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Smoked mostly Preds kids and Preds coach

At first glance hard to believe this happens in a spring game, BUT looking at those rosters posted above it is clear that the 2010 esmark and venegance kids smoked the PPE 10 kids on the other team 3-0. How embarrassing for them following the 2010 PPEs losing way at Nationals. So goon it up w late illegal hits and then the fighting after. 2010 esmark and venegance kids #WINNING!

Is this the coach telling these boys to go fight at the end of a spring consolation game? Where have all the good coaches gone? Will they now add MMA private lessons to the skills lessons?

Wouldn't want to cut into profits for the tournament next weekend with the same kids? 😃

Thanks for sharing! A real exciting end to a meaningless consolation game. Interesting there don't seem to be any penalties on the score sheet for the little dust up. https://gamesheetstats.com/seasons/6330/games/1829869

I get the idea of keeping players in "house" leagues and not doing the travel stuff, but we need to remember that many of these players and parents have already done what the programs offer. Some programs only offer "Little Pens" or "Learn to Play" and then their progression is to move into their ADM/8U program which then necessitates travel for jamborees. I feel like many parents would rather travel a few times on weekends to play at a different rink than have to drive once a week to find an "in house" program if their "home" rink doesn't offer one. I am not sure if the programs that operate out of rinks with a single sheet of ice have the ability to offer much beyond the "Little Pens" to ADM progression due to ice availability.

different story

Yesterday at Frozen Pond. Check out livebarn right about the 3:30pm segment. Bench clearing brawl involving 2 local teams.

Yet another egotistical hockey coach. You can spot them a mile away by reading their bios. "Played juniors" means paid to play in some meaningless junior league. "Forgo playing NCAA" means no college program wanted him. These type of "coaches" have 2 skills, skating and self promotion. If not for that they would be middle school gym teachers or selling snake oil. But go ahead and keep giving them 80 bucks an hour to "get you to the next level" Make sure you ask them what the next level is and what percent of their clients made the next level.

I heard he was booted from his prior organization for not taking a certain kid or kids onto his team. Not sure if that's what happened but I've heard the same story from several unrelated persons.

Hotels are up, food is up, coaches are all wanting you to do private lessons. Are parents finally realizing Bob is not going to the NHL and they don’t want to travel? For the 2009, 2010 & 2011 the coaches did not stand out so why keep paying these prices maybe?

This guy is taking Esmark into the ground. At least renegades saw how toxic he was. He gets along with the kids because he is one himself and now he is bringing “friends” into the organization that act like him!

U18 Team USA will face the winner of Canada / Sweden for the gold tomorrow at 11am.

There are 8U and 10U house leagues in the close suburbs. There probably are few options the further you get from Pittsburgh, but it’s not like there are no options. I don’t understand the comment about watering down the PAHL. They have lots of divisions and if you expelled the bottom half of every roster, the top half would be homeless

Agreed 100%. There are plenty of kids that would benefit from in-house leagues. One practice per week, one game per week. 4 'seasons' per year, 8 or so games per. You can sign up for anything from 1 season to 4, like dek hockey. Depending what you want or what else is going on. Keeps the cost down. Keeps commitment down, but allows for an additional skating lesson each week if so chosen. There are so many kids and parents that just want to try out the game, or just have something fun to do, get some exercise or activity... and maybe do more serious hockey from there- or not, and continue to just play in-house in addition to baseball or whatever, don't have to extra money, whatever. A good portion of the kids will proceed to more from there. Some won't, they be happy with in-house just like adults are happy with rec league. But you'd get more people playing and less of the kids that are watering down PAHL just because if they want to casually play they have no other alternative.

Wasn’t talking HS. You of all people should know PAHL is known to have a few.

That is nonsense. Look at NA and Peters, Andrew Seiss and Chris Clackson learned from two of the best Mike Bagnato and Rick Tingle + Mort and earned a shot. PR's Jordan Yoklic just won States as did South Fayette Matt Schwartz, John Zeiler at TJ. Most of these guys have a playing pedigree or coach as assistants and earn a shot. Cody Black at Mars Chris Cerutti Penn Trafford and Mike Schall at Bethel are other Examples. Good Luck to Brian Bearley, 11 years coaching at FR and gets his chance. This list is long and there are many more examples.

Some organizations are a good ole boys club of dads year in and year out. You could be Scotty Bowman and still won’t break in with that group.

I agree with all of this. The goal of little pens is getting them hooked and using that to boost your retention rate out of that program. The minute you get that list of kids registered for your rink, you immediately reach out and educate. First and foremost hammer learn to skate. Get them on the ice with that before the first pens session. Once that starts, your first session is skating heavy. And have your skating director running a station every week. You will dramatically reduce the number of kids laying on the ice unable to do much. Kids laying on the ice or having to be carried around by a coach and unable to participate in drills equates to frustration by the parents and kids that quickly don’t wanna do it anymore. it blows my mind how underutilized in-house hockey is. We are making a whole sector of the population unable to access the game. Not every family is able to manage the traveling around, not every family is able to afford PAHL hockey and there are families not interested in that much time and financial commitment from the start. Some may never but others may get hooked by that low cost less commitment opportunity and eventually want more hence your PAHL program grows.

Why don't the larger organizations take the blue teams and just do in-house or play against 2-3 other very local orgs? PAHL is WAY to spread out for an 8U blue team to drive 2 hours each was for a 45 minute jam. Ridiculous.

Still looking for an 06 or 07 aa/aaa defenseman for the tournament. Email hockeyx10sion@yahoo.com with interest. Thanks

Part of this is the lack of developmental/house hockey at the younger ages. Stick them on a blue mites team or B squirt team instead of helping them develop with more ice time and even internal games in developmental hockey.

Since this is one of the difficult things every year, how about a thread where boards can look to see what coaching candidates are available? Might be a silly idea but also might be a good way to find a coach that a team otherwise may not know how to contact? Perhaps lead to multiple offers where you can pick the best one. Of course no currently employed coach is going to inquire in a public forum but sometimes a coach leaves on their own terms, new head coaches bring in their own staff, or whatever. Maybe somebody is young and looking to get started. And if a board is looking for somebody to help out, they may not know what options are available. So if there's any potential coaches out there, post what level you're looking for and some kind of contact info if you'd like.

Can't agree more with you. It really starts at Little Pens. I consistently see at the organization we are with at least 50% of the kids at each Little Pens season can't skate. Little Pens ends and the organization is pushing the parents to sign their child up for the ADM. It's all about the money and numbers. There are so many kids in the organization that should not be out there until they can proficiently skate, but isn't it great, we have 4 blue teams! They need to start with educating parents how important skating is, then discuss youth hockey in general ( where to start, age groups, tiers, etc.) I consistently hear parents complaining that's there's no communication. It's appears coaches either don't want to be bothered or are scared to give parents feedback. A brief conversation with each players parent would go a long way. I can't tell you how many parents with kids moving up to 10u this year were in the dark on what level team to sign up for tryouts.