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?

On 5/11/2020 at 11:51 AM, The King said:

The “evenly balanced teams” is always brought up by the parents on the board that have kids that can’t cut it on the “higher level” teams

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".

On 5/7/2020 at 2:07 PM, The King said:

I’ve said all along that all of this will happen. The Current culture considers try outs exclusionary and discriminatory. Who formed this culture? Parents of players who either can’t or won’t see the benefit of amateur sports besides being a social event as well as the spineless organizational leaders who don’t have the integrity to fight the culture or have a need to further their personal agenda. 

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.  

19 hours ago, The King said:

Anyone that would open their ice rink would be violating Federal, state and local orders. So nobody in the hockey community can hold tryouts or any functions BY LAW. Neither USA hockey nor it’s affiliates have any say in this. All they are doing is piggy backing on already established orders. This covers their asses legally. Basically, it’s like a teacher telling a student it’s against their rules to take drugs. What will be interesting to see is if rinks open when local or state lawmakers lift the shelter in place orders and medical pros deem it ok to congregate, what will organizations do if they aren’t told by an affiliate they are permitted. Meaning, we are given the all clear by federal and state governments so rinks that had been losing money decide to open. They contact their contracted customers and tell them they are open and will begin the contract year. All ice will be billed. However this affiliate seems to wait until they can piggyback so they don’t give the go ahead to hold tryouts or club events in time. They have zero legal right to tell anyone not to fulfill their contracts. I’m sure They can make an administrative decision to discipline a club that didn’t wait for them to tell them what to do but they can be sued for that. Either way, this letter is a waste of time for any of the members clubs and only serves to cover the affiliate

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. 

14 hours ago, Spear and Magic Helmet said:

Anyone else been around long enough to remember when tryouts every year were Aug/September?

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.

1 hour ago, The King said:

True and sad. This is your consumer based hockey culture 

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.

7 minutes ago, Jack Handey said:

Even if you gather a bunch of prices, you can't use that as an apples to apples comparison.  Every association offers different stuff in their programs.  Different ice amounts, different training options, etc.  And every association has a different ice rate from their home rink.

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.  

21 hours ago, twoboys said:

My kids have done it both ways when they started Squirts.  In my opinion, if your child is one of the top two players in his birth year in large organization then he or she probably should play against older kids on a mixed team.   The rest of the kids are fine to stay together.  The problem if the top players stay together with their birth year they will single handedly raise the level at which a Minor team plays.

 

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.  

49 minutes ago, RegDunlop7 said:

Lol the asinine rules imposed by USA Hockey in recent years (i.e., no checking/delayed offsides until 14U, no icing on PKs until 16U, etc.) only enables the Canadians and Europeans to continue producing better players.

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.  

I would agree with Saucey about the quality of the camps the Pens offer at UPMC.  I've heard nothing but positive things about them for the past 3 years or so.  

Saucey is right, especially at such a young age, it is the parents who are asking for the AA designation and it is very hard for smaller organizations to field a pure BY team because the numbers are not there to have enough skilled players at a given age. 

13 hours ago, RegDunlop7 said:

Hence why the Vengeance are a faux-AAA organization.

The 09BY Vengeance are the 2nd ranked 09 team in PA and are 22nd nationally.  Maybe you can make the claim that organizationally they are "faux-AAA", but that specific team is doing more than enough to be considered legitimate.  

Before somebody says something, yes, I'm aware these kids are only 10 years old, but that is where the conversation on the board went.

1 hour ago, Chinstrap said:

It is easy to look online ( or just ask) how many teams an organization fields at each specific age grouping, then look at the availability of ice. 
 

Any mention by someone on this board about organization X or Y will probably be met with skepticism and “ oh they’re just a disgruntled parent”.
 

Look for yourself and see if the organization you are considering is fielding too many teams for the amount of ice available, then decide if that organization is focused on quality or quantity.

This is a really good point about the # of teams a given organization is going to field and the amount of ice time that is available.  

North Pittsburgh was mentioned earlier and they are fielding 6 teams at 10U, 6 teams at 12U, and 5 teams at 14U.  

Arctic Foxes has 4 teams at 10U (including an '09 BY and a '10 BY), and 7 teams at 12U (including an '08 BY and an '07 BY)

Don't hesitate to reach out to the current TM or head coach and ask them what the practice schedule looks like and what the expectations are.  I know that some teams might have practice from 6PM - 7PM, but may have an off ice session or film session before or after that hour on the ice, so your hour and a half at the rink just turned into 2 hours or more. 

Maybe talk to other parents that are currently doing development program with your player and see where they are planning on going.

I've heard good things about the UPMC Lemieux camps from players and parents that have gone in the past.  The majority of players are high A to AAA level and the coaches are very involved and apparently really push the kids.

42 minutes ago, PuckHead7 said:

That usually happens when the kid makes team number 3 of 4/5 at a large club and team number 1 of 2 at a small club.  Usually, the smaller clubs teams have a wider skill range.  Top team might have AA to low A+ players.  Bottom team, A- and B players.  Larger clubs the skill range is much closer.

I have to say I agree with a lot of what has been said in this thread...  I definitely agree with what I quoted above. 

It is a population size question when it comes to smaller organizations.  Think about organizations that have the ability to put 4 or 5 teams into a given division vs. the teams that put 1 or 2.  The top team in the smaller organization probably only have 1 or 2 players that could make the top team in the bigger organization.  They then have to fill out the rest of the roster with players that may only make the 3rd team in the larger organization but are now playing on the top team in the smaller.  

This leads back to the idea that 1 or 2 players can carry a team, and in the situation above, the answer is yes.  If the team is "placed" into a division that is at a significantly lower skill level than the top 1 or 2 players then the answer is yes, especially if the placement is done because of the lower skill level of the rest of the team.  There's a good chance you are going to see those 1 or 2 players be able to dominate most games because of the gap in skill level.  Keep in mind that the opposite could be true as well if the team is placed into a higher division and the lower skilled players are forced to "play up" to that level, then you could be seeing some scores that are not competitive as well. 

It is often a no win situation with organizations that draw from a smaller population pool when it comes to placements.

20 hours ago, Eddie Shore said:

Correct, Major Junior = Can't play.  Regular Juniors = Can play.

But, that second rule looks like you can play in Major Juniors, file an appeal, sit out the first year, then play.  That is very interesting......

I would hazard a guess that there could be changes coming with the NCAA now altering the rules on athlete compensation.  

It's the same organization, became PPE in 2012 when the Penguins and Dicks Sporting Goods became involved.  

On 10/18/2019 at 2:52 PM, Eddie Shore said:

On 10/18/2019 at 9:27 AM, miked said:

doesn't CHL negate NCAA eligibility? i thought that's where the USHL and NAHL came into play.

Not sure, but i think you are right.  I know BCHL, CCHL, OJHL and a few others are ok, but I am not sure how all the other ones are.

Yes, CHL players receive a stipend, which the NCAA views as being a "pay to play" situation.  If a player goes the CHL route, they lose their NCAA eligibility.