Entering the 1956-57 season there was only one way to go and that was up.
The Beehives arranged an exhibition tilt with their new affiliate, the Junior ‘A’ St. Catharines Tee Pees, and the media wasn’t kind to the Dixie squad with their predictions.
After the team had such a disastrous 1955-56 year, the media openly predicted scores would be in the range of a 10-goal spread- if the Beehives were lucky. After all, the Tee Pees were a top flight Junior ‘A’ team and the Beehives were a cellar dwelling ‘B’ team. To top it off, they had just been dumped 7-4 in another exhibition game against their league rivals, the St. Michael’s Buzzers.
To everyone’s surprise, the Dixie Beehives held their own and lost to the visiting Tee Pees by a slim 4-3 margin.
The 1956-57 regular season play, however, didn’t give much to suggest that the Beehives were anything but on the precipice of another disaster. The first half of the season saw close matches with the majority of the games being decided by two goals or less. However, as the back half of the season took shape, Dixie was finding it harder to reach the win column. In the end, they were hanging on to a playoff berth by the slimmest of threads.
Their final game of the season came against Brampton and it was an elimination situation. Brampton had clinched first place in the league and a loss would end it all for Dixie. As it turned out, the Beehives defeated their north Peel rivals 6-1 and ended up fifth in the standings-good enough to make it into the playoff round.
The press, and Brampton fans, were again not too kind to Dixie. The media carried stories indicating that the Brampton Regents took it easy on Dixie since they had nothing to gain by winning or losing.