Spear and Magic Helmet

1 hour ago, Danner27 said:

All the schools listed above - the only ones I’ve heard over the years that will find merit scholarships to get a kid they like are Mercyhust & JCU.

We know a 02 at mercyhurst, they shoveled a good amount of money to in the form of merit scholarships to get him to play club hockey. He told us the school is around 50k a year so he’s still paying the price of schools like IUP, CAL etc. he would have gone to IUP if it was not for the merit $ mercyhurst gave him. The on campus rink was a big plus in his eyes. He had an opportunity in the nahl but opted not to gamble and goto school. 
 

it’s nice to see some schools locally doing what the powerhouse acha schools do for club hockey. 
 

So that brings me to this - what are the local schools like rmu, pitt, iup, Duq, cal & upj offering during their “recruiting” ? Seriously, what are they saying or doing ? They don’t offer anything in from of financial support. 
 

It's been years since I was around this, but way back in the day, the "recruiting" was really more so the colleges could tell the kids about their programs. The benefit was really more for the ACHA programs than to the kids in that the kids often didn't really even know much about the ACHA teams. That being said, the kids also would have had to have applied to the schools by now and I think in some cases, financial aid stuff was due around Feb 1.

I imagine it's somewhat true today too. I think basically the ACHA programs want to show the kids that the hockey is serious and worth doing, maybe give them some information on how the teams work and whatnot. I think Pitt and maybe Duquesne have locker rooms at Alpha, so maybe they want to show that off too.

18 hours ago, Pa Hockey said:

STATES 

Penn State was a failure and not gonna happen real soon 

East - IceLine is the best facility 

West = Lemieux + RMU or maybe Harmar are good locations and seat 1000-1500 

Penguins Cup 

West = Lemieux + RMU or maybe Harmar are good locations and seat 1000-1500

PPG Paints is great in lower bowl and 15 K + to open the doors 

Letting Students in for free with HS Jersey would fill the arena at an all-day event (If it breaks even or makes money Great) 

More community involvement would lead to more interest more Penguins Tickets Sold and they should be interested especially with Sid and Geno in the twilight of their careers 

 

You forgot Rostraver. Location is terrible, facility is not great, but they got a lot of seats!!! At least that was the excuse back in the 90s when they had a bunch of playoff games there.

20 hours ago, Happy Hockey Fan said:

The cost to foot the bill? What about all the money taxpayers spent for the Pens to have a brand new building? That arena should be used not only for the championship games, but many other games as well. I played there as a member of Duquesne around 5 games a year. And that rink should be available for Duquesne and Pitt to use now. It is ridiculous to think that the rink gets used for around 45 Pens games and sits idle the rest of the time. Especially since it is a public subsidized building. 

You're not wrong about the taxpayers paying for this building. I would argue it's more than 45 Penguins games though. There are a number of concerts and other events at PPG every year. Certainly the Penguins are the main tenant, but they are far from the only user of the facility - just last weekend we had NCAA basketball there.

I stand by my point that someone has to pay to turn on the lights. You might start by asking who sponsored your City Game on Ice. I'm sure there is a reason it's not a yearly event at PPG. We also paid for the Wells Fargo arena or whatever it's called out east, and they never have the state championships there either.

I am sure money is not the only reason we don't have high school hockey events at PPG, but money an easy out for PPG if they want to say no. To your point, back in the 1970s, there were many, many regular season games at the Civic Arena.

I guess it depends on what the ticket costs, but 6000 tickets really sounds very, very optimistic to me. I would think the major obstacle is cost in any case. I'm sure it costs way more to get the ice at PPG. Someone would have to foot the bill for that, and I'm not sure if the Penguins are interested in doing that after a couple of years of revenues being battered.

I do agree with the points about the kids wanting to play at PPG. I am sure most of them would want to play there even if the entire arena were empty.

3 hours ago, Novos51 said:

Yes it’s short and minimal bleachers. As much as we did extending the building to extend the ice and add more bleachers was not financially feasible. There is a wishlist item to build a second sheet but further growth would have to happen for that to occur

Well, as others have said, it's great to see you took this step and improved the rink. The "B" division is a perfectly fine way to grow your program and I am glad to see you had some success.

9 hours ago, Novos51 said:

We took a garbage dump rink that you couldn’t even play Bantam or above because the boards were bad and invested 3 million dollars into it.

Sorry, I'm a little out of the loop. What rink is this?? I didn't realize we had a rink where you couldn't play above Pee Wee.

On 3/3/2022 at 9:21 AM, fafa fohi said:

The incessant pimping of this book continues.......

Still got 650 left to sell. Taking up a lot of room in his trunk. 

Pretty amazing to me that McDowell isn't just dominant in single A. They were a good AAA team for years and have an enrollment over 2000. Now I know the size of the school is really not that closely related to how good the team is, but this is definitely a surprise to me. 

.

2 hours ago, Jack Handey said:

is it Groundhog Day?

14 minutes ago, hockeyisgreat said:

How does the nahl get funded by na3?  Are there teams from both leagues in the same city? Same ownership? Is na3 like a minor league to nahl?  Just trying to figure it all out before it might become an issue.

You can read the link below, but basically it's all under one umbrella, so yes, same organization if not same owner. NA3HL is pay-to-play, but as mentioned, it is almost certainly the case that some of those fees help fund the top level. That isn't just true of the NAHL/NA3HL, I'm sure you can find many local amateur organizations that work that way as well (i.e. the lower teams help fund the top teams). That being said, some players do get exposure in the NA3HL and do move up. However, I kind of think that is just common enough to give people hope that it could happen to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_3_Hockey_League

 

6 minutes ago, nemesis8679 said:

Where does WHL fit in? And in Canada, is only tier 1 capable of rendering players ineligible for ncaa? 

WHL, OHL, and QMJHL are Major Junior A. Those players are generally not eligible for NCAA with only a few exceptions. Canada has numerous Jr A leagues that are a step below Major Jr A but are comparable to the USHL. BCHL and OJHL (or whatever the former OPJHL is called) are some examples. If you look at NCAA rosters, you'll see plenty of players from the Canadian Jr A ranks. 

Looks like the kid is banned for life. And to reiterate my point before, not sure he would have been banned for life if there hadn't been social media. 

https://nypost.com/2022/02/22/usphl-junior-hockey-player-banned-for-life-after-ref-punch/

Personally I think this type of behavior isn't new. I saw my share of kids acting like jerks in my time. It's a bit of a double edged sword. Yes the kids get famous, but now there's concrete evidence they are jerks and not just rumors. 

2 hours ago, forbin said:

Not kidding at all. Total bonehead move. Not a WPA team though, thankfully?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaOWQmYlFR5/

 

 

That is terrible. Not a good look for that kid at all. 

With JCU winning, do they get the nationals bid or does it go to Pitt for winning the regular season? In years past, it was the regular season winner and not who won the conference playoffs. 

1 hour ago, Jack Handey said:

Yep saw a NAHL (I think he was NAHL) commit yesterday on social media.  Frankly I thought it was pretty brave given all that has transpired.

Where else are they going to go?? There's still only about 60 NCAA D1 teams. Looking around at rosters, how many of them are more than half foreign players? Not a lot of options for American players.

17 minutes ago, twoboys said:

Coaching JV has got to be difficult.  Sort of like middle school.  There can be a huge difference in talent and size.  I think this would be even worse if the JV or middle school team doesn't have cuts.  

How many JV teams do have cuts?? I imagine not many.

1 hour ago, sadday4hockey said:

Take it easy, Karen.

ha. I do have to say that Karen Hill is very much NOT a Karen by today's definition. You don't wanna end up like her ex-boyfriend.

1 hour ago, muckerandgrinder said:

The biggest problem with Silver Sticks (and has been for many years) is that they still use the same website from 10 years ago. They do not promote it and getting information on registration, dates, details etc. has always been difficult.

There are a TON of tournaments out there now and many of the are subpar yet… they have glossy websites, slick banter (swag for the players and coaches!) and registration months ahead of time that is easily accessible.

Also, higher level teams want to know who they are playing if they are going to be spending a weekend somewhere.

Silver Sticks could still be relevant. They simply have to get out of the year 2005.

I imagine some of it is inertia. They have had Silver Sticks since the 1980s, maybe even earlier. There is probably a lot of "we never had to do that before, so why do we have to do it now?"

16 hours ago, Danner27 said:

I believe meadville plays more games than their PIHL schedule - at least it was that way a few years ago when my kids still played. 

They do, plus NA, Bethel, Peters, Mt. Lebanon, and a handful of others. Then you have teams at the other end who are barely able to fill out a scoresheet for their 20 PIHL games. It just seems kind of excessive I guess and definitely is something that the PIAA won't like. I suppose it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because there are many reasons hockey won't become a sanctioned sport and this is probably a smaller issue. 

Also Meadville had to take a break from the PIHL for a few years because they couldn't field a team. They did end up in the B division where co-ops were allowed. I believe they have two high schools in their district and something changed where they were considered a co-op if they used players from Cochranton HS. 

1 hour ago, Danner27 said:

18U Foxes are not going to silver sticks due to NA hockey games. 

Kind of crazy if you think about how some HS teams around here play as many non-PIHL games as PIHL games, if not more. Definitely would be a huge problem if hockey wanted to be a recognized sport. I just dont' see how the PIAA would allow some teams to play 50-60 games.

Sam was a very good guy. Sad that we lost him way too early.

4 hours ago, Law said:

Spear, not entirely true about all local ACHAM1 teams. PITT is ranked 14th in M1 and finished ranked 20th 2 years ago. Didn't play last year. Think you would be surprised if you went to watch them.

You are right. I was being overly general. As @Danner27 mentioned Pitt, RMU and IUP are stronger than the rest of CHMA, The lower teams in there are not great. A #14 ranking for Pitt is pretty impressive actually. I hadn't noticed that before and there are some good teams below them in the rankings.

Cal is perfectly happy to the the big fish in a small pond. I think that helps their recruiting as well. Cal has kids who go to school just to play hockey. I haven't seen them play in years, but they would have won the CHMA in their heyday and then probably gotten crushed at M1 nationals.

20 hours ago, Danner27 said:

I haven’t seen much varsity this year but what I did see last year definitely was not as good as the past. The pihl to me, looks like it’s been on a steady decline year over year for sometime. That’s probably a different topic. 
 

ACHA is a mixed bag. I’ve seen very weak M1 teams.  I’ve seen M2 & M3 teams that would beat up on a good amount of our area M1. Sometimes ACHA classification doesn’t make much sense. 

Agree HS is worse, but that's often due to the fact that many of these teams are barely hanging on. Most of them don't cut anyone, they just take whoever they can get.

In the ACHA, the M1/M3 designation is really more about how organized the club is than anything. The local M1 teams are, at best, middle of the pack in M1. They often get blown out when they send a team to nationals. The M3 teams, at least the good ones, are among the best M3 teams in the ACHA and have decent showings at nationals. Now, if these teams played each other, they are probably about the same quality, though Cal had some teams around 2005-2010 that would have blown out the local M1 teams.