HockeyDad23

2 hours ago, Lifelongbender said:

As a follow-up, we were told last night by our JV business manager that spectators are not permitted at any PIHL games right now by MidAm rules. This was not enforced at the scrimmage we had over the weekend, but it looks to be required now.

https://cdn3.sportngin.com/attachments/document/4441-2272632/PIHL_4x4_Information.docx.pdf#_ga=2.257285579.131289136.1601905555-635639436.1601307249

And it's all because of an arbitrary 25 person rule. SMH

37 minutes ago, Lifelongbender said:

Ok, thank you. I have not heard that from any official source yet. My kids both have scrimmages scheduled all weekend that will likely be affected.

Games will be played 5 on 5 for PAHL based on the vote Sept 21st.  Two 18 minute halfs. 9 skaters, 1 goalie, 1 coach, 2 refs, 1 emt. There is no 4 on 4.

I'm having a little faith that the governor realizes all the extra efforts that some officials and parents have to through for the kids and will realize it is important to us. Hopefully leaning to increase the limits ever so slightly. Anything is better than 25 for hockey. Not ideal but I'll sacrifice watching live so they can play with coaches, refs, and full rosters. 

Just now, Quinlan2020 said:

I hear what you are saying, but those infections didn't originate in those nursing homes. The more community spread that we have, the more it will get into those places unless we can have everyone that goes in there tested every day. So far we don't have that kind of testing in place unless you are a pro athlete or work at the White House.

It has to be the staff bringing it in. I have heard stories that families can still not enter to visit. Sad situation. 

1 minute ago, Danner27 said:

It’s going back to alpha & ice castle as the only places to play regular games.  I just heard PIHL (before this announcement) wants kids to wear masks while they play now. Dumpster fire! 

Maybe our government should target the hundreds of thousands of deaths at the shitty and run down nursing homes and leave restaurant owners and kids hockey alone.  70% of the deaths in PA are at long term care facilities. Sometimes it seems a dumb guy spouts off "masks during hockey" and everyone is like yeah great idea. Let's do it. That will slow the spread even more. 

1 minute ago, Danner27 said:

 

Thanks for sharing. Very Sad. I'm hopeful the governor gives a little this time. And might rush it due to Football games tomorrow.

4 minutes ago, forbin said:

That is false. They are allowing full roster games 5v5.

Ok thanks. That just happened on September 29th.  So they just started the change 2 days ago. They missed so much time by waiting.

All teams I talked to that played there said they shuffled half the kids out of the locker room at a time.

https://www.rmuislandsports.com/

12 minutes ago, forbin said:

What rinks are still enforcing the 25 limit and forcing 4v4? Literally every single rink I have been to in the past two weeks have allowed 5v5 and the two that weren't have as of today, lifted that restriction. 

Do you think that a certain organization or rink really wants to be the whistle blower to put a stop to all of this?

RMU is still enforcing it. But my guess is they fear consequences of the governors wrath being affiliated with the univesity.

I am not a fan of Wolf and consider him very vindictive.  But based on his interview and language used by the minority leader in PA, I think he may have a heart a bump things up a bit. After all he did open restaurants up to 50%.

Giving the house bills that almost went through, the out cry from parents, maybe Wolf will have a heart.  The efforts taken by parents and the republicans and some dems on house bill 2787 has to show Wolf that sports means a lot to his constituents.

Dermody eluded to maybe a % capacity like OH.  The press asked about football games tomorrow and Wolf said "we're working on it." So probably will release guidance in the next 12 hours I would hope. 

Back to jail everyone

https://www.wtae.com/article/appeals-court-allows-pennsylvania-to-restrict-crowd-size/34238554

24 minutes ago, fafa fohi said:

NY teams are still traveling out of state for games and tournaments.  No home games to my knowledge.

Local PAHL teams have been traveling to OH, VA for tournaments.

That is what I have seen as well. Heard NY teams traveling to OH to play.  I know some PA teams have been to OH. Haven't heard anything on MI or how it is to play with a mask on.

How is everyone doing with scheduling of tournaments? Is New York open yet?

1 hour ago, aaaahockey said:

I'm guessing the stay will be granted by the federal appeals court panel next week but I hope I'm wrong. That's the next step now that the judge who actually made the ruling denied the stay. If the panel rejects a stay we will be good until they rule on the case and st that pace probably not til next year so we should get the season in normally. 

I find it fascinating that while being challenged by the judge that the non essential vs essential and how they arrived that their 25/250 limits, Wolf staff is not drafting a rebuttal, argument, or case study as to how they arrived at these decisions. Today was a opportunity to do that and yet they still cannot. Instead the response was more of a plea to consider the "stay" in order to save lives.  In the court of law that doesn't sound like air tight data.

The only argument from the governor or others on the 9 vs 9 and others in the lockeroom would be, "then don't play."  

He is quoted saying education is more important than sports and said sports should not resume till January 2021.  So for us to state kids are more exposed in the lockeroom next to eachother than on the bench......someone from that camp would say, good point, no hockey for you now.  In reality we created that temporary hockey model based on guidance of 25 indoors.

I'm going to cram as many scheduled games in the next few weeks to take advantage of our current situation.

36 minutes ago, fafa fohi said:

Sorry but this is a load of crap.  Wolf mishandling this does not define the Democratic Party nor serve as their litmus test.   You are calling this episode a circus?  What in the hell would you call the last 3 1/2 years?  
 

Your comment of Wolf “converting Democrats to Republicans in hoards” is a joke.  As a Democrat that believed Wolf failed miserably in his handling of the outbreak, I don’t know of a single Dem changing parties because of his missteps.  65% of the voting public polled this week say Trump and his task force mishandled the outbreak.  Get real.  
 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/516180-almost-2-in-3-americans-disapprove-of-trumps-handling-of-pandemic

That was a good article. I think everyone on both sides of the aisle can play monday morning QB on what the other party did or should have did.  This topic is ripe for Biden to pile on the virus response. Unfortunately his party has their own hurdles in the public perception. 

2 minutes ago, Lifelongbender said:

Sigh. We have no way of knowing what would have happened under any set of restrictions that differ materially from the ones they imposed. @Quinlan2020, your sentence "The fools that deem them unconstitutional do not acknowledge that" has a MAJOR flaw in it given your intended argument - whether the restrictions enacted were constitutional is not determined by whether they were effective. You seem to have that distinction entirely confused. Even if you were right about the effectiveness of the measures taken, it is still quite possible that they are unconstitutional.

We all understand your point of view, and as I have said before, I do not doubt your sincerity. However, you are either a doctor or a hypocrite, since you are giving a whole lot of medical opinion up there, having accused others of overstepping when they gave their own opinions. 

And, for what it's worth, it is not obvious at all that "medical advances" have made COVID more tolerable. It may be that masking has caused improvements in some areas (but I strongly doubt it), but there hasn't been any at-large improvement due to medical science, given that we are all doing exactly the same thing they told us to do in March. This after telling us for a while not to wear the masks, by the way.

Look, can we stop having this stupid, unwinnable, entirely non-factual argument, and talk about the hockey? You responded to "Open the economy!" with "The measures put in place were justified". That wasn't a response to what the man actually said. Let it go, dude.

To this day, at least in PA, I never heard medical staff of the governor say something like this. "We looked at buildings and the ability for the virus to spread. When we started looking at data from other states or China, we crunched the numbers and figured 25 people was a good number for indoors."  Hence, no science, no data, all arbitrary.   In theory, the science and data should all be consistent. Each state should be looking at said data. But PA has 25, OH has 50% capacity, blah blah blah.  But to your point (and I'm being sarcastic) the 25 people restriction saved lives and kept our cases lower than if it had been 100....right.

1 minute ago, ctil20 said:

Wolf “appealing” this right now screams hurt ego. The numbers don’t warrant the restrictions anymore. 
 

If there are no significant issues that arise from a more relaxed approach (via federal judge).. and Wolf continues to try to appeal - not only will Pennsylvania be a landslide towards Trump but it will remain red until the generations who dealt with this fiasco are not voting anymore. 

I do find it interesting that there is a direct correlation between those that preach the stay locked up, fear, stay home stuff are Biden voters. Not in all cases. I'm not saying it as a bad thing. It is just fascinating. I also found it fascinating that those that preached stay home, shut it down, save lives all got to work from home and kept their salary. I don't remember hearing too many that were unemployed saying "keep it shut down!!!."

1 minute ago, Hockey22 said:

So what is the next phase after green? oh, there is not one.  So we just sit and wait until wolfey dictates (I'm sorry, his unexperienced staff decides) that we can have more than 25 people in an ice hockey rink which is 200- by 85-feet: that's 17,000 square feet of space just in the playing surface, with the overall averaging 25,000 Square feet.....But no, he has no plans, he has no road map, he has nothing..... 

Wow. You must have been reading my mind while I was typing. Thinking the same thing. I don't know in general if there is a plan. Day in and day out the news talks about cases, cases, cases.  And the contact tracing they were talking about seems like has disappeared. Except for when all bars were shutdown is the only time I can remember a story that contact tracers traced all these case outbreaks at bars. Since then where are they coming from? Public transit? Schools? Work? Restaurants?  How is this thing still spreading?

Just say we need to get our case rate below 5% in order to fully resume life or something.  There is no metric and no end.  Just keep spitting out cases are on the rise.

I'm going to enjoy the full scale hockey and take what I can get at the moment. An appeal will be an appeal or whatever. But for now I'm happy that our kids will be happy.

And with regards to the appeal. I do agree Wolf will do anything he can to change it back to what he sees fit. I think he is a proud fella and took this as a major slap in the face. Probably is also embarrassing and he hates that someone challenged his authority. So he will fight tooth and nail despite what some of the constituents (ie sport parents) think. In reality he probably wouldn't have care anyways. But the fact that he will never be up for re-election makes it even more likely he will try to get the ruling reversed.  I saw that his reasoning for the appeal will be "the science."  I still am unsure what science and statistics they are going by to govern red, yellow, green.

I am surprised. But optimistic and appreciative that they take this Ruling to heart

1 minute ago, miked said:

No, they are not making up anything. this has been discussed multiple times on this site. This is straight from the gov office. If you put an imaginary 6 foot barrier at center ice, you have created 2 indoor spaces, that can each hold 25 people. 

these rinks have lawyers that are researching and contacting officials to try to figure out what they can and can't do. there are floating interpretations of certain things but the basic gist is this.

if you rent the ice for a private function, you are limited to 50% of the capacity.

if you split the ice for hockey with said imaginary border, you have 2 "rooms" that each have a 25 person limit.

if you play a game, it is an indoor sport with a 25 person limit in total.

it is this arbitrary stupidity that people are trying to fight, not some revolution against restrictions that actually DO have plausible benefit, but Wolfe has dug in, in spite of the wishes of the people of state, elected officials, even his own party has begun to turn on these issues. since he can't be voted out, he's going to go down in a authoritarian rage.

Well said.  And Wolf is sticking to his guns despite the argument that they are using the science to come up with these requirements. Because truth be told, the requirements would be consistent in each state and county. Because they should be following the same science. Hypothetically.

3 minutes ago, hockeyisgreat said:

Who is going to be the first to test it now that it has been deemed Unconstitutional? Why hasn't MidAm or Atlantic come out with a statement in regard to their position on this?  Everyone hopes Wolf will relax his position but it seems he is pretty stubborn. I would just like him to show us the research that supports his position.  Pa is ranked 9th in toughest Covid restrictions.

My thoughts is no one is going to test it. No one wants fear of being sued.  On the PIAA level with regards to fall sports I see some schools going out on a limb and having spectators and taking the ruling to heart. Others are sticking with the governors orders.

3 hours ago, forbin said:

Both of the situations are from first hand experience in the past week. My kid was on the ice.

-There were 28 players and 3 coaches on the ice during a private ice rental at Bairel. One half of the ice was being used by 2 coaches and 20 kids, the other half was a coach and 8 kids. No middle barrier. 

-There were 42 players and 6 coaches on the ice at RMU. This was split into two groups divided by barriers in the neutral zone. 21 kids and 3 coaches on one side and 20 kids and 3 coaches on the other.

I have no reason to believe that either rink is trying to dig their heels into the ground about moving forward with hockey as "normal" as possible like some other people on this forum seem to think. 

I don't think there's anyone involved in Western PA youth hockey that doesn't want to see 5v5 full rostered games as quickly as possible.

Yes in both situations both rinks are trying to drive the argument of 25 in a "gathering."  The legit language is no more than 25 indoors. Period. 

3 minutes ago, Danner27 said:

Not that I don’t believe you, until we see rinks such as Warrendale & Rmu allow full play it doesn’t really matter. Both of those rinks are The ones holding up PAHL and PIHL. 

Spot on. That is why I mentioned earlier that businesses need to buy in to the decision. My fear is they do not understand the legal relief it provides. In their minds the governor said 25 so that is what we're gonna continue to do. But as a business owner they can dictate what they want.

2 minutes ago, BeaverFalls said:

There was so science nor metric to work towards that would allow us to increase the limit. That’s the point. 25 was it. Period. There was no greener stage. New Normal. Deal with it. 

Precisely. And the cat is outta the bag now.  Good or bad, the precedent has been set for business owners and citizens to go after their governors for deprivation of freedoms.