Lifelongbender

I have to admit that I agree with this, to the extent that we are stuck with whatever fiasco we are handed here.

You know, as silly as this restriction is... If we could have 27 people per sheet of ice, we'd have enough space for ten skaters and a goalie, or two full lines of offence and two full lines of defense. Or we could just do what literally everyone wants to do and play hockey normally. As for letting parents into the rink - I hate to tell some of you this, but many, or even most, players are much better when you aren't there yelling at them and the refs all the time. It's better for most players NOT to have the parents in there. That's to the extent that they players are even aware that people are in the arena. For the most part they aren't paying any mind to the stands.

A coach I know well was at Ice Castle over the weekend and told me that he watched a good bit of a full 5v5, full bench, referees and parents present scrimmage between the Predators and another organization. They've been loose about the regulations the entire time over there, though they did tighten up a bit briefly a few weeks ago.

They don't have to be AA or above. My boy is a JV player and a midget A- player and he wouldn't be happy with non-contact.

It is certainly possible for intelligent and reasonable people to disagree on policy on any issue in general, and on the COVID situation in particular. If you're well-informed, you know that there are highly intelligent, highly educated people out there who disagree substantially on the appropriate responses to all of the COVID issues - masks, sports, etc. It's also clear that the appropriate level of response/concern about this issue varies between highly educated and informed individuals. That makes sense because ad hoc risk tolerance assessment is highly subjective. If you're not using a formal cost/benefit model to calculate risk, you're not doing it rigorously. This is further compounded by the fact that so many arguments that this board has seen on the subject seem to have public good and private good mixed up. I personally believe that the measures ordered by our government are disproportionate and of dubious effect. However, at this point they are what they are. It's clear that nobody really knows enough to make hard decisions about managing the virus, and equally clear that the current measures are not politically/socially tenable in the long run. With all that as a background, it's surely true that much of the debate about the issue of response to the virus situation is based upon differing assessments of public risk and the tolerance level of public risk, all the way from the "if it saves even one life..." to "you're violating my rights and public health be damned" (both of these extreme examples being equally vapid). Because these decisions are made by politicians, decisions assessing these risks are inherently and unavoidably political in nature. Hard stop. What I'm not doing is assigning risk assessment policies to political parties - I'm not saying "those damned liberal democrats are ruining my life" or "those crazy super backwards republicans are going to kill us all". I am saying that this issue cannot be resolved for two simple reasons: Nobody has hard, non-ambiguous science that is not in debate by good scientists on both sides to tell us how risky this really is or how to best protect ourselves from the risk. (I know, some people are going to disagree with this statement, but it's a cold hard fact that there is a healthy debate about this between informed individuals.) There is no universally accepted way to evaluate the public risk issues and assign an acceptable level of risk. Every person has a different idea of how much risk is acceptable for themselves, and most people just assign that same level of acceptable risk to the public at large. That's not a reasonable way to assess public risk issues. In short, there is no way to resolve this issue by any sort of debate online, since everyone, no matter how informed and convinced of their cherry picked portion of the science available, is inherently making a personal assessment of risks. Those risk assessments are the problem.

I've played some beer league on that little rink, and the neutral zone is so short that if you take off when your defense gets the puck you'll be offside before the breakout pass reaches you. And that's my skating. My midget would be screwed. Then there's the Olympic size rink there, too. I never get to play on the NHL size rink...

It seems from my reading of what I saw that, were PA to allow some places to relax the 25 person limit but not others, that we could even be in a situation where we could play 5v5 with full rosters outside Allegheny County, while still being limited to 10 players/bench inside Allegheny County. As someone said above, my kids will want to play if any hockey at all is allowed to occur, but this is really going to mess things up. Imagine being a senior varsity player (or even JV, honestly). How is PIHL hockey going to proceed?

For the number of useful posts he made, I don't think we will miss his attitude or writing style.

Not to mention the short neutral zone on that rink. Man!

Wow, this is a bad look for whoever made this deal.

This is true for the organization my kids play in. Our registration rate is nearly identical to last season.

I saw a copy of an alleged set of rule modifications for return to hockey to be voted on by PAHL. I haven't been able to find it anywhere to post it here. I would also note that coaches at my organization have been told for weeks that there would be no placements at any level above 12U.

Midgets and bantams are definitely not having placements. I thought I had heard that the squirts and peewees might still have some placement games, though.

I bet they get that many for basketball every game, right? I don't think that 3000 per game is impossible. It might be optimistic, but it's conceptually right in any case.

Supposedly the Armory is still in the works. I know someone involved in the project. But "still in the works" in this context means somethings similar to "planned for when we hit the lottery", I think. There are too many obstacles to this project. It's a perfect building, but in a literal residential neighborhood with no parking. It's hard to imagine how enough cars could get into, and out of, this area, to support a serious hockey program. Or how the locals would be able to tolerate the traffic on top of the serious congestion already there.

Gilmour Academy is a pretty good place to play hockey, too. I'm a Pittsburgh guy but I went to college in Cleveland and they're legendary out there.

And you may be right about them having the money if they wanted to spend it. Actually wanting to spend it on hockey is another thing entirely.

Yeah, you're right on your first sentence. I admit that freely. I guess I'm an old guy who'd be driving to the rink from the South Hills, and not a kid who just wants to fill in a college Friday night. As for the rest of it, you're right about the number of schools that do have on-campus rinks. I wouldn't disagree that Pitt could build a rink if they wanted to, and probably rent ice to Chatham, CMU, and Duquesne in the process. Of course, what I was getting at was your point that it wouldn't really be economically smart because it wouldn't make any money. Especially considering the cost of building one in Oakland.

I don't guess they are taking Canadians over Pittsburghers for any reason other than that they are taking the best players, and there a MANY more Canadians than there are Pittsburghers. One has to think they are selecting their players on the basis of scouting and performance in showcases. Come to think of it, you don't see too much scouting in Pittsburgh. It's possible that Canadians are over-represented because that's where the scouts are.

Both of you are right, I think. I don't have time for anything other than youth hockey once the season starts - I get to the Pens Kids game every year and that's about it. I do sometimes get to catch an RMU game if I'm out there for another reason, or if one of my kids' teams goes as a group. I do think that on-campus rinks would make college hockey more successful, in that it would be something else for college kids to do on a random evening, but honestly I wonder if a college program could ever pay for a rink in Pittsburgh, even with rentals. I'd rather go to the island to see RMU than deal with campus, for my money.

In fact, weren't they reporting just the other week that the PA Department of Health had said that youth sports don't appear to be a significant vector of infection? Maybe I heard wrong.

Which really is part of my point. Obviously this is interesting information, but firstly it doesn't bear on hockey directly at all, and secondly it doesn't matter what PIAA says if the governor can shut everything down again at will. Hockey and basketball are both close in, face-to-face sports that happen indoors on relatively small surfaces. I don't think we can learn anything from them saying golf can proceed.

Still no mention of ice hockey...

Thanks for posting this. Any development in this situation is interesting. However, this article, while interesting, is clearly football-centric. It doesn't say a thing about any indoor sports at all, and only mentions golf and tennis in passing. Basketball and hockey are going to be a totally different thing in the minds of the decision makers. They happen indoors and in fairly close environs.

Almost posted this myself today. It seems to address this topic perfectly.