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Generally, I find the larger the tournament the more likely you will have competitive games. The more teams the better the tournament director can divide teams into tighter skill ranges and the less the teams the more likely you will get someone out of place shoved into a bracket (either someone who beats all the other teams handily or gets beat by everyone).

The only teams that should be traveling this far to find competitive games are legit Tier 1 teams!

Although appeal games rarely overturn PAHL's final placement of teams, they are particularly done by teams wanting to be placed in a higher division spurred by the rumblings of anabolic parents and their desire for their kid to play at a higher level.

A team's manager or head coach needs to contact the tournament director prior to registering and ask for a list of participating teams in whatever division they plan on entering. Most will give you this info and then decide based off the other teams that are participating. If the tournament is unwilling to do this, I would suggest moving on to something different, there's enough to go around. No reason to go to NY or VA to play teams that are 20 minutes down the road.

This is straying from the topic a bit, but I find tournaments to be the least useful thing you can do dollar for dollar. I'd rather schedule some independent games and control who you play. They are largely a racket.

Yea that's true. And then you travel to Buffalo or somewhere for a tournament and play all the same PAHL teams again.

i feel like a lot of these kids, coaches, and parents going independent are just tired of paying the same kids and same organizations over and over every year.. its new opportunity to play different teams, different kids.. when you start playing so young you fall into playing the same teams and kids year after year after year..

LOL……..the “off-ice training” fee that is offered to these teams may be the biggest rip off of all time. All I hear is the so-called trainers spend more time on their phones than they do in instruction and getting the kids a solid workout. And if any AA or lower team makes the off-ice training mandatory with a separate fee, run for the hills and look elsewhere.

Oh, I agree they do. But they go Vengeance or Esmark now. SHAHA puts out better BY than the Preds. So I scoff more at the idea of going to Preds when cut.