6 or 7 teams would have been competitive at the Central Region Championships.
