Spear and Magic Helmet

Wait, what is this about? What is going in this complex?

Agreed. High school shouldn't be playing on the weekends.

That is a good point about the MHR, and I agree that the worst and best in all of 14U A would be a pretty uneven matchup. I'm not totally against having 2 or even 3 A divisions. I just think 6-8 is too many and probably includes some teams that would be OK in AA.

As someone else said, they want to play with their friends. However, one beef I have with the current system in PAHL is how many levels there are in A. A major, A minor. Then black, gold, white. So 6 variations of A. Why so many? When I was involved, it was AAA, AA, A, and B. AAA did have birth year teams, but no one else really did. I guess you could make a case for a birth year team in a "nationals bound" AA program, but why bother at A? Nowadays, they don't even use B for 18U or 16U, presumably so no one's feelings get hurt by being on a B team, but who are you really fooling by splitting A up into so many slices? The problem with this is you end up with a division that has teams from Erie driving to Morgantown and/or State College, and you have teams from the South Hills not playing each other. I agree that you don't want every game to be an 14-0 blowout, but it seems like there is too much effort to call everyone A and then have to align each division to make every single game "fair". If you use bigger buckets, you'll probably let it even out. I think this is a part of the reason everyone feels they have to have a "hybrid" team and invent other reasons to say their team is better even though they are just "A". Some of the better "A" teams should just be in AA. I don't really care if they self-declare themselves to be AA. If they think they are good, they can play AA and get destroyed every game if they aren't self-aware enough to place themselves correctly.

Yes, I think that's what he means. The Chicago Showcase started in 1985 and I believe was last held in 2009. The Pittsburgh team did have a few good showings in the 2000s. There were a few local players who made connections there that helped them get to prep school, junior, etc. In general, there were quite a few players (not just from Pittsburgh) who credited this tournament with helping advance their careers. I believe that the local team required participants to play on a PIHL team. Since 2010, it has been called the Americas Showcase. It was held in PGH for a several years, then moved to St Louis, and not sure when they last held it. I don't think this incarnation of the tournament had quite as many good teams, and I don't think it had the track record of the Chicago Showcase as far as player placement goes. However, times have changed a lot in the last 13 years or so and I'm sure that's a part of it too. https://www.americasshowcasestlouis.com/page/show/3414808-about

Who is getting paid in PAHL and MidAM? I was only aware that the PAHL commissioner was a paid position? What other jobs are paid?

What is the Viper Stars? I feel like, years ago, they had the Vipers and the Viper Stars, which was a result of NHAHA and the Pittsburgh/Steel City Stars merging. However, what was once the Viper Stars seems to be Esmark now.

In the 1990s, there were 3 triple A organizations - Steel City/Pittsburgh Stars, Mt. Lebanon/Pittsburgh Hornets, and Amateur (later Junior) Penguins. I believe the Amateur Penguins was the only one of those three to be AAA in the 1980s. A lot of things hurt HS hockey in the area. It hurt when the PIHL started to require things like minimum grades and students being enrolled in the school they played for. All of a sudden, there was some off-ice accountability. I am sure there was a lot of rule-bending that all of a sudden ended, and in some cases probably resulted in the death of some teams. Even mighty Meadville, who dominated the 1990s, was a victim around 10-15 years ago when it came out that half of their players were enrolled at Cochranton HS and not Meadville (their justification was it is the same school district, and technically there was some precedent with Armstrong Central in the 1990s). Then the new wave of rinks in the 1990s and 2000s hurt because they increase ice fees to cover the cost of their newly constructed facilities. Somewhere around 2000, the Easton Synergy stick came out and normalized paying $100 for a stick, and about the same time, the top end skates starting increasing in price $50 or $100 every year. Top end skates were around $250 in 1995, and by 2005 they were double that. The other equipment crept up as well. Being more organized also drove up costs. Players had to have matching helmets and pants, nicer jerseys, etc. They look much better on and off the ice for sure, but it's not cheap to do that. So while hockey was always expensive, it got much more expensive. The number of new rinks also had a bit of an unintended consequence of increasing the difference between bad and good HS teams. If you watch one of those old games in the 1970s or 1980s, there are about 5-6 kids on the ice who can skate forward and backward and turn both ways , and the rest look like guys who started playing when they were 13-14. Nowadays, there are many more kids who started playing at an early age. I'm sure you all know, an average player can skate circles around a bad player. If you are a good player, but live in a district where your HS team is terrible, is it really any fun to get pounded 11-1 every game? It's no longer like the old days where you could at least be competitive with 3-4 average players. Plus, with kids at cyber schools, charters, and other alternative schools, and with kids jumping organizations at younger ages, representing your high school or community is just not as important to them. So anyhow, a whole lot happened, and I don't think you can blame any one thing. More like a death by 1000 paper cuts. I do think that the programs that have survived are generally much stronger today, and it does seem to have settled out over the last 5-10 years. The whole NCAA thing makes my head hurt. Someone here probably has stats on this, but there are around 60 NCAA teams, and each team has a maximum of 18 scholarships. A lot of teams don't grant 18 scholarships, and it's often more like 9-10 total scholarships they split up among the 25-30 players on their roster. On top of that, something like 35-40% of NCAA D1 hockey players are foreign, and I sort of assume that the scholarship dollars go much more in their direction. So anyhow, hardly any NCAA roster spots compared to the number of kids playing, and many of those people on those rosters are not scholarship players....oh and scholarships are only a 1 year commitment anyhow. Coach thinks you're not working out? He'll give your scholarship to another player and cut you. Just nothing like football, which is 130 teams in the highest tier of D1 and 85 scholarships per team. Or basketball, which is only 13 scholarships per team, but over 350 teams. In both cases, very few foreign players, certainly nowhere near what hockey has. https://www.ncsasports.org/mens-hockey/scholarships

Can someone help me out here? I'm a little confused with the organization. NHAHA is the Huskies? Viper Stars/Vipers are not part of NHAHA? Esmark is the old Pittsburgh Stars/Steel City Stars, who I thought merged with Eastern and/or NHAHA? Or did Eastern (Pittsburgh Tigers) merge with the Amateur Penguins to become what is now the Ice Renegades and Vengance?

Happens more than you'd think. I know of a few on USPHL teams and you have to think some of the kids playing 16U out of town are in cyber school too.

Just to play devil's advocate a bit here, your stats show paths to NCAA. The @dazedandconfused shows players drafted into the NHL from the OHL vs from the USHL. Although there are very limited circumstances where OHL players can play NCAA, it almost never happens. So it's not quite an apples to apples comparison since "success" is measured differently.

Just out of curiosity - where have people been saying the CHL (Canadian Major Junior) is being passed by the USHL?? I'm not arguing the point, just haven't heard this before.

If it helps, technically UPMC is a non-profit. They own the building and I think the business.

If we were talking about A, I would tend to agree, but AAA teams tend to be deeper and the kid isn't exactly lighting the NAHL on fire. Not that HS hockey is anywhere close to the NAHL, but Peters has some kids who could put up 0 points in 13 NAHL games.

Per their website, AHA started in 1992 at Golden Mile: https://www.ahabadgers.com/page/show/2101767-about-allegheny-hockey I am not 100% sure about this, but I believe Eastern moved to Harmarville not long after the rink was built (1992 I think). Eastern merged with the Amateur Penguins a few years later. I'm not sure if the Amateur Penguins AAA teams were rebranded as the Junior Penguins at the same time or if that happened later. NHAHA also moved to Harmarville around the same time as Eastern. I think they eventually became the Pittsburgh Huskies and moved to PIA.

I might be remembering this wrong, but didn't a few of the Hawthorne-coached BCAHA/Beaver Badgers teams have PAHL banners displayed in the bigger rink at Airport? Like I said, my memory was foggy, and I don't think I made this clear, but I was under the impression that some Beaver Badgers teams were using Airport a lot, not just as an occasional spillover. Maybe it was just a few years, but I do think those years overlap with the time period you cited. Maybe it was only Hawthorne teams, and once his kids aged out, they stopped doing it.

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the Beaver Badgers had some of their teams at Airport. If I remember correctly, it was mostly the AA teams. Having the teams at Airport gave them a little more reach for higher end players. That was before the A level had 6-8 different sub-classifications and more teams were AA. I think Allegheny has always been at Delmont, but I believe both Badgers teams are named after "Badger" Bob Johnson. Definitely an iconic coach, but maybe not as prominent a name today. The Predators name might be a little older (I think their first jerseys were Nashville Predators jerseys), but they have definitely kept up with the times as far as jersey design.

I think the lower teams at Preds are the ones complaining. Also, the other point about how everything goes through the rink is valid - jerseys, bags, warmups, etc all are purchased at the rink pro shop.

Are these official books or is someone bootlegging them? Prices seem lower but I always worry about fakes with Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Pennsylvania-School-Hockey-Championships-America/dp/1467106682/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EO687X6B0WYI&keywords=PA+HOCKEY+BOOK+JEFF+MAURO&qid=1667679898&sprefix=pa+hockey+book+jeff+mauro%2Caps%2C70&sr=8-1

Kind of a nice article about Murph: https://www.post-gazette.com/business/career-workplace/2022/11/05/pittsburgh-ice-rink-market-rostraver-black-bear-hockey/stories/202211060046 Nearly a month into retirement, Jim Murphy can’t stop waking up at 4 a.m. He sold his business — Rostraver Ice Garden — on Oct. 11. But after 30 years of the steady grind he followed seven days a week to open up the rink each morning, his body hasn’t yet made the adjustment. “Retirement is a beautiful thing,” he said. “It was too much for me, at 75, to continue to run that business.” Mr. Murphy used to worry about finding a buyer for the company that he put his heart as well as his life savings into. The other thing he didn’t want to see was a new owner converting the ice rink to a different use. The company that bought him out, Black Bear Sports Group, alleviated both of those concerns. Black Bear is in the business of operating ice rinks and that is how it intends to use Rostraver Ice Garden. “They got a nice facility, and I got out,” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s good for both of us, I guess.” With the purchase of the 65,000-square-foot facility in Belle Vernon, the privately held Bethesda, Md., company also gained another key asset in a region where it is expanding its market share. Rostraver Ice Garden is the fifth ice arena Black Bear has purchased since 2015 in the Western Pennsylvania/Ohio region. The sports and entertainment company owns 31 ice rink facilities across the U.S. But as the company has worked to grow its foot print in this region, its offers to buy ice rink facilities have not always been welcomed in some communities. The Beaver County Board of Commissioners rejected an offer by Black Bear representatives in 2019 to buy the county’s ice rink. “Our board was not interested in pursuing any deal with Black Bear,” said Tony Caltury, director of recreation and tourism at Brady Run Ice Arena in Beaver County. He said the county didn’t want to hand over control of the facility to a private company that might concentrate its programs on hockey and possibly cut back on providing adequate ice time for figure skating and other youth programs. Other concerns also weighed heavily in the county’s decision, he said. “They are trying to get a monopoly on the market,” Mr. Caltury said. “There was a fear in our community that if we were to sell, that the kids would be priced out of hockey,” he said. “Being a county-owned facility, we can keep prices as low as possible.” Strategic move From Black Bear’s point of view, the purchase of Rostraver Ice Garden is a strategic acquisition. “It fits perfectly, geographically with our other ice rinks in the Greater Pittsburgh area and Northeastern Ohio sub-markets, said Murry Gunty, founder and CEO. “We have a rink in Youngstown; two on the east side of [Pittsburgh]; and one on the south side of town,” he said. “So, this one on the south east side of town fits perfectly.” Founded in 2015, the company focuses on buying ice arenas in metropolitan areas with strong demographics and an NHL club presence. Black Bear is owner of the Foundry Adult Hockey League, which is the largest co-ed adult learn-to-play hockey program in the country with about 2,500 players who participate in tournaments held in the 23 cities where the company owns ice rinks. Other tournament businesses that the company owns include Atlantic Hockey Federation, Atlantic Girls Hockey Federation, Tier 1 Hockey Federation, National Girls Hockey League and Defender Hockey Tournaments. Pittsburgh is an especially key market for the company. “Pittsburgh is a great hockey town,” Mr. Gunty said. He added that on top of great fan support, the region has everything in place to support hockey for the longterm — that includes strong youth and high school hockey programs and the city being home to one of the best National Hockey League franchises in America — the Penguins. For hockey fans and hockey league players, this region sits in a geographic sweet spot. “People can drive to Pittsburgh from all over the adjacent hockey markets like Michigan, upstate New York, New Jersey, D.C and eastern Pennsylvania,” Mr. Gunty said. “Everyone can drive to Pittsburgh,” he said. “It’s only a three- or four-hour drive. So, it’s a very attractive place to play.” Other Black Bear-owned ice rinks in this region include Printscape Arena at Southpointe; Palmer Imaging Arena in Delmont; Pittsburgh Ice Arena in New Kensington; and Deep Freeze Arena in Youngstown. The Pittsburgh region supports about 30 ice rinks that supply more than 40 sheets of ice used by leagues and individuals. It goes from Youngstown, Ohio, and south Morgantown, W.Va, east to Johnstown and north to Meadville. Ice rinks in this area earn revenue by charging skaters hourly rates. In the Pittsburgh region, rates typically run from $275 to $350 an hour. One source familiar with the local industry said when Black Bear purchased Printscape about four years ago, the hourly rate immediately shot up to $400 an hour. Mr. Gunty wouldn’t talk specifically about prices, but he acknowledged Black Bear’s prices might be higher than the region is used to. “We often purchase old rinks that are at risk of closure due to mismanagement.,” he said. “They often require millions of capital expenditures to survive. Moreover they often are below market in their rates.” He said the company does raise rates in the markets it operates in to meet what the market can support. “Given the large number of rinks in each market (including Pittsburgh) in which we operate, we have to be very aware of what others charge to ensure that we are competitive.” For years, Black Bear has been busy trying to buy its competitors. Several independent ice rink owners in the region declined to comment on the record for this report. When asked if the company plans more acquisitions in this region, Mr. Gunty would only say “We’re open to it.” A balancing act As a municipal facility, the Mt. Lebanon Ice Center serves users with a diverse program mix rather than focusing on hockey play, said Tim Ishman, ice rink manager. Groups, clubs and leagues for figure skating and hockey pay a private rental fee of $339 an hour. During public open skate sessions kids, families and seniors can come in pay between $6 to $9 per individual to participate in those sessions Mr. Ishman describes the facility as cost-conscious, but not profit-driven. “You try to fill your ice the best that you can,” he said. “But I think everybody’s mix is going to be a little different, depending on what the area is looking for. “There are some rinks that are just hockey only,” he said. “We are a community recreational center. We are a little bit of everything for everybody. That’s our niche.” Mr. Gunty said Black Bear rinks devote a lot of attention to the youngest ages with learn-to-skate hockey programs and a free gear program it does in partnership with the Penguins. Figure skating is a much smaller part of its program, but it’s not left out, he said. Figure skating instructors will be teaching the youngest kids to skate. “We just want to be good stewards of the game of hockey,” he said.”That’s our role in the market.” Mr. Gunty said he has been in discussions with Mr. Murphy for close to five years to buy Rostraver Ice Garden. Neither party would disclose the purchase price they agreed on. Mr. Murphy says he doesn’t miss running the ice rink a bit. He still gets calls, texts and emails from customers wanting to schedule ice time. He gladly forwards everything to his contact at Black Bear. He takes his dog on walks and rakes at his Bethel Park home leaves to pass the time. He looks forward to some hunting and fishing. He could never go watch his 9- and 7-year-old grandchildren play hockey at the Spencer Center while he was working seven days a week at the ice rink, and he looks forward to getting more involved now. “I’m not a kid anymore and it took a toll on me,” Mr. Murphy said of his small business. “I hit a point where I couldn’t do it anymore.” Tim Grant: tgrant@post-gazette.com or 412-779-5834 First Published November 5, 2022, 6:00am

That is kind of my concern too. It is more of the scheduling issue. I am sure they can plan home games and practices in a way that they can do both, and I'm sure that there are places that will accommodate them on the road, but that seems like a lot of things have to go well.

In my experience, a lot of kids go to the store and buy a stick without knowing if they are right or left shots. If the parent knows nothing about hockey, they buy a right handed stick, which is sort of your point, once they commit to the stick, they're forced to be right handed. In general, right handed people hold things like brooms and shovels with their right hand at the top, so they should be left hand shots. I will say that if I watch a higher level of hockey, even, gasp, faux AAA, the lefty/right ratio is much more towards lefties, so the skill level does kind of filter it out. But if you told a right handed kid to wear a baseball glove on his right hand ("hey, it's right handed!"), you'd definitely see a bit of difference in fielding skills. Tournament ice definitely sells for more. I think your numbers are right or at least close, but in talking with rink managers, they tournaments pay more for the ice than the contracted ice, so more toward the higher end of your range. I disagree though in the number of students. I would say more like 15-20 students. Once you factor that in, it's maybe $100 more per hour ice than LTP. Once you consider the cost of instructors, which adds up over the 25 or so weeks of the peak season, the difference is bigger. Let's put it this way, there are rinks in the area that seem to have a tournament every holiday weekend, and Black Bear hosts tons of tournaments every year.

You definitely would like to see a bit more LTP in the area. I feel like the average game I see these days has 80% of the players being right-handed shots, which is pretty clear evidence that they weren't really taught at the start. The problem is that tournament ice sells for a whole lot more than LTP ice.

How much is it?

I forgot to mention those locker-rooms in the basement. Not far from whatever machinery was down there too. Also, only one set of stairs from the basement to the ice, so there would be fights on the stairs or in the lobby between opposing teams, who had to share the stairs and walk through the lobby together. Don't know if this is true, but the rumor is that the building inspector failed the rink because there was no emergency exit from the dungeon locker rooms, but someone bribed the inspector and made the problem go away.