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Thanks Forbin. I've been lucky enough to be around youth hockey between playing and coaching for probably upwards of 90% of my life and have coached from Mites to Midgets. Most parents don't get the education that is needed for them to understand truely what the odds are of their player moving on to higher levels, or even what those levels look like from a skill level. Unfortunately, with experience we know that the jump from "B" to "A", "A" to "AA", "AA" to "AAA" all get exponentially harder as a player moves up the ladder. I will always go back to parent/player education as being the most overlooked aspect of youth hockey. To steer the discussion back towards what we were originally talking about, there is some value in discussing and watching kids at 12U play. I've been lucky enough to watch kids that you can already see are going to be able to advance and thrive at 14U because they do play a borderline physical game at that age, while there's also the other end of the spectrum of the kids that shy away from contact at 12U and are going to struggle greatly and probably end up giving up the game, or not advancing to higher levels of play because of that. I do believe this is where the value of having major/minor at 12U and up would be valuable and also illustrates why teams might chose to go independent. I've always felt through the years that higher level of play will almost always = more physicality because the players have better control of their bodies because those players are better athletes in general. If you have a team that is going to physically dominate other teams in their "home" league, then there is value in going independent. Anything can happen during a game and a team can/will run into a hot goalie sometimes and lose a game that they dominated every other aspect of. Should that team have to dominate teams that they are going to beat 95% of the time or maybe play a schedule that ends up in a .500 or .600 record and the kids get challenged?

that's bc the older kids parents see the bullshit in the the excel program..... of course the younger has the waiting, bc they are drinking the kool aid.

Strictly financially speaking, the Excel grade school and middle school programs are actually not a bad deal at all. I have no idea how the on ice instruction is though. From a developmental standpoint I think that private/small group sessions are awesome for developing individual skills and should be utilized by all level of players from house league to AAA. Just like all kids should be shooting pucks in the driveway everyday, or doing dryland training exercises. But I definitely agree with @BACKCHECKING that the more games a kid plays the better chance he has to develop his hockey IQ and his teamwork skills. You simply cannot replicate game type scenarios during a private lesson. We have talked about this subject at length here how todays players are all individually skilled, but severely lacking in the team play aspect of the game. Both sides of the player needs to be developed, and early on because bad habits are formed very easily at the mite/squirt/peewee levels.

Someday I think parents will realize that all this doesn't really matter until kids start hitting and hit puberty. I can't even count how many "all star" mites/squirts/peewees fade away once they start hitting and kids hit growth spurt. PPE has absolutely no loyalty to any parents either. There are countless parents who pay for years then when it comes to U16/U18 their kids get cut for someone better. You really would be better off working with a skating coach as much as possible in their youth and take private or small group lessons. It doesn't matter if you play "independent" schedule with 50 games or a solid PAHL with 30. Kids don't develop as much during games as they do in lessons/practice. The PPE practices are just as much of a joke as others. I've seen 60+ kids on the PPE ice trying to run drills and no one takes the time to stop and work 1:1 with kids. Again, invest in skating time and if your kid is good enough, he'll make AAA. That's simple. Otherwise you're spending money hoping you get some leverage. I'm sure there are plenty of parents on this board who know kids who were PPE when they were kids and now are average players on their HS team.

My one son has taken lessons from a bunch of different instructors over the years. At times he never misses a week and other times he doesn't go for a few months. The way I see it is that 1/3 of the kids taking lessons are already playing AAA. 1/3 are not even close to playing AA. The rest are in between. And for the most part, most of the time the kids taking lessons are Squirts and Peewees. I would think that in order to significantly improve a kid better take at least a couple of lessons a week on top of his or her practices. Most parents aren't willing to put the time or money to this extent. Basically, a hundred a week. 400 a month. 7 month season total about 2800. Plus the off season when it probably is even more expensive cause you are probably trying to get you kid on the ice ton. It is rare that a parent trying to save money by playing PAHL will spend that kind of money. More likely, a parent/kid wants to play AAA but isn't good enough so they take lesson to try and improve.

Not yet and most likely not! Haven't tried Preds, Icemen etc. But then again the only one that counts as AAA is PPE!!!!

Not wrong in the slightest. We all know there is a great deal of politics with youth hockey. PPE squirts is 90% Lil 66ers, PPE peewee is 95% PPE squirts and so on. It's just common sense.

We know. We all know this, but unfortunately for you not all of us have kids that old yet and this is a forum for discussion. Therefore discussion of younger birth years will take place.

Setting my watch for 2027 when these 09’s declare which ACHA program they will be playing for…