Lifelongbender

This is terrible news. He is an awesome human being.

There's an adult LTP program at Printscape arena in Southpointe. No idea what it costs but I've seen them on the ice many times at 8:00 PM or so.

There is no tryout process. You register on the PIHL website (typically in early April for that year's league) and your daughter is assigned to one of the teams with the other girls from her high school. All players from any one high school are assigned together, and the league assigns schools together to try to balance competition and ensure that each team has enough players and, importantly, goalies. The games are usually competitive and the girls seem to pretty much universally love the league. Since it's considered varsity hockey under the rules, they get delayed offsides and they're allowed to ice the puck while killing penalties. Since girls never get either of those rules, it's a new experience for most of them.

Some of us are probably old enough to remember when that rink was a pavilion and didn't even have exterior walls. There's no question it's one of the worse rinks in the region, but it could be a whole lot worse than it is. The worst thing about it really is the parking.

They are geographically named (North, South, East, West, etc.) and roughly geographically put together, but they move schools around into new regions all the time to make numbers work and ensure that everyone has goalies and the like.

That's totally plausible if you add in all the travel costs for an independent team. I know someone whose daughter played for one of the local independent teams in 23-24 who kept careful track and said that cost just over $20k after travel expenses.

That depends entirely upon your expectations, really. There's plenty of good hockey going on in the city. You have to do your homework and understand your player, both their potential and their personal goals. It seems to me that the majority of complaining about teams and coaches on this forum seems to come from parents who think their player is AAA material, going to D1 at least, or The Show. In my experience, most parents who believe this have unrealistic expectations of their players. This tends to lead to unhappiness with coaches and organizations. I'm not saying that there isn't room for criticism of coaches and orgs - there are plenty of both that deserve some criticism. But chasing those extra As leads to unhappiness with teams and coaches, and also tends to lead to unhappiness for players. Just my $0.02.

Don't quote me on this, but I heard that LiveBarn still works at Printscape on a game by game basis. I'd check that JV game. But it will only be available on demand - not live.

Neither of my kids has ever played in Keystones, though I know many kids who have. In general they seem to have enjoyed it. Is it "worth it" to the folks who think everything has to advance a player's chances to get paid to play someday? No. Absolutely not. But in the end it's just a summer tournament. If they enjoy it, good for them. Hopefully parents aren't thinking it's some kind of major exposure to D1 scouts, though.

Yeah, this is true. When I was a kid the only options in the South Hills were Mount Lebanon (and let's remember that ice was so rare in the area that the Penguins practiced there back in the day), Rostraver, and South Park when it was cold enough. I guess you could include that old rink on the South Side, too. We have it much better now.

It's true that Alpha is a mess, but, man, there aren't many "nicer" rinks in the area, to be honest. Especially nicer rinks with three sheets of ice. The truth is that really decent facilities are rare in the region, sadly.

Well, it appears they realized there was another revenue stream to squeeze. I can't speak about whether their service is any good, but I'll say this: out east they own everything and maybe this isn't an issue, but what this means for us locally is that if you are a team whose home rink is a BB rink, you'll have to have both LiveBarn and BBTV if the grandparents want to watch the games, or if, like me, you normally download all the games for review.

If you review USA Hockey rules, you'll see that high school hockey rules include icing being permitted by a shorthanded team and delayed offsides. Amateur hockey had those rules changed under USA Hockey, but they remained the same for adult and high school classifications. The difference between the two is in USAHockey rules.

Absolutely correct.

Admit it - you're just trying to start trouble with this thread, aren't you? 🤣