Ice Hockey Australia made the announcement that the
Australian Junior Ice Hockey League would be expanding in the 2016–17 season. It planned to include teams from
Queensland,
South Australia and
Australian Capital Territory into the regular season format after the previous season using a Tier 2 tournament for the 3 new teams. Due to cost of travel after adding 3 additional cities to the league, the season format was changed to a multiple weekend tournament format and the league was divided into 2 conferences. Two other issues faced at the beginning of the season were that there was no ice availability reserved in
Melbourne, Victoria to schedule games for the
Melbourne Glaciers and Adelaide was again experiencing issues with its main rink cooling system. With the first schedule originally announced and ready for December, the
Canberra Junior Brave pulled out of the weekend and it is unknown if they would return later in 2017 in a future weekend tournament. With a shrinking junior talent pool in Melbourne, the
Melbourne Whalers suspended operations for the 2016–17 season, leaving only the
Melbourne Glaciers to participate. The
Perth Pelicans would also suspend operations for the 2016–17 season, leaving the
Perth Sharks as the only representation for junior talent in Western Australia. ==Exhibition Games==