Lifelongbender

Yeah, that sure seems like what the original poster was saying happened.

I have to admit being a little happy when the COVID situation was limiting spectators. As much as I love watching the games myself, it's best for players, coaches, and especially officials when there aren't any.

Are you saying that the parents called the police to report the referee for something? Because a player fell over? Obviously I didn't see the situation, so I'm taking the description you gave at face value. I'm just trying to understand it. One thing you said is indisputable - it's a no-win world for referees anymore. I can't imagine why anyone agrees to do it nowadays.

For the record, this is a discussion board. EVERYTHING on here is just banter.

It's funny that, though I watched the video of that moment a few times, I didn't notice that the camera was looking at the stands. I just heard the yapping and my mind went the other way.

My God, you're right. I guess I heard that guy repeatedly yell "Shut the F up, b!" enough times to assume it was the parents we were hearing. Now that's a classy coaching staff.

There's a constant discussion, only slightly serious, about eliminating face masks in the NFL in the interest of reducing the severity of impacts. You want to talk about a bad idea - that's it. But the concept has some merit, at least, in terms of fostering discussion. Listening to the parents yell at each other in that video, I can't help but think that I'm not surprised at the behavior of the players.

IT was short, at least. Got to love the mouth on whoever that was in the stands. LOL. Doesn't look like it was a particularly good game, either, from the bit I watched.

I don't know how many people have opened this and read it, but it was actually quite interesting in a sort of numerically intensive kid of way. I think it more or less confirmed what I already believed - PA has a number of very good Varsity hockey teams, but the top tier of MN teams is just a different animal. Thanks for posting.

Unless things have changed since I last looked into this, rapid tests are considered reliable if they are positive, but a negative on a rapid test is not considered reliable. This information may be out of date. And, of course, there are probably PLENTY of people who don't care about the distinction, and will just say they got tested and it was negative. I had to be tested a few weeks ago and it literally took 8 days to get a result. I had it done at a UPMC. They didn't offer anything faster than that to me, and believe me, I asked.

If this is true, what isn't necessarily obvious to everyone about this is hoe much that fact will screw up rescheduling games for non-National bound teams. Because they didn't change the date, all of the National Bound teams will have to get their games in before the same date, which means that organizations will have to give them priority on rescheduling slots (as though they wouldn't do that anyway, I know but...) and that means that the "lower" teams will have to reschedule games piled up late in March somehow. Fortunately, at least in the divisions my kids play in, there weren't that many games affected, but it's still a huge issue.

Games are being rescheduled in March already by some teams.

Games start up again next weekend. There's going to be a mad rush to reschedule games that were missed. Fun times!

They've been experimenting with it at some juniors tournaments for quite a while, too, from what I understand. That particular rule irritates me MUCH less than the concept of eliminating touch up offsides. It already distorts the flow of the game where it has been eliminated. Such a bad idea.

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.