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As an official, sometimes you do miss the secondary assist, when that occurs I normally ask a coach or the goal scorer something like "which d-man made the 1st pass?" or something along those lines. They are good with giving me a number 99% of the time and I have to trust that they are going to give me the correct information. I only ask if I know that there was a 2nd assist and I missed the number, I won't hand out an assist just because a kid skates up to me and claims to have made a pass. If teams want to send in stats corrections, so be it. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not perfect but I can say that I do the best job that I can when I'm out there. I always wanted my son to get credit for points when he deserved it back when he played so I make it a point to give these kids the same credit today.

Agree--the same goes for me. At the lower levels of PAHL, I really do not care too much about getting assists correct, and often, I will take a coach's word for it. No one knows after the fact because PAHL does not compile such things. Kids and parents like to "brag." For higher levels, I definitely try to be accurate, and I often work with my partner to get the right numbers.

Back to the main story at hand congrats to all the kids. Great honor even if you are "telling the refs who to give assists to". If that's the case these kids have a great future ahead of themselves as politicians.

Yes they do North Hills games. Several out of Baierl. I believe if your team is willing to sponsor you get more games. They do a good job of spreading it around. Here is a list: https://www.pihlhockey.com/broadcasts

We're not that far from having only A or AAA here too. Back in the 90s, when they started using the AA designation, there were a lot more AA teams. Now there are 6-8 different designations within A, some of which would have been AA back in the 90s. I have friends in Columbus who say the same thing, that there is almost no one in AA there anymore either. Might end up being a bit of a re-categorization like Junior hockey. In the early 2000s/late 90s, there were Jr A, Jr B, and Jr C designations, and it was all over the place. I think (and I could be wrong) that only the USHL and NAHL called themselves Jr A. Most of the Jr teams were Jr B. Jr C was mostly younger kids. At the same time, there was a push in the rust belt and mid west to have "split season" midget hockey, and the response was to have more Jr teams, who were not bound by the split season agreement. Anyhow, the point of the rambling is that I would not be surprised if USA Hockey says there is only "tier 1" and "tier 2" and renders the AAA/AA/A labels meaningless, like it did with Jr A/B/C.

Went to nationals... it's not like that's an earned spot at the HS level

I didn’t say anything about beating the pens. Just because you play for the Pens elite doesn’t mean you are the going anywhere. Lots of Pens Elite players that never played more than ACHA. Others that haven’t played for Pens elite have gone on to higher levels. There is more than one path to higher levels.