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Thats a huge boost for Seneca Valley

Appears central catholic has hired former seneca valley coach Anthony Raco. Seneca valley is promoting assistant Tyler Mesisca to head coach.

Don't see many posts like this on the board, but kudos for working to create opportunities for this group.

Vengeance Tier II (Formerly SCIR) has a group of 14U players that do not have a goalie. We have not formed a team with them yet for obvious reasons. We are looking for an A Minor/B goalie at the 14U level to help this team form. Please submit this form if you are interested: https://www.scirhockey.org/information/player-inquiry/ If another organization in our immediate area has room for 14U skaters, please let me know so we can make sure this group has a team to play for this season. coaching@scirhockey.org.

100% kids will sometimes specialize too early. Although I'm not sure numbers will increase over time if there aren't already kids who at least play goalie part of the time at the late squirt/early peewee years.

Standardization would be nice, but in PAHL they could just not allow labeling teams prior to placements being completed. Just tryout for the organization. You can get an idea about an organization by the number of teams they have traditionally fielded and where they generally place.

That is a 12U Hybrid team that made no promises of being AA. And they have more than 7 skaters. Looking to round out that roster so to give these kids a place to play. The 12U 2013 and 12U 2012 have solid high level rosters.

Definitely a goalie shortage for the 13s and 14s. Could eventually be a good thing though. Kids that go in goal too early lack the skating skills they need. I am sure the goalie numbers will increase over time.

Considering that this form has 3 “Attempted Threads” with time stamps of August 6 & 7 2018; and December, 2022…I’d think that it’s safe to say that it’s high time to take this old horse ‘round back of the shed and, um, ‘let her run free.’ Stick a fork in it…it’s done:

How about ridiculous travel with a young kid when you might have other kids with other interests and don't want to spend the money or drag the whole family along/leave half the family at home all weekend while you drive 4 hours to Buffalo to play some team equivalent to what you could play within an hour of your house.

Hopefully wait until one of the other teams with 7 skaters folds and convince them to join. Or vice versa. At least one team will fill. Some kids will be hung out to try, but hey, this is the price of high level 12u AA hockey. Or just wait for a few kids that didn't make a team they wanted and dangle the AA carrot at them.

Inflation, cost to play I am sure won't help things.

Short shifts

What's the plan for the 12U team whose roster is posted with 7 skaters and 2 goalies?

USA Hockey should use some of our outrageous membership fee and develop a standard for AA skill/ability and assign qualified evaluators to do preseason district/regional AA evaluation camp for players to be able to be considered AA. Then associations can only create AA teams out of actual certified AA players. Take the local politics and snake oil salesmen out of it. That ought to thin things down a bit!

When you have too many teams claiming that they're AA, then you have a lot of orgs not "taking the best players available" in some cases and keeping or bringing in kids in favor of friends and/or school teammates... yeah those other kids that could be making some of these teams based on skill and hard work are going to explore every option they can. Or they say screw the tryout circus altogether and stay on a team that they already have friends on or that's easy and convenient. So where you could have some really, really strong teams, instead these players are spread out piecemeal over an array of different teams. So you wind up with AA or A teams with one or a handful of talented, hardworking kids with a high compete level and then on the same team you have a noticeable drop when it comes to the floor of the team.

Top AA or AAA 18u Goalie needed for Iron City Cup -- May 17-19, in Harmarville. Email Hockeyx10sion@yahoo.com with interest. Thanks,

Top AA or AAA 18u Goalie needed for Iron City Cup -- May 17-19, in Harmarville. Email Hockeyx10sion@yahoo.com with interest. Thanks,

Allegheny Badgers?? 16U AA?? Top 3?? In what parallel universe??

@aaaahockey that’s an excellent point. I’m sure the youth hockey numbers have skyrocketed in places like Vegas and Florida due to recent NHL success. I believe most of the orgs in the south hills saw similar tryout numbers as years past at the 12U and 10U ages.

Organizations ebb and flow. I haven't seen a major decline much at the three organizations I'm most familiar with. I would also point out that we are moving outside the double Stanley cup window and the Penguins are on the decline. That means less people watching, interested, and participating in the sport. Kids starting the sport today weren't alive when the pens won their last cup

Numbers are definitely down at North Pitt. 150 skaters tried out at 12u this year. Only about 60 at 10u.

If you are an involved parent of a AA player chances are you know which teams are strong.

They probably just kept an extra team's worth of players in the house league. And that could be for one of two reasons. The next group wasn't ready for travel hockey so their development is being prioritized, which is good. They have a capacity in house league that they will reach no matter what in order to maximize $$$. But if those numbers are down, then so would I expect are most others.

I'm not sure about other organizations, but I heard North Pittsburgh is only fielding three squirt teams this year. Was four last season and five the season before that. I think Covid definitely has had an impact, as the 2012-2015 birth years would have been learning to skate or were early mites at the time. Very formative years when the rules at the rinks were nuts and hockey was labeled a super-spreader.