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I love everything about this thread. It has so many of the themes we generally see in this forum wrapped up into one. Crazy over involved parents, "Daddy Hockey" All roads lead to beer league. Cronyism vs meritocracy And not only that!! The typical "keyboard warrior" attacks have escalated to calling people out by name and even added in some mafioso style intimidation and threats. " Better not show up at the rink, and you are making enemies!" We even got a taste of the usual PPE complaint, "PPE was set up to give local kids a place to play" in this case IUP let outsider kids from Slippery Rock come and play for them. LOL If only PAHockey could increase the font size on his red text and maybe throw in some charts and excessive formatting, That would be glorious! Who would have thought IUP club hockey could be so interesting!?!?

Mike Lange's voice and game/goal calls for the Pittsburgh Penguins have spanned decades in the Pittsburgh area. Listening to him call all those games over the years was instrumental in growing hockey in Pittsburgh. I know it is one of the reasons I fell in love with the game, and I'm sure a lot of the people on this forum as well. Rest in Peace Legend.

No offense, but if you are this way being critical of coaches and decisions made on special teams, ice time, etc with your kid only being nine years old, I can only imagine how YOU will be in a couple of years. You are concerned over the coaches putting lesser skilled kids on defense? Hell most kids at that age are still figuring out how to pee let alone being set on a position. If the coaches kid getting all of the ice time is a ten year old, don’t worry about it as he will move up to PW next year. My advice? Don’t be “that dad.”

They do factor enrollment into the formula, but it probably doesn't play a big enough role. The problem with enrollment when it comes to hockey is that it's less about enrollment and more about wealthy enrollment. In the case of Canon Mac, despite having plenty of capable players their club is a mess. Coaching and management of that club has put them in a free fall from AAA to A in just a few years. But in no way should a school of CMs size and wealth ever be close to being a single A school. Essentially they have been rewarded for mismanagement. What I can't understand is. why can't they use the amount of USA hockey members each school has? That would give the better figure than just using enrollment alone.

Cherry picking / stealing implies that the high schools developed these kids and the Pens team suddenly comes along senior year and grabed all the best players. These players were all great for a long time, and got their development somewhere other than their high school team. Maybe they decided they didn't want to look back with regret in 10 years that the didn't try and pursue playing at a higher level. Maybe playing Pens Elite has been their dream for years, but couldn't quite crack the lineup. Maybe they got bored of playing in a PIHL league they dominate because 85% of the players are prepping for the Adult D leagues. It's hard for me to take seriously anyone that says "if you are good they will find you." Especially in the context of playing in PIHL OR PAHL. Sorry.. The PIHL ALL STAR GAMES are held annually at the home of RMU, a D-1 program. Anybody know how many times it has been attended / scouted by Head Coach DS, who lives 10 minutes away?? Or even any RMU D1 scouts? Here is a mediocre D1 program that calls the rink home, and they aren't even interested in giving a look at the best local high school players!!! Yet you act like Boston College is sending scouts to come watch Armstrong play Baldwin on a Monday night.

Hello all- It has been a while since I dropped an update but being that it's been a beautiful week, I felt it was time to update the community. #1. @Pa Hockey I have had productive discussions with @Pa Hockey and as a result I have decided to welcome him back. Due to a few events in my personal life I have re-evaluated things and decided that I am ok with @Pa Hockey posting tournaments. After taking time to digest this all, I extended an olive branch to @Pa Hockey and invited him back as I think his informative posts/rankings/and his own "takes" are more valuable than not having him on board. At the end of the day, I am for as many kids participating in hockey as possible. Our dispute about advertising tourneys now falls into the "don't sweat the small stuff" category and I am moving on from that. I will continue to maintain vigilance on the forum as far as ads go, but at this point I likely will be more lenient than before. For the most part I try to stay out of the way of users and let them run with the ball in terms of what is posted here and I will continue to be mostly behind the scenes. If you feel up to it, please welcome @Pa Hockey back to the forum. #2. About me After a LONG time of running this forum, I think it is time to clarify that I am not the "hockey player" Paul Baxter. My favorite hockey player was #4 Paul Baxter and that's why I use that as an alias. I would attend Pens games in the late 70's (think Ron Stackhouse, Greg Malone, Rick Kehoe) with my Uncle when there were 4,000 people there. We'd park "for free" on the street below the closed St. Francis Central Hospital and walk through the old parking garage to the CA. By God's grace I was able to be at Mario Lemieux's first ever home game, Sid's first ever home game, I was also at the famous "five goals 5 ways game" on New Years Eve 12/31/88. I was at the very first Pittsburgh Gladiators arena league game when the roof opened. My parents took me to see Billy Jean King play men between 1974-1976. I watched the Pens defeat the Blackhawks in the miracle 5-4 win in Game 1 of the SCF 5/18/92. I saw probably 50 concerts. Truck and Tractor pulls. High School hockey games. Pitt-Duquesne, and I attended many Pittsburgh Spirit games. I worked at the Civic Arena for Choice Seat as one of their 2 computer techs on their old Unix mainframe in-house ticketing system in the early 90's. I literally have explored every single inch of the old Civic Arena building, as it was pretty much me, a security guard, and a refrigeration technician in the entire building when there was no event in progress evenings and weekends. In real life, I'm Western PA resident that owns an IT business, and who was highly involved in youth hockey while my kids were active. Nobody who I interacted with in PIHL, PAHL and local hockey orgs ever knew that I ran this forum, and that is fine with me. I kept this on the down-low on purpose. My kids aged out of youth hockey years ago but I enjoy providing this forum to the community on my own dollar. I have covered the hosting, domain, maintenance and licensing costs of the forum software fully with zero donations. Free information exchange is a valuable community service that I will provide via this forum as long as I am able to. #3. Open to ideas & Feedback. Thank you all for participating and giving your time to this forum. If you have any comments, ideas or suggestions, feel free to reply. It's a great day for hockey! PB

I had a really long response to this post, but I'll sum it up with this - Your son is a 1st year Squirt. Let him have fun playing hockey with his friends. That is what matters most at this age. You will have the rest of his youth career to track shift length and be critical of coaches, d-pairs, line combinations, special teams, etc.

I think your first sentence proves my point. Are you saying that "club" hockey are "2nd" teams to school hockey? While I wish you were correct in that statement, and I wish hockey was big enough in Pittsburgh to have the same model as Minnesota hockey, it just isn't. The fact that you are totally oblivious to any hockey outside of scholastic teams and label club teams as "2nd teams" kind of contradicts your whole "if hockey would collaborate instead of compete against each other" statement. Try to embrace all hockey instead of just the hockey you want to promote if you really want to grow hockey. That being said, your list is a (opinionated) list of the top 30 kids that play scholastic hockey. A list of the "top" kids in western and eastern pa would require you to actually look into all the kids that play hockey anywhere in the state and make a list from that. Most of the really good kids either have no interest in playing school hockey or gain nothing but risk of injury.

If there's a 10u team with 2 committed goalies, and they're not getting equal time at that age, I'd find a different org.

From the accounts that I have followed on here, it seems like the officials were in the process of breaking up a series of altercations near the end of a lopsided game. As one player from the losing team was being escorted off the ice, a teammate attempted to intervene and while the official was attempting to keep him from becoming involved he reacted by striking the official, let me know if that is incorrect. I have officiated in the past and have had to breakup a number of fights all the way from 8U up to adult league games. It is impossible to breakup an altercation at any age without physically engaging the players that are involved, regardless of age. It gets exponentially more difficult to do as the both the physical size and intensity level both ramp up. For anyone to think that officials in a high school hockey game would not have a level of physical contact with the players involved has obviously NEVER officiated a game. If an official is doing his or her job correctly, there will be physical contact, so if a player reacts to that contact by striking or making contact with an official in an aggressive way the issue is with the player and not the official.

That is why they buy so many rinks in the same area. They like to price set. Then they make teams play in their leagues, use their streaming,.... They like the monopoly model! Horrible for youth sports

The answer to your first question is this - SHIT HAPPENS. The kid is 9-10 years old. Is he / she having fun, or are you too busy yelling at everyone because of the poor placement and not really paying attention? Seems you have the qualifications to be on a hockey board or better yet, run for Hockey Director role at your kids org. As for not knowing what I am talking about, well, that depends. Raising four kids from LTP to HS level and one playing D1 club, I can speak from experience and say I have a good sense of youth hockey. All I can remember from those Squirt days was my kids had fun, they looked forward to the post-game snack and got better with time. Hell, at that age they are still learning how to pee straight. As for misery, you are bringing it on to yourself bro. You seem quite angry and being this wound up at the Squirt age, I can only imagine how you will be when your kid is at the age level with checking.

Any coaches treating players like that, ESPECIALLY college or high school kids, are jerks that have no business coaching. They have enough stress with school, relationships, working, etc. They don't need something that is supposed to be fun to be miserable. No kid or young person deserves to be treated like that- even at the highest level. IUP is far from the highest level. That's no way to grow a program or the sport in general and those coaches should be embarrassed.

Now we added the angry hockey mom. We have really hit some kind of zen in this forum.

You guys miss the point. Parents do not want to drive to Erie for a game on Tuesday night. They don't want to drive to a game in Wheeling either. Ask any parent (or coach or player) and they would gladly vote to remove both from PIHL. Cathedral Prep won it last year. They were so bad the year before they had to be moved down. PIHL would still exist without them and there would still be a Penguin Cup Champion.

Looks like they are up to 9 teams for this season. I believe this began with 4 teams under the guidance of the late John Mucha and it's great to see that his vision of growing the game continues as part of his legacy.

Dowiak and DiMarsico for PSU out of PPE lighting it up tonight in NCAA tournament. Nice to see the PGH influence.

With one adjustment, the number of puck touches per player in practice is significantly higher than a game. That is why the practice to game ratio is so important.

So... ...is there any place worth playing hockey in Pittsburgh? This place is so depressing. Reading the posts here, everything is either a money grab or inept.

Here are some thoughts from a guy who has been involved in hockey for a long time. My sons played at Pens Elite. I can tell you at the squirt age they never worked on the power play or pk. They would go over it a little in film or off ice. 99% of the time at squirt they just ran their lines through. It was all about skill development but would work on concepts off ice. I don't believe any team should be spending ice time working on a power play at the squirt level and the high level teams typically don't unless things have changed. As for parent coaches it can go either way but you need them. There are not enough good paid coaches out there for high level and Varsity teams in my opinion much less all the travel/ other school teams. If you have a very qualified parent coach it may be a much better option than a lot of paid depending on experience and motives. If the parent coach is an issue the organization needs to let them go. I will say years ago my one son's team had a great parent coach (no it wasn't me) and because so many parents are anti parent coaches the organization went to a paid none parent coach. Myself and another player moved on from that team as when I talked to the "new none parent coach" I was very concerned with how he would run the team. That team went from 40 wins to only ten the next season. The season after the whole team pretty much fell apart. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING AT SQUIRT IS THAT THE PLAYER IS HAVING FUN, SKILL DEVELOPMENT, AND A POSITIVE COACHING ENVIRONMENT

See the earlier announcement! I'm afraid you don't have ol' Pa Hockey to kick around anymore! I am concerned about how will we find out who the thirty best local players are now? (Excluding those playing Junior, NDTP, Pens Elite, or moved away for other AAA teams, or Prep School, or playing for a Laurel Mountain team, or a Co-op PIHL team or those that just chose not to play for their high school team)

Hockey already has your Elan Musk! It's Murry Gunty and Blackbear. They get rid of all the "wasteful spending" like community programs, reduce competition, limit options, and then have their corporate friends run it "efficiently" (profitable)

Larry Koch passed away on Thursday 1/23/25 at the age of 92. Some of you will remember him from coaching high school hockey for Bishop Canevin, South Park and North Catholic. You may also know his sons, Jim and Bob, who are also involved in western PA hockey. Larry was a great promoter of the sport and one of the first in the area to start learn to play programs. He used to run them at the South Park ice rink back in the late 1970's. I know a lot of people that got introduced to hockey because of his learn to play. My sympathies to the Koch family. Larry was truly a special person. May he rest in peace.

Let's put the blame squarely where it belongs; the kids that drank! They knew the rules, they knew the consequences and they still did it and then put it on social media so let's lump stupidity into the equation. Quit trying to find someone else to be a scapegoat. Sorry, this is just my opinion.

Any unbiased person who watched that embarrassing display and comes out of it thinking the refs are the problem needs their head examined.

I’m starting a chain so we can post tryout postings for the teams in the area. We have done this in the past and it has been really helpful.

About time, there has been way too many "AAA" teams at this level for too long.

Rumor has it it was unintentional.

Why would they list D2 that's just where the best AAA and Foreign players play moving on to the next level like Ncdc Nahl Usphl ect One of them is in the final four college game Why is a newspaper reporter doing this anyway let ten band and coaches vote on this He doesn't cover hockey all year A goalie 12-7 really? My favorite is when he picks a kid 2 years in a row just to find out he can't make his college CLUB team

Unfortunately, the cost to play this great sport precludes far too many from the experience.

Man there is a goalie(s) on this list that got lit up like a Christmas tree numerous times. There’s no way this is a legit list.

I don’t want anyone here to miss out.

Really? Not this list again! I have so many questions. Curious if this 1-30 in a ranked order, or just 30 players in no particular order? Only 6 Single A players even there are more teams in A than AA and AAA combined. And B division ignored? Your residence shouldn't matter in a top player list. I know more players go to AAA schools, and the team play is better and deeper, but 6/30 is foolish. Mars had a decent season, but had no worthy players? The lone player represented by the A champion is probably their 3rd best player, didn't score against a good team all season, and then invisible in the playoffs. The best PT player isn't on the list, same with Montour. Ever hear of Noah Calendar? Without him CV doesn't win half their games the last 2 years. Did you catch any Meadville games? BTW, Getting 5 out of 6 of the Stellar 6 isn't that impressive when you had 30 cracks at it. Otherwise, Kudos PaHockey on a job, done.

I appreciate the work you put into this list, but it is a joke. This is the same list you posted prior and you are clearly including players from teams where you consulted with coaches you know or are connected with. The omission of certain schools with zero representation yet that had players with stellar seasons speaks for itself.

Pens Elite has a great program. My only complaint is the expense of the program. Hockey is in a sad state where a lot of people way over pay chasing a dream. It sometimes ruins families lives while people are making profits off of them and their child chasing a dream. It is nice when there are other options but those do tend to be limited and not consistent. Kudos to teams that make them available from time to time

It’s worth it if it means my kid can play club hockey at IUP.

The only way it changes is if families start saying no. PAHL could be one of the strongest leagues in the country if the PLAYERS of the AAA teams ranked below 50 (usual suspects) decided to return to PAHL AA elevating the local play significantly. Organizations and coaches will continue to take your money. The change has to come from those paying the bills.

I have so many jokes to make considering it's "Dicks" that I will keep my mouth shut so I don't get banned from the forum.

It is insane that they asked each family to pay between $1,200 and $1,500 after the season ended for their teams. Can not believe that people are willing to fundraise and pay more money after the season ends but some people will continue to drink the kool aid and believe that their kid will be one of NAHL tenders that rarely ever actually make a NAHL team. If your kid can't make the top Pens Elite team stop chasing the AAA dream and let them play for the closest PAHL organization. If they are still "too good" for their local organization at that point then look at going AAA. The Pittsburgh area has at most two teams full of AAA players at any age group. Quit chasing the dream and let your kids enjoy the sport. Most of these kids will not play any higher level than D1 or D3 ACHA and that is fine.

Don’t you know already? (I’m being semi-facetious when I say this…) Youth hockey development ‘can’ be a waste of time, money, energy, and resources if you take it too seriously. Some people would say that you’d be better served if you spent most of your money on a game that yields more of a tangible return. Having been involved on all sides of the hockey landscape over the years…It’s now easy to see how the financial benefactors can separate themselves and collect the endowments of the less informed. I’ll also add this, don’t let your child’s hockey development ever become a burden to you (or your family). Let them have fun while you (and your family) cultivate lifelong friendships. Hockey has no parallels with other sports when it comes to this bond.

Trying not to be too repetitive, but I think you need to adjust your expectations a bit. I see AAA kids at 10u who don't grasp PK and PP concepts. I usually have started to see some of the better AA and AAA teams execute good PP and PK at the 12u levels, but that varies with coaching and the overall ability of the kids on the ice. I can tell you coaching at the 10u level can be pretty difficult. You'll have kids who can barely skate or catch a pass and others who may be capable of more. Designing practice plans that can benefit the entire team is tough, so I'd just let the folks volunteering do their thing. This challenge occurs at other levels as well, but 10u you'll have a lot more kids who still need the basics. Other things you mention, like being able to pass the puck and make good changes - all of these are things the kids will continue to get better at. Be patient and adjust your expectations. It's amazing how quickly kids improve on things like this, but it won't happen overnight. I will also say in regards to the Dad on the door - I am not a fan of a Dad running a door their kid is on. I've always preferred they run the door opposite of what their kid is on. That's a simple fix in my opinion. At 10u/12u kids should be getting relatively equal playing time. It's always going to vary some depending on penalties and maybe having uneven lines due to kids being out. However, you'll run into stuff like this wherever you go and there are a lot worse things that can happen. My experience is that when you leave a club because of 3-4 complaints you have you're likely trading those things in for 3-4 other things that are also not ideal. I hear so many dysfunctional stories from clubs in this area that if my kid is with his buddies and having fun, with a group of Dad's that care about them then that's all I can ask for.

Yes, I am a coach. I am trying to understand exactly what advice you are searching for. Your original post asked the question if your player should move on. That's a fair question, but the reasons are confusing. You want a coach that will provide equal ice time and opportunity. At this age and skill level, that is important. And if that's truly an issue like you describe, then the team should meet with the coaching staff, civilly, and work it out. Especially if the one assistant coach is putting his own kid out twice as much like you said. However, at the same time, you were being critical of personnel on defense, specific d-pairs, who goes out on the PK, not practicing special teams, and suggested hiding weaker players on the wings. So it sounds like you WANT to shorten the bench in order to achieve better results since your team is "underachieving", because the "coach can't get them through". Is that why you want to leave? The great thing about amateur hockey is that you are free to go wherever you like. If you want to hop from association to association every year, you are free to do that. But understand while the team colors may be different, the team problems may be the same.

Only requires a $75 subscription per day to black bear TV come on now don't be cheap!

This is why hockey sucks.

Find a coach that will be okay with him skating out when not playing goal. At that age it shouldn't be a problem, and should be encouraged.

I’m sorry. I thought we were talking about sending a clear message about substance abuse. Not, we’re sending a clear message about substance abuse except when it inconveniences others.

The lesson is........ kids make mistakes. Their flaw is social media and the need to preserve said mistakes. Sometimes the urban legend is better than a video.

@PAhockey is always at the forefront of pushing the envelope with genius takes like this - “Drinking alcohol and doing drugs do not belong in the game and will be punished if caught.” What would we do without him?

Why does playing high level youth hockey always come down to discussions about D1 college scholarships and a cost/benefit analysis?? Can't kids play hockey for fun, teamwork, exercise, camaraderie, or any other number of reasons? And if you play, why not play at the highest level you can achieve? My kid was in the band, never did I think he was getting a college scholarship or becoming a professional musician. Never did I say I wouldn't pay for private lessons because it's unlikely it will result in a record deal.