zam

Either patience has wore thin at Avonworth after playing 2 years in the A league with no championships, or maybe there was some scandal??? but the Varsity and JV coaches were supposedly just axed.

1 hour ago, Deke715 said:

You watch the video close enough, there is a player that's not even dressed, helmet on but wearing shorts out in the middle of all of this!!! 

CJ sending his Stella Sh*ts off the bench to join in. WTF   

For reasons unknown to me, they continue to let this guy lead our youth.

What a disgrace!

Wow, this seems a bit personal to you. Did your kid not make the cut for his spring team? 

And no I don't condone coaches sending players out on the ice to seek retribution, if that's what happened.

8 minutes ago, sadday4hockey said:

What's the plan for the 12U team whose roster is posted with 7 skaters and 2 goalies?

 

Short shifts

8 minutes ago, Hockeydad11 said:

Lots of teams advertising themselves AA that wont be AA.  

I'm shocked!

2 hours ago, aaaahockey said:

I think it's a little more nuanced than that.  I would give pens credit for a players development if they played both 14u and 16u years there.  These are the most important.  I wouldn't give them credit for a 12 year old who leaves for prep school. That seems a little silly.  I also don't give them credit for someone they import for the 16u team for a year who then immediately leaves to play juniors.  The hard fact is there are very very few pens players who start young and stay in the program through 16u and are successful.  As a matter of fact, and speaking to their own development model, not a lot of kids develop to even make the 16u team (or maybe they are leaving due to all the extra requirements/money like excel north catholic etc.).  

I think I found 1 player that fits your criteria! 

From Western PA
Played,PPE 14U,15U,16U,
Invited to NTDP tryout 
Drafted USHL
Boston University Commit
Drafted 3rd round NHL

Who gets the credit?

Maybe we could give a little credit to the kids themselves for taking some natural talent and adding in a bunch of hard work and dedication. And the team or organization where they played or trained only played a small part.

I'm pretty sure if Mooney adopted any of our kids years ago and sprinkled his magic training on them, they still wouldn't be representing the USA at world championships. 

7 hours ago, nemesis8679 said:

He's right, and the family knows how to hype the kid.

Sometimes it's hard to keep up with all the many wisdoms this forum provides. So far it's generally understood that,  

Good players leave PPE but we should credit the players' success to the team they left for. 

Good players come from elsewhere to PPE but credit should go to the organization they came from.

The new one I got to wrap my head around, 

Good players start at PPE and stay there but we should credit the father's training and hype. 

Any others I'm missing?

The best kids don't stick around anywhere for 18u. The best kids are playing USHL, OHL, NTDP at 16u and certainly by 17u.  And i'd guess a good number of the "next best" kids are playing some other Junior League by 18u as well. 

6 minutes ago, Happy Hockey Fan said:

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. 

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?

21 minutes ago, HappyHockeyPucks said:

Vengeance 2009 - Why are they having so much trouble filling out the roster? The 2009 renegades team had several really good AA players that could fill out a roster. 

It's possible those kids aren't interested in a more rigorous AAA practice/travel schedule. But it's more likely, AAA players (parents) don't want to play with half a team of AA players.   It's all perception. Unfortunately you don't see many PAHL AA players making the jump to a AAA team at these ages no matter how good they are.  Instead you see these "Has-been AAA players" move around from other "AAA" organizations.  Sounds better saying we brought these kids in from the Barons than the Lawrence County Lightning.

39 minutes ago, No Politics said:

And blindly.

But... "That only happens to other people.  We'll be different."

44 minutes ago, sadday4hockey said:

I simply can't fathom how far people will go to chase something that's not happening in 99.5% of the cases.

 

One need not look any further than the Great Walt Disney who said "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."

But if, in fact, you do want to look past the great Walt Disney, perhaps The Office's Michael Scott said it best "You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take. Wayne Gretzky"

35 minutes ago, YardSale said:

I think he is asking in the context of the low numbers at other tryouts.  Are there Pens cuts coming to the rescue?

Other than the birthyear when the Pens drop the black team and only field one team, is there ever a large enough cut of players to "Come to the rescue??" At least historically maybe 2 or 3 players get cut from a team, they either go to prep school, Barons, or Esmark. Has that changed?

12 hours ago, sadday4hockey said:

Fafa, there's a reason they took the Cardinal Wuerhl name off the school.

Believe me I'm not trying to defend Catholics and their dirty little secrets, but you make it sound like Cardi W roamed the halls of North Catholic assaulting students. 

I just watched a few minutes of that YouTube game, there are guys wearing white practice jerseys with numbers taped on the back, a couple of them could barely skate! It's impressive that even 100 people would come to watch that. I did see a fight though, so that could explain it.

Is it safe to assume with the additional number of games and travel involved that paid coaches for Club hockey is an even higher amount? Or maybe pay is higher in PIHL because of club sponsors and fundraising.

A few years ago a friend on a local AAA club team said each family had to pay 1000 cash to start the season and they put it in a bag and gave it to the coach as his salary. Not sure if he got paid additionally from the organization.

17 hours ago, Nepotisim_anyone said:

Does this include dad coaches 🤯

I assumed Dad coaches get paid a warm up jacket and kid plays for free.

Can we just get a permanent thread pinned at the top called "Pens Elite Problems"??

It's the most amazing thing about this message board! There are roughly six or seven "current" threads, they all have different headings, but every one of them has turned to something related to Penns Elite. And nearly every one of the posts starts with "I think" or "I heard". With so many contradicting theories from one thread to the other.

One thread says they only let locals play the younger ages and it's a fundraiser for the program and they replace all the local kids by the older ages, but another says they don't care about 18U so they let locals play without going to North Catholic. 

One thread says all the best kids leave town to go play elsewhere. Another thread says all the best kids are out of towners.  One thread says Excel and North Catholic aren't "required" for the good players that it's typically the 15,16 and 17, 18th best players have to do Excel.  

So what I gather it's a Fundraiser thru Middle School. Strict North Catholic requirement for freshmen and sophomores, money grab with a bunch of schmo's playing Junior and Senior year.

Still in the hunt to play adult league???

The best player in PIHL could just as easily be on a D2 team or a single A team than on a PIHL AA or AAA team.  

If the co-op schools are in their own division, shouldn't Private/Catholic schools also be in their own division?  

There's the suggested retail price, and then there's the price that the Insiders and the top players pay. It's all negotiated depending on how much leverage you have. 

Just now, Happy Hockey Fan said:

I haven’t paid attention to that lately, but I do remember kids joking about a particular player doing that a few years ago. But doesn’t mean that all kids do it, so to discount everyone’s assists based on the fact that some kids do it is probably not the best solution. 

It's a combination of some players "claiming" assists from the refs after a goal, some refs not caring or unable to determine goal scorers, and some coaches/organizations sending in stat corrections to the league.  If you see a team that consistently has 2 assists credited for every goal, you can be pretty sure either the coach called them in after the game, or the players followed the ref to the score keeper. Most of the time it's inconsequential,  my kid has had missed assists at times and assists he didn't deserve credited to him other times. 

2 hours ago, sample39 said:

He's a fantastic player, but over 40% of his points came in games against the bottom 4 teams in D2.  Teams that would struggle to beat or even compete with good Tier 1 and Tier 2 JV teams.  

I don't want to make a case for the D2 kids because I haven't seen them in person, but it appears the Stellar 6 Player from the A Blue division also got nearly half of his points against some really awful bottom 5 teams. And quite honestly the other half of his points came against the playoff teams in that blue division. And if the playoffs showed us anything it's that other that CV, the rest of that division was also pretty bad. Is he a good player? Maybe. But he probably only gets a fraction of those stats if he played against the likes of QV, Shaler, Indiana, GB, Meadville, NC all season. Not taking anything away from the young man, he led the team to the Pens Cup, Undefeated Season, Freshman and all that, but it's the same situation.

14 minutes ago, kid310050 said:

He doesn't run the entire arena he is the VP of the Tier 1 organization

Oh Man! You aren't disputing this guys legal troubles, just disputing his job title?

An ankle bracelet sounds like more than an unpaid parking ticket... Was he even able to travel with the team?

Each birth year is slightly different depending on who is coaching and which organization the strongest players gravitate toward.  I'm assuming you are asking about the younger ages based on your question.  Generally speaking Pens Elite is always going to field the strongest team in the area. You can look at all the birth years for the last number of years at My Hockey Ratings.com and see they are typically in the top 12 teams in the country.
Historically Esmark was their closest rival, and they take most of the Pens cast offs and add some foreigners. They are typically strong only at 16u and 18u. They only started having younger teams a couple years ago, one of them was ridiculously bad last season. 
A couple years ago Vengeance put together a successful 2008 team that was equal to Pens for a few years, but since then fell apart and most of their best players went to pens or left town. They never really got traction on any other birth year besides that one.
Any of the other "AAA" teams your results will vary.  This is the first I heard the Aviators fielding a "AAA" team.  A couple years ago their organization consistent of like 2 A minor teams and didn't have home ice anywhere. So better watch out, You are definitely playing the role of guinea pig on that one.

My suggestion for any team you are considering, find out who the coach is, find out what their reputation is and how long they've been coaching. Look up how successful they were last year.  If they have an open skate or a tune-up go to that. If your kid is the best kid there, go somewhere else. If your kid is the worst one there play single A Pahl hockey.

5 hours ago, TheRightCall said:

 And, he didn’t sacrifice his high school years billeting out of town and missing the rites of passage like homecoming and prom. 

 

Some may say the life experiences of living with a host family in a new city, and traveling the US and Canada while developing relationships with that family, coaches, and players all while pushing oneself to succeed at the highest level of their sport might be more beneficial than attending a dance at the Burgettstown Days Inn.