Snap Shot

Anybody have any idea what is going on in State College. With the rink being on Penn State's campus it hasn't opened yet and I was told by somebody that lives in the area that the ice hasn't been installed yet. Anyone know anything about this or if that organization will even have a place to play prior to the season starting in a few months?

Apparently this is EXACTLY what happened with the State College Icers stuff. There were some board parents whose kids were put on a team that was well above their skill/ability level and instead of telling their kids to work and get better, they tried to level the playing the field so that nobody had their feelings hurt. I guess the organization wanted to do it at the 10U and 12U levels, after having a AA 10U team for the 1st time in years and there were feelings hurt because people's kids "made" the AA team, but were "thrown into the deep end of the pool" and couldn't keep up/compete at that level. The organization tried to sell it as a skill development thing that would benefit "everyone".

I heard from somebody in central PA that apparently the State College association was proposing going to "balanced teams" as opposed to putting the like skilled players together and trying to play at as high a level as possible within PAHL. Apparently this got shot down once parents heard about it, but it goes to prove what "The King" wrote above.

MidAm just released June 15th as the date that hockey activities can start. Rinks being open is up to the government and how they are handling the community at large. Does this open the door to organizations not holding tryouts and just naming teams? If ice isn't available, but an organization wants to move forward with building a plan for the upcoming season, does anyone see something like this happening?

I heard that there are teams still anticipating playing later this summer (June/July) but I'd guess those are due to a combination of wishful thinking and not wanting to lose the revenue (not in that order).

I heard from a PAHL organization president the other evening and he said that depending on the physical rink situation (did they take the ice out) and the way the state government allows businesses to open up they are "tentatively" hoping to have tryouts in late May. I don't know how realistic that plan will be, but that is just what I was told.

That rink is run by Beaver County Recreation Department and is not a private business. Over the years, they've used as a Red Cross Emergency location. The last time I'm aware of it being used was during a blizzard while there was a hockey tournament being played there and there was arena staff that got snowed in. I would interpret it as they are simply putting the plan in place and being prepared for a worse case situation where the county does become overloaded.

I agree that this letter is a "CYA Letter", but coaches and organizations will find ways around it, we all know it. Instead of selling ice to an organization rinks will sell it to a parent or a coach, so that, in name, is who has the ice. From experience I know that opens up some cans of worms from an insurance coverage level, but I would think we all understand that rinks are businesses and will find ways to bring in revenue. I would argue that this letter covers MidAm and USA Hockey from an insurance level more than it dictates who can do what and when. As far as the PPE questions: 1. Would there even be enough ice time available to add the Black teams back into the organization? 2. I'm going to assume that the PPE/Dicks relationship is used by Dicks as a tax write off, so I wouldn't anticipate seeing that changing.

Yes, but that was probably 30+ years ago. There was a conversation on NHL Network Radio a week or so ago about tryouts and the Spring tryouts apparently sprang out of the GTAHL as a way to keep minimize the "recruitment" of players because they are not bound by geographic boundaries. What ended up happening was most/all of the organizations would schedule their tryouts on the same day so that you still had very limited ability to "organization shop". I had a chance to speak to an organization's president last week and he said that he's anticipating August/September tryouts for PAHL teams with PPE probably going in late July depending on what happens with the NHL season since getting the Penguins back on the ice will take priority at that facility.

Unless a parent is wealthy, cost is always a question. That being said, making a decision purely based on cost is not the smartest way to go about things in my opinion. It helps to know what you are getting for your money.

100% correct. Almost needs to be broken down as $$ amount per hour of ice time or training, or however you want to break it down so that it can be compared accurately.

I agree 100%, the size of the organization and the level of play of the players around the top kids is important. At this young of an age, one or two highly skilled players can greatly impact the level of play of the entire team, which might help the more skilled player, but does that really help the rest of the players if they are being forced to play over their heads? Larger organizations have an easier time getting "similarly skilled" players on to the same team because there are more kids available to fill out rosters. A smaller organization is going to run into having a skill gap simply because there are not enough "similarly skilled" players to fill out entire rosters. I saw this with my own eyes this past weekend at the 10U AA PAHL level during their playoff weekend. The larger organizations had full benches of "similarly skilled" players, while the smaller organizations had one or or two really skilled players, but then a pretty substantial drop in skill level down the rest of the bench.

What is your definition of "better players"... The percentage of Canadian born NHL players as dropped significantly since the 1980's when over 70% of the league was Canadian. I'm not a huge supporter of USA Hockey's ADM development system, there has been a larger number of US born players taken in the 1st round of the NHL Draft in recent years, and the US players being drafted are coming out of ADM. Considering the majority of NHL teams traditionally select "the best available player" at the draft I think there's a good argument to be made that right now USA Hockey and European countries (especially Scandinavian countries) are producing "better players". This is especially true if you take into account participation levels in the US and Europe vs. Canada. You can dislike the rule changes all you want (I particularly dislike the change in the offsides rule), but to say that those rule changes are putting US born players at a disadvantage developmentally is fundamentally wrong.

Just to back up what Lifelongbender said above, there has been a MASSIVE push within PAHL over the past 3+ years to develop and establish more girls teams within the member programs. My understanding was that this year they were duel rostered on both the "boys" team and the "girls" team, the push for next year is that the girls teams go to a "full season" of 20 or so games and that they are only rostered on one team.

The Black teams served a purpose of filling a market between the Gold Teams and PAHL AA. If you agree with that approach or not shouldn't matter, people were interested and showed it with their checkbook. This takes away that option and will ultimately end up with other organizations coming in and trying to fill that void. Feel how you might about PPE, but now these players and parents are going to be putting their money into an unknown. I think this goes along with the saying about "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't". Because there is money to be made, somebody is going to step in and attempt to fill this void in the market.