RefHannah

On 5/29/2025 at 11:10 PM, nemesis8679 said:

We'll see what happens by 16u.

Truth!

Are you guys suggesting that this birthyear is atypical? I can think back to most teams, back to the 2004s whose rosters at squirt looked nothing like their roster at Midget.

If you want to have some fun, go find the rosters of the Brick Teams from 7-10 years ago. Those are supposedly the "Best" 10 year olds, go see how many are no longer relevant by the time they are 15/16U.  Surprising number of kids playing PAHL or PIHL level, or not playing at all. Yes LJ and Humphreys are still good.  Haha

Any confirmed coaching changes in pihl yet this off season? I heard rumors of some pretty successful teams opening up their positions for applicants in the last few weeks. But, I guess Bruce boudreau or John Tortorella didn't come into town to apply so they're keeping status quo?

On 4/2/2025 at 12:41 PM, fafa fohi said:

All-in with Excel and NC tuition would probably be between $35-40K a year.  I don't think U18 players that are 18 years old have to attend NC, but I may be wrong.

Shattuck St Mary's, Avon Old Farms, Mt Saint Charles, South Kent, Bishop Kearney, Are all in the 60-70k neighborhood. Yes those are boarding schools, but those are the numbers we are talking about 

Now if you want to uproot your family, move to some other city like Cleveland and play for the Barons and go to public school, you can probably save some money Vs the Pens/NC option. 

The fact is hockey is expensive, the higher the level, the more expensive it gets.  

6 hours ago, fafa fohi said:

Western PA ain't Minnesota, sport.

I don't think people can grasp the difference between Minnesota high school hockey and PIHL. The best and deepest teams in PIHL could not compete against most teams in the Minnesota. Its safe to say a PIHL All Star team couldn't beat a Top 10 Minnesota team.

Most of the top MN team's rosters each include 5 or 6 players drafted to the USHL or WHL. Many of those kids have already been called up to play some games this season for a Junior team. A number of teams have D1 commits. There are kids in the top 50 on NHL Central scouting list for this year's NHL draft currently playing, not played there a couple years ago, CURRENTLY PLAYING.

Can anybody point to a single PIHL player this year that has a D1 commitment, drafted by Major Junior, or is on the NHL Central scouting list? Anyone?

On 2/4/2025 at 10:56 AM, hockeyisgreat said:

QV  had a backup goalie!  They should be OK come playoffs!

Just wondering if this comment is more disrespectful of a pretty good Plum team that has been close in nearly all their losses this year. Or more disrespectful of a goalie that could have been in the PIHL All Star game had he lived in one of about 30 other school districts. A 3-2 game that could have gone either way?!?  I know we aren't used to close games in PIHL in the bloated Single A. Take a look, QV has some good players beyond just one goalie.
 

My recollection is that a certain gentleman transferred the "Pittsburgh Hornets"  ownership to the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite in exchange for a spot on the BOD, a consulting job, a coaching role and a fancy title.  Tax fillings indicate financial compensation for this transaction as well. 

At the time, the newly formed Pittsburgh Penguins Elite was primarily interested in the Tier 1 USAH/MidAm "classification", but one would assume they still own the Hornet's name, logo, and other associated property. But, perhaps they relinquished control of those things at some point.  Or perhaps they always remained the property of that same gentleman, who appears to no longer have any connection to the Pens Elite Board and he has since changed organizations.

One could speculate that he is now leaving the other organization and is the one involved in this revival. Or could this other organization (whose name no longer carries a corporate sponsorship) be rebranding themselves? The Bantam and older model seems to fit with that organizations tradition.

Since this is all just speculation on my part, would it be a stretch to suggest that Black Bear might also be involved? And might as well guess this isn't just a revival or rebranding but rather a hostile takeover?  A hockey organization given the boot by Black Bear and subsequently replaced by a new organization, it's happened a few times before. 

A trend I'm seeing recently at the AAA level at least, more and more Russian/Ukraine/European players coming and playing on American AAA teams. I'm talking even 13u aged kids.  I know there have always been some teams that had a few, Esmark being a perfect example, but not this young, and not this many. Carolina, Florida, Columbus, NJ. Have their families moved here, are they billets? Anybody else seeing this?

Talk about it being hard for local kids to play NCAA, It's getting hard for them to make a decent Bantam team!

First of all, in A and the open divisions you have more bad teams than good teams.  So you have players on the top teams putting up five points a night against garbage teams, so those kids stats look impressive.  But individually they're not necessarily any better than some kids on the bottom teams.  If you are on the ice with four Plugs, you aren't likely to get the stats of someone playing on a line of AAA players.  Therefore it's good that some of the star players on the lesser teams get recognized. 

Anybody take a look at the goalies, there are teams with backup goalies better than some of the kids that made the All-Star team. 
 

1 hour ago, Icebucket said:

I wasn't at the game but watched the whole thing a few times on livebarn. It's a very bad look for CV. Not sure if it's just a team that isn't used to losing and couldn't handle it or what..

 

Of course they don't like to lose, but maybe they also like to fight? They had a pretty good Donny Brook with Plum I think it's was last year.

7 hours ago, zam said:

The formula should be used as part of the decision making, but so should the roster, and the success of their JV and MS teams. 

I've said this for years that evaluating the roster should play into it. And the argument against that is teams would just add their better players after the schedule is released.  But take Avonworth for example, arguably the 6 best players in their district aren't even playing for the team.  If they were they would probably be contending for the AAA championship. And I know every year there are teams that can't get their talented players to play PIHL, and that's nothing new.  But a couple players can make all the difference, especially between A and AA.

1 hour ago, aaaahockey said:

Yeah too hard to tell without knowing if they are playing full rosters etc.  USC has to be disappointed if they were playing full rosters with the results although it looks like they made the playoffs anyway.  

USC is going to be fine, they gave a senior JV goalie her first Varsity action. They had already clinched advancing out of their bracket.  She played admirably, but I don't think I'd read much into that single game because it was game that didn't matter to them. The score really wasn't indicative of the game, still credit Avonworth for keeping them to only 2 goals.

BP is it going to rely on defense and goaltending to stay in games and eek out wins.  They aren't very deep, and lack goal scoring.  They scored a total of two goals in the three games. 

If you are a competitive player and play hockey long enough its fairly likely you will get a misconduct penalty. Whether it be from your arm coming up while making hit on a smaller player, an opponent turns late in a corner and you hit him from behind, or an official thinks he saw something and makes a strict call.  But if you have 5 of those in a season, or you find yourself on a team of players that takes one of those every other game, then i am afraid you really aren't playing hockey.  At that point, you really should either play in a non-checking league until you learn to play, or perhaps hockey isn't for you. 

I would almost go as far as to say a typical player should be able to play an entire season without getting 5 Minor penalties, let alone 5 Misconduct Penalties!

Looks like a better showing for the MidAm 16s at national camp. A few Pens made the final all star game. I would have thought a couple additional Pittsburgh kids might have been contenders also based on some of the social media posts through the week of course those aren't the most reliable. Did anybody watch any of the games. Has the final team been announced? 

U17 camp is over and the MidAm team unfortunately finished near the bottom and doesn't appear that they had any players selected to move on to the Hlinka Camp. Was anybody there? Any surprises? They take nearly 40 guys, you would think atleast 1 would advance.

Next up the 16 camp, anybody have expectations for them?

22 hours ago, aaaahockey said:

Again I don't want to make this about specific players but at one birthyear the consensus two best pens defensemen didn't make it.  That shocks me.  Some of the kids who did make it shocks me.  I could be totally wrong - maybe the consensus is wrong?

In my experience the defensemen that show well in these type tryouts are the flashy selfish ones.  Pickle's post (THANK YOU!)  suggests they note the players that stand out like a "3 stars of the game". So a defenseman that does multiple escape moves in his own end and skates the puck up the ice and gets a goal or assist is going to look a lot more impressive than your "consensus top pens" that don't ever give up any scoring chances and just move the puck up to their teamates. That same flashy defenseman might be on the ice for every goal against but that isn't noticed as much as his skating around with the puck. That's just my guess not knowing the particular players or their style of play. 

Thanks again Pickles for the Comprehensive explanation of the process! And if my speculation about defenseman is wrong feel free to correct me. 

In my experience the top 5 or 6 Pens Elite players on most of their teams are in their own level. Occasionally an exceptional player at another local organization could be in this group, a few years ago an 06 Shaha player, maybe a top Esmark player. These would be obvious choices for National Camp.

After this level there are probably another 30 local players that make up the next tier of players. These are the rest of the PPE team, the best players on other independent AAA teams, and maybe some exceptional AA players.  Any of these kids COULD make national camp, a couple will, but it wouldn't be expected.  

The next group of players and there are probably over a 100 of them are typical AA PAHL players. Very good players, successful high school players , they show glimpses of being a higher level, but aren't productive against higher level teams. Some get invited to MidAm tryouts, but many get left out. None are expected to advance to national camp, so it's hard to call them "snubs" But since they are similarly skilled, when some get invited to try out, the others feel they should also.

Just my humble option on the local landscape, each birth year differs a little. Agree or disagree?

15 hours ago, aaaahockey said:

Just to clarify I mean the ones who made it past the midam camp.  Some of the choices midam evaluators made were mind boggling.  There were obviously some snubs to make it to the midam camp to begin with but you would think they would be better at evaluating once you get in. 

So the Mid Ams invite over 100 players to try out and send roughly 15 players to national camp.  My question when someone suggests there are snubs is this, was a "top ten" player left out of the tryout? Or not chosen for camp?

Because obviously these things are subjective, the 90th best kid might be "snubbed" for the 130th best kid.  Or the 18th best kid might get chosen over the 14th best kid. But I'm my experience the top kids still make it through. Am I wrong in this case?

National camps start next week, with the U17s. Rosters are posted, I like that the teams are based on districts, But I'm guessing MidAm will struggle again. Do any local guys have a shot at making the Hlinka team? 

Younger rosters don't seem to be posted yet, although maybe they are hidden on the MidAm site somewhere. 

If by that age you aren't already being scouted for the Brick team, then do you even hockey bro?

In all seriousness, go wherever it's a good fit and the child enjoys themselves. Add additional skills and skating classes if your player is willing. If you need to prod them to go then don't do it.

The trashing of organizations that occurs on this board is directly proportional to the number of people that have been spurned by that organization.  The organizations like PPE or Esmark that cut or didn't call back many of your kids face the most ire.  On the other end of the spectrum are Beaver Badgers and Arctic Foxes that take everyone and so everybody is happy. Nobody is coming on here and complaining they got picked for team 4 when they deserved to be on team 3. Thankfully. Lol

"out coached" in high school sports is really funny! You're only as good as the players in your district that come out to play.  And you better hope you have a stud in net every 4 years if you want long term success!

Can anybody point to a local coach that CONSISTENTLY took a bunch of mediocre hockey players and turned them into champions? And I don't mean just a one year overachieving team.

Five Pens Elite players were drafted into the USHL yesterday. Most impressively they are all locals, not the usual out of towners we often see coming in for one or two years of exposure at Penns then leaving.  

Three former Vengeance players were also drafted.  All players who followed their ring leaders out of Alpha last year when things fell apart there. Doesn't appear any of the remaining vengeance players were picked. Would they have been picked if they stayed there, would others have been picked if they left, I guess we will never know.  But I'm sure there are more than a few options on this board.

One of those players counts in both categories, HMMM, so I think a total of 7 local kids picked. Probably a record draft class for the area. Kudos.

15 hours ago, TheRightCall said:

The event was non-USA hockey sanctioned, so no penalties would carry over to anything. Nowhere to file a report because there is no governing body for this tournament.

I get that, I also get they probably weren't in the mood after breaking up fights. But as an official, if a score sheet is being kept, which it obviously was, I would feel obligated to accurately document the game. 

39 minutes ago, dazedandconfused said:

Yesterday at Frozen Pond. Check out livebarn right about the 3:30pm segment. Bench clearing brawl involving 2 local teams.

Thanks for sharing! A real exciting end to a meaningless consolation game. Interesting there don't seem to be any penalties on the score sheet for the little dust up.

https://gamesheetstats.com/seasons/6330/games/1829869

39 minutes ago, nemesis8679 said:

I heard he was booted from his prior organization for not taking a certain kid or kids onto his team. Not sure if that's what happened but I've heard the same story from several unrelated persons.

Yet another egotistical hockey coach. You can spot them a mile away by reading their bios. "Played juniors" means paid to play in some meaningless junior league. "Forgo playing NCAA" means no college program wanted him. 

These type of "coaches" have 2 skills, skating and self promotion. If not for that they would be middle school gym teachers or selling snake oil.  But go ahead and keep giving them 80 bucks an hour to "get you to the next level" Make sure you ask them what the next level is and what percent of their clients made the next level.