The Bogart Cup, the oldest amateur sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season.

The CCHL's regular season is typically held from September to March, with each team playing 55 games.

Following the conclusion of the regular season, 8 teams advance to the Bogart Cup playoffs, a three-round tournament that runs into May to determine the league champion.

The reigning league champions are the Navan Grads, who defeated the Smiths Falls Bears in the 2024 Bogart Cup Finals.

[2] The league has featured such NHL stars as Steve Yzerman and Larry Robinson, for which its two divisions are named.

The Canadiens also wanted the league to be strictly for development, allowing four 19-year-olds and five 18-year-olds per team with the rest of the players being 17 or younger.

This was met with much anger and disappointment with players who had just reached their 20s, but the league substantially gained in popularity and did not step back from the changes.

The Braves brought in replacement players from midget and Jr. B leagues for a game against the CJHL's perennial champions, the Cornwall Royals.

As CJHL champions, the Royals represented the league at the playdowns for the 1966, 1967 and 1968 Memorial Cup national junior hockey championships.

The financial cost of the playoff run was too much for the team's backers to handle and they declared bankruptcy one disappointing season after winning it all.

Through new management and rule changes, the league barred 20-year-olds from the Major Junior ranks, created a limit of five 20-year-olds (homegrown from the CJHL), and banned the paying of players.

This new system was guaranteed to increase revenue amongst all teams nationwide as they were allowed to have more home games, increasing revenue through ticket sales, and decreased the travel expenditures that forced the Rockland Nationals to fold soon after they won the National Championship.

In 2004–05, the Central Junior Hockey League saw higher attendance figures in all arenas with the NHL lockout.

The Cornwall Colts became the 4th team in CJHL history to play host to a Centennial/Royal Bank Cup tournament in 2008.

On May 8, 2011, at the 2011 Royal Bank Cup in Camrose, Alberta, the Pembroke Lumber Kings defeated the BCHL's Vernon Vipers 2–0 to win the CCHL's second ever National Title during the league's 50th anniversary season.

Prior to the 2014–15 season, the CCHL announced it was adapting the American Hockey League's overtime format.

David Frost, the agent of former St. Louis Blues player Mike Danton, was banned from all Central Junior "A" Hockey League games and events in fall 2005 after Frost entered an off-limits-to-fans area at the Jim Durrell Arena, home to the Ottawa Jr.