Lifelongbender

Eliminating tag-up offsides is a terrible idea.

I tell my kids that all the time - you play for the love of the game, for your teammates. The ultimate goal is beers in the locker room after the game. I'm well over 40 and I still play a couple times a week (when the leagues are going, anyway).

That article was interesting, and I'd seen the merger plans before, except that it seems to explicitly state that Slippery Rock isn't suffering for students as much as the other schools. I'll concede this point though - it's not really part of my argument, anyway, about this, although I may have been wrong when I made that statement. Regarding your last paragraph, if you are an athlete hoping to continue your playing career, sports are a critical part of choosing a college. While this doesn't happen for hockey players a whole lot anywhere, and certainly not at schools where hockey is a club sport, obviously scholarships are a part of the equation for some players. You can bet that the guys who were playing for Slippery Rock probably would've taken a Big 10 (or whatever other conference) placement if they had been recruited for it. Why wouldn't they? It's just not realistic to suppose that players won't go to a school where they can play, if that's important to them. Choosing a school for that reason is perfectly rational if continuing to play is important to you. None of this may apply to many of those guys, who may have been Slippery Rock bound no matter what, and simply decided to play club hockey on top of that. Most kids aren't being recruited for college hockey, and for them a good club program is probably attractive as part of a college's total package. Again, that's a perfectly rational thing for those who want to play.

It's more likely that it's more important to them to make an example of the students involved than it is to worry about students not coming to the school. I'm not sure what you're saying there about the razor thin margin. What does that matter to a state-owned and operated school? Slippery Rock is not, nor will it ever be, hurting for students. And honestly I'm not sure why these actions would cause them to lose students, unless you mean the 25 or so a year who would've played hockey for the school.

It seems to me that that's the intent. It was certainly intended that nobody currently playing there would be playing there when the program was reinstated, right? As for carrying bottles and picking up pucks - I make my midget team do that as a group, but that certainly doesn't rise to any sort of actionable level of hazing in my mind, perhaps simply because it's so prevalent. As someone said above, it seems to me that this is exactly the sort of thing that I'd expect the Captains to take the lead on, and everyone to participate in. In other words, I expect the exact opposite of making the rookies do it. Having said that, I think that everyone should do it together, and I would never permit my players to make the "rookies" do it, but it just isn't that awful a thing, either.

I don't know about the 4th, specifically, but I think there's really good reason suppose we will have a complete season before this is all over. Others here have expressed concern about ice in Pittsburgh, and noted that the loss of even one sheet of ice, especially in the South Hills, would probably be devastating. This I agree with 100%. The addition of ice at Harmarville and in Cranberry doesn't begin to offset losses of sheets of ice in the hockey heavy South Hills. But honestly I think there is a better reason to think the season will be completed as much as it is possible. If the season is shortened by any significant number of games, organizations will find themselves stuck with issuing refunds. There are a few organizations for whom that would be mostly an inconvenience, because they are large and well-funded. It's hard to imagine the Predators, or, for the sake of the debate that never ends, the Pens, having existential issues with giving refunds. But issuing refunds would be really difficult for some of the smaller organizations, or for the more poorly run organizations. It's hard to imagine PAHL not doing everything they can think of to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen. For the sake of civility, I won't name any here, but I can think of two or three organizations that are struggling badly just to put teams on the ice. That's my take. It might extend the season to June, but I think they'll extend it to ensure 'everyone' has 20 games. Anything else could have serious repercussions for both the rinks and the some organizations.

And here I thought all the name calling and chest thumping would fade away after the King left.

I don't have a dog in this hunt - I disagree with suspending the season, and both the school teams and the amateur organization my kids play for are entirely suspended until January 4 - but while the PAHL statement doesn't mention practice, the governor's order absolutely suspends them. You have to go to the definitions part to read what they mean by the various terms in the school and amateur sports to see it clearly, but this is from the order: The emphasis there is mine. If any organization is permitting practices, more power to them - I wish my kids were still playing and practicing - but they're clearly violating the order. As others have noted, while I disagree with the actions being taken WRT youth sports, violating this order isn't going to make it quicker for us to resume.

LOL. Obviously you haven't been reading my posts over the last ten months. I'm not at all with Quinlan about COVID. I only meant that there was a good bit of grousing about rinks staying open illicitly back the last time.

It should be interesting to see how the government responds to this specific issue. It was a constant source of discontent at the time of the last shutdown.

Times like these separate the kids that are serious from the ones that aren't at the higher age levels. I know my son is already planning his stepped up running and driveway workout regimen. There are going to be teams, in the A and B levels, who really fall off on the ice because of what their kids didn't do off the ice during this shutdown, especially with the holidays being in there. Nice move to completely shut down the holidays, by the way. This is going to just kill businesses all over the state.

I don't think that either of them entirely shut down at all. I know at least one was operating quietly the entire time, but for some of that time you had to know the right people.

I doubt that a particular ice rink in the South Hills will slow down at all. they hardly did the last time.

The wording as WPXI reported it specifically includes recreational sports. To wit: Pretty clear to me. It'll be interesting how they respond to the fictional interpretations of the rules the rinks used in the last shutdown to stay open.

Now this is a reasonable response. I understand your take on what the science is on masks, but for many people the continuous give and take of "masks work" followed by "masks don't work" that drives our daily news cycles is probably very confusing. A person could be forgiven for not really knowing what to think about masks given that give and take. And, for that matter, about shutdowns of schools and the like (read, for instance, the Great Barrington Declaration). It is not at all the case that there aren't reputable scientists and health professionals who disagree with shutdowns, or mandatory mask wearing. While it may be true that the majority, or a plurality, of professionals agree on these things (though I don't know how we would determine the validity of that specific claim, because nobody can agree on who is responsible among journalists, either), it's not the case that any of the measures being taken are settled science, or make cost/benefit analysis sense, either. You don't get to cite scientists that agree with you without also recognizing that scientists exist who have opposing viewpoints - if a scientist is only credible because he agrees with you, or with the majority, your case is already lost. You disagree with science based upon the merit of their actual data, not upon some sort of Nielson rating system. Personally, I don't know if masking works. I have read a huge amount of writing online by scientists on both sides of this issue, but as I have written elsewhere on this site, I think that mask wearing is a small price to pay to get them to permit our kids to play hockey. You were right when you said "It's also hard to convince people to abide by restrictions when we don't even know if they will be effective. I get that. This is a complicated issue that has good arguments on both sides." However, there are a number of people who do not agree that either masking or stopping of gatherings is common sense. While it may be that these steps are our best bet at slowing the spread of the virus, there are many people who seem to think that restricting gatherings in order to slow the spread, in particular, isn't worth the cost to society. I'm not sure, myself, what the right answer to this question is, other than to say that it seems to me that the government telling you that you can't have cousins over for Christmas is fundamentally problematic. To me, these sorts of gatherings in particular are not a public health risk in the way that a concert would be. All of these things are the sorts of things that are supposed to be open to healthy discussion in our society. It's my fear that nothing like open discussion has occurred on either of these topics at any level at any time. It certainly has never occurred here. Which I wish was because we are a hockey board. But nothing like discussions of hockey has occurred here in months, either.

Wow. What an asshole way to respond to this. I get that you're trying to make a point. I get that plenty of posters here have been really nasty to you, and each other. But this isn't any way to promote positive discussion or reasonable debate. You've managed to lower yourself to the old King's level. Good on you.

I know that, without school to keep them socially engaged, my kids are relying on ice hockey practices and games for pretty much all of their interaction with their friends. This situation really sucks. Hopefully the governor/government will make reasonable decisions regarding hockey.

No. Sadly we cannot.

The Governor released an update to the mandate that responded to the portion of the CDC recommendations saying that if masks can't be worn due to the protective equipment or level of exertion they should not be worn. That was Friday. So any "I saw a game where nobody was wearing masks" claim about this is now unimportant. My son's team played two midget games this weekend. At both, some of the players were wearing masks despite the fact that they weren't required anymore for personal preference reasons. At both games both of the refs were wearing them, at least most of the time.

@Danner27, you do realize that your post there is an argument for not playing hockey at all, and no, in fact, an argument for not wearing masks while playing, right? I mean you do realize that is how the government would respond to that? I have to assume it's your position that hockey should be shut down, then. I respectfully disagree. As long as they're allowed to, my kids will want to keep playing, mask or no mask, and I'd bet that almost every player in the region will take that same position. Once the enforcement effort is clear it will level out.

I expect it to get shut down no matter what, but mask compliance will be one of the stated reasons when it does.

Honestly it's becoming so tiresome to read posts on this board that its value as a discussion forum is practically nil.

I guess I expect that this mask thing, like everything else, will work itself out after a few weeks of playing under it (assuming we get a few weeks of playing), but this is a fair question. It's likely that enforcement of the mask mandate will vary widely between teams. How do you force your players to play at a disadvantage if the other team has a large number of players not wearing masks, medical excuse or not? I really think this will turn out to be no big deal, like it did in Michigan, but there are concerns. Hopefully coaches will try to comply.

It's true that there were several games postponed this week, including a number between local teams in the Pittsburgh sense, but most of the games that have been postponed are between Pittsburgh area teams and teams in West Virginia. The second of the two orders made travel to West Virginia for purposes other than a commute for work or medical treatment essentially impossible.

To be clear, this is a moral and, for many of us, a legal duty.