Spear and Magic Helmet

You would think that if the PIHL wanted to be taken seriously, they'd limit these weekend tournaments too. Some HS teams are playing 40-50 games. Some are barely playing 20.

I agree. The result of this season is well above expectations. Dubas deserves a lot of credit for bringing in a whole group of players who fit in well. Half of the guys who played important roles on the team this year are new to the team this year. Trading Kulak was probably a sign that the organization did not expect to be in the playoffs, so even internally the expectations were low.

Pete Shaffalo, who many of you may know, passed away over the weekend. He was a member of the 1987 state champion USC team and has coached many teams in the area as well as managing and working at local hockey stores. Gofundme below is mostly just for information - there will be tons of donations, so don't feel obligated to make a donation. https://gofund.me/446e18f8a

Split season just doesn't around here. Way too many schools do not have teams and the current high school hockey season lasts way too long. You'd end up with a huge decline in local participation. Plus, we've seen this before in the early 00s. If you mandate split season midget hockey, guess what? Junior hockey doesn't follow those rules. If it's not Jr hockey, then it will be AAU or something else. Someone will come up with an alternative, especially with Black Bear lurking around here. If you want to fix HS hockey, great, would love to hear your plan, but if it involves split season, I can tell you it's not going to work and will probably kill high school hockey.

I will say it is true that not every USA Hockey registered player plays high school hockey. However, it is a much better metric than just school enrollment. It shouldn't be the only criteria, but it is an idea that has a lot of merit because it is easily measurable.

It does seem reasonable for the IUP players to be able to audit the books and see the budget. It is technically a student-run organization. Again, it has been years since I was involved, but in general having 2 ACHA teams on campus sometimes meant the lower team was seen as more of an expense because the student government dollars were typically only granted to the top team.

I definitely have heard this rumor before. That's a tough call. No goalie means no team.

Co-ops exist in just about every other sport. There are almost 2000 co-op agreements across the PIAA for just about every sport, including football. One example of this is NFL cornerback Dane Jackson, who for QV (in football). They are eligible for PIAA playoffs. If the goal is to increase high school hockey participation, you have to include co-ops. I will say that some of the co-ops that exist right now would not pass the PIAA guidelines for a co-op, but I think a goal should be to move to PIAA guidelines. There were many unofficial co-ops in high school hockey from its infancy and personally I'd rather have it out in the open the way it is now. There were way too many teams back in the 70s/80s/90s playing loosey-goosey with eligibility rules when the PIHL did not exist and there wasn't the ability or enthusiasm for monitoring the situation. https://naviga.triblive.com/sports/rosters-opportunities-grow-with-school-sports-co-ops/ https://www.timesonline.com/story/sports/high-school/basketball/2015/06/25/dane-jackson-starred-in-football/18504874007/

Depends on the sport. NIL and all of that is a factor now too. In WPa, there's always money for football and basketball.

It's been a few years since I was involved in ACHA hockey, but what you described could apply to several of the other CHMA and CHE teams as well. Some of the local teams have local, non-parent leadership. Some don't. I won't go into the drama I saw with local teams back in the 2000s/2010s, but I will say that it happens. Most of the time, the overactive parents are the reason the team exists at all, so it's a bit of a double edged sword for sure.

Definitely those two things plus general wealth in the community matter a lot more than just school size.

You are right, the schools around here use school size. However, our schools are smaller than those on your side of the state, and at least in WPa, school size is not a good predictor of hockey team strength. A lot of the medium to big schools around here have almost no hockey players.

I think it does make a lot of sense to use "varsity eligible players" as a metric rather than school population. There are plenty of big schools around here that have almost 0 hockey players - I'm thinking Ringgold, Woodland Hills, Penn Hills, and a few others. It always bothers me that school size is blindly applied as a criteria when it's not even close to being the most important criteria. It's tough to see pure schools emerging from D2. I support D2, and certainly we have plenty of co-ops in other sports like football, but to me it makes more sense to have pure schools start in A and then move up or down as needed. years ago, the eastern PA teams used AAA as an "open" division, meaning anyone who wanted to play AAA could, then divided what was left between AA and A. They have the advantage that their high schools are generally much bigger than ours.

I don't know what the best solution is. I do know that there are teams that were in A and are now in AAA. They would have folded if they were forced to stay in AAA while they were bad.

Who is the "best member"?