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At the Moon Richland game last night. Richlands first game back in PIHL and the after the 2 hour drive, they had to stand through a 15 minute 67 jersey retirement for the Moon player who passed away last spring in a car accident. So how did they handle it? By hanging a 67 Richland jersey behind their bench. Class act all around from Richland. tenband tv broadcast the ceremony and game if anyone is interested.

He was impressed with the extra "A"

People have too much time on their hands

Not!! Just like his cousin, it's 90% Jon Sr. and his training methods.

Maybe people can't afford it, too. The cost of these programs keeps skyrocketing, and they've been around long enough to see you don't get the return promised.

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.

Not to completely derail this thread, but the Preds are a joke. You mentioned you “spoke to the coaching staff”. That’s great. They will tell you anything you want to hear to get your tryout money and if your kid sucks up to them enough, or your wife is hot and flirtatious, your kid will make the team. However, he won’t see any playing minutes unless you are ponying up and taking weekly private or small group lessons with the coach. Thats a fact. DM me for more info. I know these guys personally and have for many years. Nothing ever changes. Ask some of the 08-12’s who have left because of those exact reasons. They over promise, under deliver, and over charge you.

My son played in the AHF. I'll say that the league does a much better job of managing their website. Live scoring, stats, players of the week, all-star teams are all pretty cool and certainly add to the experience. I'll also say that the level of competition in that league is absolutely not worth the 10-12 hours of driving you'd do for a weekend, even if you do get 4-6 games. If you're in PAHL already there's no point in adding that amount of driving and hotel stays to play teams that are equal to the competition out here (at best). If you're an independent team you can easily find equal or better competition within 2-3 hours (Ohio, Buffalo) and not take that long trip on the turnpike.

The "parent coach" discussion always makes me laugh... don't get me wrong there are also parent coaches out there that know very little about the game and just are trying to help, but it's like someone that is good at hockey, knows how to coach, cares about the kids, has considerable hockey knowledge is all of a sudden null and void once they have a kid?! I get it, everyone is worried that kids will be treated "unfairly", "favored", etc. if a parent is behind the bench. If anything, I probably gave/give my kids less leniency when I coached them. I know that isn't always the case, but nothing ever is. So "parent coach", "non-parent coach", who gives a shit. Can the guy/girl coach and treat all the players accordingly? That's all that should matter.

What is the team average GPA and what are the jobs graduates are now in, that is the only stats that will matter after their 4 years 🤷😁

Tier 2 hockey is becoming such a cesspool of misleading organization leadership promoting the pathway to higher opportunities. I was reading various websites promoting that they will connect their players to junior and college teams. Add to that the 9 million private training outfits that charge ridiculous amounts of money to get your kid to the next level and the advent of Tier 2 tournaments advertised as “AAA” showcases or “College Exposure Showcases” where nobody is really there to be scouting. And even worse the advent of competing Tier 2 AA “National Bound Tournament Teams” as we see in Altoona and State College where kids play mostly for A level PAHL teams all season while playing tournaments expecting to compete in States effectively all for an additional $1500-$2000 on top of your regular PAHL team fees. Altoona does have 1 team doing it right as a full season team so I lay credit where it’s due. The increased emphasis on Tier 2 National Bound glory has become an extremely unhealthy obsession in some areas. Add Black Bear to this and the line between non-profit organization and ice rink business is increasingly disappearing where you see organization higher ups running the organization and are on the rink’s payroll at the same time. And with multiple rinks set up this way it creates the potential for the business to keep these programs in cahoots with each other thus creating the shell game where players can be encouraged to be moved around to satisfy their situations of need in their respective organizations and facilities. Based on what I’ve witnessed thus far I’m led to believe that’s already happened. it’s a sad reality with the direction hockey is going in these parts I think the volunteer run organization that’s there for the kids is fading away fast for adults to profit off these kids thus driving up costs and potentially driving families to the point they can’t afford to play all while not re-investing a portion of those funds back into facilities to where we have quality customer service oriented staff, clean restrooms and locker rooms that don’t have puddles of piss on the floor, mold growing in the showers, no extra glass on hand requiring plywood as a fix, as well as effective preventive maintenance on the aging chillers, dehumidifiers and Zambonis A lot of these rinks are not taken care of and it shows I hope I’m wrong but it seriously concerns me where we are going to be say 5 years down the road I’m a realist and I know it’s never going to happen but it’s time to refocus on being honest and doing what’s right for kids End rant!!

Unfortunately all the independent/“faux AAA” teams impact the other players and families who would love to play a good, competitive, LOCAL schedule. That is why people get frustrated with organizations like Icemen that take some talent and travel all over the place instead of playing PAHL.

I'm going to take a guess that at the upper ages, especially 18u, that kids are deciding to play for school only. And why not? I think it's hard for a lot of kids to do both, or have little enough interest in anything else to have the time to do both. Now if these club teams just played PAHL and a few tournaments, that's one thing. You can do 20 games, maybe 4 tournament weekends, 20 school games, and the practices to go with it if you wanted to. But add another 35-45 independent games to that, and now you're playing more than an NHL'er. And going to school, and trying to have a life in there on top of it. Makes it not very easy. They come to the realization that chasing PAHL/Independant isn't worth what they might have to give up. Hockey is supposed to be a fun thing, maybe there are other things they enjoy, too. Whether it's spending time with friends, a part time job, spending a lot of time looking at colleges, wanting a few nights to play video games, or whatever else they could be doing instead of being at the rink 6 nights a week. Friends going out to the movies this weekend? Girlfriend wants to go to the school dance? Too bad, you have to drive to Philadelphia or Columbus to play a handful of games to count towards your My Hockey Rankings. It's stressful, it consumes a big chunk of free time, you might get split up from your friends you like playing with, higher costs, etc. And it becomes increasingly apparent for just about everybody that there is no scholarship to Notre Dame or getting drafted to the OHL coming any time soon. Or alternatively, you can play for school. Still be part of a team, still play good hockey, and actually get a crowd engaged in the game, other than half a dozen dads yelling over the glass at you. And unlike the independant teams, you're actually playing for something. You're at school half of your day, 5 days a week with your peers. It's more likely some of those kids you go to school with care more about talking about and cheering for their school team than the Pittsburgh Icemen, or the Allegheny Badgers did over the weekend. I don't know if I'm right, but my guess is that is contributing to where these players have gone.

I follow your argument, but I disagree entirely. It's been my experience that closed tryouts are far better for both the organization and the players. I do not agree with the implication that most organizations are holding closed tryouts to hide the actual potential playing level of the resulting teams from parents. From an org's perspective, you don't have parents yelling at their kids during tryouts, or accosting evaluators during or after tryouts about their kids. From a player's perspective, observing closed tryouts both as a parent and as a coach/evaluator for years has convinced me that most kids play better at tryouts when their parents aren't watching and preparing their withering car coaching speech the whole time. Most parents have no idea how to evaluate their player relative to their peers. That's just a sad fact. There are many things about how organizations run tryouts that I have issues with, but I am absolutely convinced that the benefits of closed tryouts far outweigh any costs.

To anybody that thinks a kid moving up from AA to AAA in the later stages of their youth careen can’t be as good as their little Johnny who has always played AAA, go pound salt. I know a kid who didn’t play AAA until U18. Was the best Dman on his AAA team. Went on to NAHL, and then Division 1. His teammates have not have the same success.

What does it say when an organization has to hold a supplemental tryout to fill open spots for a AAA Tier 1 team? It’s gonna be a long, long season.

@Chimp Life has earned an indefinite content moderation for being a nuisance! Congrats to Chimp for being the first of 2024 to get this honor!

They did have a Head Coach wearing an ankle monitor this season. I think that proves your point

One would suspect that the AAA Champion would disagree quite strongly?

The Pittsburgh area is great for tourneys - just not there in Delmont. Alpha, Baierl, UPMC and Neville have plenty of hotels and restaurants nearby and all are close enough where multiple facilities could co-host together.

I feel bad for the 18u teams. It's the last year of youth hockey for most of the players. They battled hard all year to earn a trip to beautiful Delmont, PA.

I think more than one thing can be true here. Do teams typically get screwed over at Belmont? - Yes Was Armstrong the strongest 18AA PAHL team by a good margin? - Yes

100% - publish them anytime possible, but once published they're final. Parents F off. Don't get me wrong, so do I enjoy seeing my kid's accomplishments where others can see them on web pages such as the PIHL and others as they progressed. However, having watched any of those games I will also know which kid won important face-offs. Blocked shots, hard fore-check, positioning and all the other things nemesis mentioned are what create good hockey players and better teammates. I can leave the rink knowing his stats, if any but more importantly acknowledge the little things that few people notice. Sort of like Lindsey Horan said about US soccer fans, this really does apply to a lot of hockey parents. For the 14 and under crowd on here, don't get so caught up in the skills training as there is far too much of that. Find Coaches who will teach your kid how to play the game and they will be successful not only in hockey, but in life.

People who are so fascinated and caught up in stats are almost 100% of the time the ones living vicariously through their kids because they NEVER accomplished anything in their athletic lifetime.

I’m sure Black Bear would be very quick to buy the facility and keep it operational.

If we need more time for the game to be completed before the curfew clock expires, how about allowing players at 16U AA and 18U AA levels to touch up on off sides and also allow them to ice the puck on the PK. Less stoppages of play will allow more time for OT or a shootout. That way we kill two birds with one stone.

The reason we have a shortage of officials around the country is due to the post calling out the official by name. I have done games for 20+ years and the behavior of coaches, players, and fans has gotten progressively worse over that time period. Please DO NOT take this as me "calling out" everyone. There are some coaches and players who simply want an explanation and, agree or not, are respectful during the conversation. There are also players, and coaches that decide that they know the game better than everyone involved and thus refuse to have any kind of discussion and simply resort to shouting and swearing until the official has not choice but to impose a penalty for the behavior. That is on the coach and player, not on the official. Unfortunately, this behavior has led to the situation where you have no choice but to take whatever official you can get because no body else will do it. Also, this also isn't exclusive to just hockey, there's a shortage of officials across all sports because of the behavior exhibited by parents, coaches, and players. The simple answer to this is to say "if you think it is so easy, do it yourself", but the earlier post indicates to me that LGP13 probably wouldn't have the temperament to successfully cover a game. There is not a single official in any sport at any level that can say they have never made a mistake on a call or a rule interpretation and that is called being human. I would suggest being appreciative that these men and women are willing to get up at 6AM on a Saturday/Sunday morning so that little Stevie or Sally are able to play their 7AM 10U B game after working their "real job" all week or cover your adult league game at 11PM on a Wednesday night and then get up to go to said job. Always remember, if the officials don't show up, nobody plays.

I disagree to an extent. AAA in our area grew out of a crappy AA (PAHL) alternative (for 80% of player a few years ago). Kids wanting to work hard vs jag off. Kids wanting to pick practice over a Friday night football game. Kids wanting to show up at practice vs stay home and play video games. AAA had accountability (which most pahl orgs did not). Today it is probably different with dillusuonal parents. But when my kid played he moved to AAA because he was annoyed with the level of responsibility, accountability and dedication in the team, organization and league.

Throw in visiting teams playing at Armstrong’s barn and getting homered by the refs goes into their ranking. The stupid fair play point is in jeopardy for any visiting team before kids lace up the skates. It is an absolute joke. Too bad ballless PAHL stopped posting game stats to indicate penalty minutes for both teams. Seems anabolic hockey parents were up in arms their kid didn’t get credited for an apple in recent games and PAHL caved. Usually the penalty minute ratio at Belmont is 3/1 in favor of the visiting team.

This is a good discussion with some interesting points. From my novice perspective, I am wondering if it makes sense for PAHL to activate the stats tracking tools for the U18 and U16 levels for sure and maybe even U14, or at least the AA levels for some of the age groups below U16. I do see some validity to ignoring the stats for the lower ages/lower divisions. The scorekeeper is usually a parent volunteer from the home team. Many are not familiar with scorekeeping and there is often a rush to complete the score sheet as soon as the horn sounds. I get why the stats are enigmatic in those situations, and it probably is too much distraction for an A minor squirt to focus on individual stats, especially when they are inconsistently recorded. Does a hybrid tweak make sense? Keep/report the stats for the upper tier teams where there is probably more knowledgeable/experienced people serving as score keepers, but keep the stats muted for the more development oriented divisions?

Better yet, spend you off-season time on soccer, lax, swimming, etc.

Hockey isn't about fun. It's about getting to the NHL. You obviously haven't been to a white mite game lately.

Problem #1 with this is that a squirt team has played more than 25 games before Thanksgiving.

Although it is easy to forget on this board, hockey is a pretty tight community. When someone is hurting, you do see people step up all the time.

Most accurate, non arguable, post in years.

No speaking for @Danner27but often these verbal commits don't work out because the University will withdraw the offer closer to the actual Freshman year when they get better players to commit. They aren't obligated to actually take you, but it also limits other Universities from talking to you so you can get screwed doing it too early.

This^^^^^ PPE coaches have been included in the evaluation process and lo and behold, many gold buckets always seem to advance ahead of those that were more deserving. I think MidAms are a sham and a complete waste.

Exactly. It's funny that we are all having productive discussions here, with each of us offering suggestions -- right or wrong -- as to what the problem may be. The more I read, however, the more I feel it's just a combination of everything. It's not just one reason. You guys are saying eleven declines is abnormal, but I know of at least three teams that had eight declines or more. I honestly don't know why. I agree that you normally see one or two declines on teams. We are seeing crazy declines, movement like we've never seen, and supplementals after supplementals because of it. I can say it's sad, though, because it's the good kids and their families who ultimately suffer.

But saying, "my kid is such a great hockey player, he's billeting in Ohio to play" sounds so much better at the water cooler.

I wasn't saying AA players aren't capable or deserving of moving up to AAA teams at that age. I was being more critical of the organizations. They treat AAA as a club, you either belong or you don't, it's hard to break in. So they keep bringing in "AAA" kids that peaked when they were 11 years old. Reminds me of NHL coaches, same 30 dudes keep switching teams. How often does a new up and coming coach get a chance?

Look no further than Michael Bunting as a shining example. Never played AAA Midget until his final year of eligibility.

And that is why we have aaa teams that can't fill. The aaa teams think that everyone wants to play aaa. But in reality there are not enough customers willing to pay for extra travel and the same level of hockey you could most likely get local.

Congratulations to all the teams that won their Divisions this weekend. Too bad all we get is scores! No game sheets to see how the games went! Or for that matter any coverage at all. Does PAHL have a facebook or Twitter site? It's ashamed how far behind Black Bear Tier 2 they are. Hopefully we will be able to find the MidAms on Score Sheet this weekend. If PAHL is not going to recognize their top AA players, I would suggest all those teams Join the Atlantic Hockey Federation and have their own Western PA Division.

Top 5? Armstrong is the gold standard for homerism, and hearing the Armstrong faithful parents attempt to say it isn’t so is comic relief.

PAHL wants to charge the money and do the least work possible. Basically they run an organized in-house league that travels to play. I can see it getting to where they're being challenged with a competitor now and will probably end up rolling over and giving up as they continue to lose players and teams. However, I'll add that the AHF/THF groups on Facebook have an awful lot of complaining about "my kid faced 60 shots but the scoresheet only said 58", "they totally missed my kid's secondary assists 3 time this weekend", or any different incarnations of that you can think of. So I can see where PAHL doesn't want hounded week in and week out with those kind of complaints.

ECHL average pay is somewhere in the 700/week range. Minimum is like 500-something and up to around 1000. Very few if any players around here would have the ability to make a team. It might be a "lower" league but when it comes down to it those guys are closer to nhl players than the best players around here are to the ECHL.

well aren't you just a ray of sunshine. I did some research : The Colonials got off to their best start in program history in 2021 at 11-3 and saw themselves ranked within the USCHO Top 20 for much of the season, reaching a program-best #17 in January. At 15-9 overall and 10-5-0 in AHA play, the Colonials earned a West Division title while boasting the AHA Coach of the Year as well as conference MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Defenseman of the Year. The top offensive team in AHA and one of the most prolific in all of college hockey, RMU's 85 goals was one of the highest totals in all of NCAA DI, and their 25% success rate on the power-play was tops in the conference. - this happens to be the SAME year the program was ended by the President. Schooley's team has reached four AHA title games and raised three championship banners since the start of the decade. After making the program's first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament via an AHA postseason title in 2013-14, the Colonials ruled the league during the grueling regular season in 2014-15 and 2015-16, winning 24 games in each of those years. Additionally - several players from RMU have gone on to play professional hockey on some level. Then let's talk about the women's program - 4 women played in the Olympics - 2 earning medals. 3 banners for winning CHA and several women drafted into Professional Women's hockey.

If I am not mistaken, one of the things that RMU doesn't like about the Island facility is that it is off campus, and therefore not as easy for resident students to attend games at. This was one of the stated advantages that the on campus basketball arena had over the hockey arena. So I assume they hope they'll get more spectators at an on campus arena.

Tryout season has been made way more difficult than it needs to be.

PAHL would solve a lot if issues if they had AA Major and AA Minor divisions at 12U, 14U (already exists), and 16U. Prevents the scenario mentioned here and also prevents peewee minor teams from going independent, which is when that nonsense starts to happen. PAHL needs to understand that the birth year model is here to stay whether they like it or not. Adapt or become irrelevant.