miked

the playoff games so far have been Home site games. SF and Char both had admissions table and announcer for their games but the home team would have paid that announcer. Now that the games are neutral site i'm not sure how an announcer would work, maybe the two teams agree and split the cost? but whatever games you were at, that was most likely a home team descision to not do those things.

At the Moon Richland game last night. Richlands first game back in PIHL and the after the 2 hour drive, they had to stand through a 15 minute 67 jersey retirement for the Moon player who passed away last spring in a car accident. So how did they handle it? By hanging a 67 Richland jersey behind their bench. Class act all around from Richland. tenband tv broadcast the ceremony and game if anyone is interested.

Aviators used to play out of Airport Ice Arena. When it shut down they were sort of thrown to the wind. I think they were playing at PIA a few years ago, so good for them getting into a more central spot at Alpha. But that's why there are 2 orgs in the Alpha house. It's not some sort of A teams B teams situation. Aviators (and a few high schools) got screwed by their ice rink closing. I've also heard the Vipers are moving into Alpha for next season.

exactly, so why isn't picking a school based on hockey vaild? with all the twists and turns that life is going to throw at an 18 year old what do they know? as another poster wrote, they found the school that was the best fit for them. what made it the best fit? for some kids and their family, the hockey might make it the best fit. it might not. whatever is going to make your kid comfortable and happy is most likely going to lead to a better chance of success.

ah, i was thinking that seemed like a crazy price bump over 4 years.

14K a year for Clarion (aka PennWest)? I was just at Edinboro (aka Penn West) last Friday with my son and they showed us the breakdown at 12k a year for tuition, 22k all in a year. So i'm not going to try to tell you what you paid, but seems prices may have changed. So if your choice is 22k for no hockey, or 25k for Bobcat hockey, seems pretty worth it, provided the kid can actually make the team. and with stats like this According to the National Center for Education Statistics, one-third of all U.S. college students switch majors before earning a bachelor's degree. And around 1 in 10 students changes majors more than once. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, around one-third of college students transfer schools before earning their degree. not to mention how many people get jobs unrelated to their degree or after working in their field for a few years change careers entirely. You pick a school that is the best fit for YOUR family. if that includes hockey or not, it's only YOUR business. Whether the school is in state or out of state is YOUR business. I know kids that went to school in Colorado just to go to school in Colorado, So what? their business, not mine. If everybody is so concerned about everyone else's education costs the advice that should be given is go to community college, get an associates degree. Transfer to a 4 year university with a transfer agreement with your community college. the associate degree gets you a 20% tuition discount on your remaining 2 years. Graduate with an associates degree and a bachelors degree with minimal debt relatively speaking. if your kid wants to go to a school to play club hockey, do it. chances are they will be more engaged and less likely to be part of this stat 30% of students drop out in the first year. Only 41% of students graduate in 4 years. Male students have a 20% higher chance to drop out, than female students. Asian students have the lowest dropout rate.

@Saucey My rant wasn't aimed at you. I understand when you have one practice a week you have to cram as much as you can into that slot. but there are still options. You could talk to your association about setting up some 20-40-20 ice slots where Team 1 practice is 20 minutes full - then Team 2 takes the ice and both teams have 40 minutes half - then Team 1 leaves and Team 2 has 20 minutes full. Then the coaches could work together on the half ice slots from time to time to break into 3/4 1/4 breakdowns. There's lots of options to get the kids the ice they need and still keep costs under control.

understand completely that there does have to be some element of full ice to tie together all 3 zones, but if coaches would work together, smaller surface practices could become more effective, thereby decreasing the need for as many full ice slots, keeping costs down. yea, you are spot on i'm so tired of having this discussion with some parent year over year. "My superstar special snowflake plays on the Squirt 17 team, and it's not fair, I demand we have all full ice practices." Really now?, We have X number of teams paying for ice here, which one(s) of them do you think we should take the ice away from? and do you expect them to continue to pay for it? Are you willing to double your fees since you are doubling your ice? "grumble, grumble, it's not fair, this association sucks, i'm taking my kid to <insert mystical elsewhere association that gives all full ice slots for half the cost>" but on the bright side, think of all the jerseys the kid will have collected to decorate his mancave when his beer league buddies are over!!!

sorry, i meant to say former, the host schools have assigned co-op schools.

thanks for the file, do you know if the host schools have assigned co-op schools or do kids in the co-op schools list just pick a host school to play for? i'm pretty sure it's the latter but how do you figure that out? also does anyone know of a Brook here in PA or is that the Brook County WV school? and I guess while we're on the all things co-op, how does a kid get his school added to the co-op list?

2 summers ago I had to take my wife to an appointment at UPMC. while I waited, I walked over to the rink hoping there would be something to watch to pass the time. to my surprise I saw Vincent Trochek, JT Miller, Zemgus Gergenson (sp) and that local D man who's more of an AHLer but did get some NHL callup time, along with a bunch of what I'll call prospects. They were all wearing some sort of identifying jersey but it's not relevant who I recognized and didn't. What did I watch them do? well first they did small area games for about 30 minutes. 2 groups in 2 stations using one zone. After that they played 3 on 3 cross ice. Yes just like 8U adm. cross ice. after all that, they went to 4 vs 4 full ice, which was pretty much a joke. Trochek was "hitting" everybody on the ice, at one point pinning a prospect to the boards and pulling his jersey over his head. Guys were trying to change and JT Miller would wave them back onto the ice. It was pretty hysterical to watch, but the point is, their work out was done in half ice or less, then they used full ice for some fun. but still, no one says you can't cut the ice in half in the other direction and skate the full 200.

couldn't agree more. I would rather have more ice slots on smaller surfaces than less slots on larger surfaces. thing is, when people say half ice slot, everyone always splits the ice at the redline. I see so much wasted ice because coaches don't talk to each other. Say one coach is going to do one on one battle drills in the corners for 15 minutes. why can't the other coach use 3/4 the ice for that time? and then they switch. if the 2 coaches would work together, the ice could be split in different ways to maximize its usage for the betterment of everybody.

I always thought which way you went had to do with number of seniors, but a little research shows that Knoch has 6 seniors (JV-2), QV has 5 seniors (V-A), Gateway 5 seniors (JV-3), and Beaver has 4 seniors (V-A). so i'm not really sure if that holds water. QV clearly made the correct choice, Beaver, probably not, but hard to say, after taking some beat downs early in the season, it looks like they finished off the year with some competitive games. Knoch and Gateway are doing well in their divisions. Knoch probably could have won some class A games, Gateway probably made the correct choice, really hard to know though just looking at PIHL site.

I know a coach for a D2 JV team (they actually play JV3). his motto is if a kid is willing to put in the work, i'm willing to teach them to skate. so "players" can be a little misleading in some cases. but if you look at the D2 teams in JV3, they barely have enough kids for every game and more than half are playing Varsity as well. Carrick has 2 goalies for both teams. I think Deer Lakes only has one for both JV and Varsity. but the lack of players, is lack of players in one school. Avonworth had been D2 until this year, they were forced pure because they had just enough kids in Avonworth school. Not sure what happened to the kids up 65 that used to be part of that co-op. I heard Deer Lakes, but can't confirm.

YES someone does, for their own GD safety!! WTF does making the NHL have to do with child safety? because the likely hood of them making the NHL is basically nil they should just do whatever the heck they want on the ice? Why not just forget hockey altogether and just have a U8 Thunderdome? and dear lord, how much clearer could pucks11 be that they were referring to GAMES not practices. but here we go, posts about it being a coaching problem if kids are standing around during practice. no wonder kids today can't listen worth a crap

was actually just part of a discussion about FPP. What happens is, apparently Sports Engine has a selector to add FPP points after the manager has entered all the games stats. And this selector has more options than what should ever be selected. The only options should be 1 0 -1. so some managers have been confused and enter 2 if they tie or 3 if they win. this leads to more FPP than games played. to think that an 18U team can't stay under 8 penalties a game is bit overdramatic don't you think? now if someone takes a 10, yea, the team is screwed, but how often should these kids be taking 10s? the issue with FPPs isn't so much that they exist, it's that they don't serve the intended purpose. Any team losing FPP consistently you can pretty much be sure that there is one maybe two kids who are just running around out of control. if the teammates call them out on it, the kid will say they are being bullied. if the coach benches the kid, the parents complain their kid is being targeted unfairly. it's so sad, but so true. I know of parents who have filmed practices and sent footage to coaches of every "infraction" they see as a point to prove their special snowflake was justified in two hand chopping someone. i'd rather them just get rid of the FPP and come up with a stricter suspension code. stop punishing the kids who do nothing wrong and just get rid of the problem.

can you clarify? this is midams, correct? I know some teams make a big deal about listing themselves as tournament bound and others do not, but I thought everyone went to midams.

I have to wonder if it's hard to keep track of the co-ops because they change YOY. Like this year Avonworth went pure, so all the kids outside the AV district had to co-op somewhere else. So since the media finds it difficult to rank D2 teams, they don't pay as much attention, and therefore individual performers don't get noticed. Not disagreeing that it sucks for those kids to not be recognized, but there is pretty limited high school hockey coverage.

which begs the question, how do these out of state rinks run tournaments with NO EMTs on site? even if they can legally squirm out of responsibility, as a rink owner, I wouldn't want anyone dying.

i just want to point out that the Foxes do NOT have a mite program. The mite program is through RMU Island Sports Complex. and as pointed out above it is very large, which is nice because they can break the kids into skill level tiers. when my son played there they had 7 tiers with 4 teams in each tier. i think it's down to 5 tiers now, but it's still big enough to keep large skill discrepancies from having to play each other. but anyway, the point of bringing this up is that if you are looking to sign up for the mite program at RMU (which is the Foxes home ice) you would not want to go to the Foxes website and register for the tryouts they are currently holding. You would want to go to RMU and register for their tryouts, which happen in the fall. It's been years so i don't want to speak for the current rules, but i would contact them now and find out the eligibility requirements for the Mite program. When my son did it, he had to pass a learn to play program. they have summer sessions so kids can be ready to go in the fall.

so I can drive 6 hours East to a VID hot spot like Philly, roam around and then drive 6 hours back spreading the funk all across the state, but I can't drive 30 miles west because i'll cross an imaginary line? politicians amazingly find ways to out stupid themselves daily. anyhow, as far as I know there is no hockey in WV currently, so I doubt you would find any tournaments there. Ohio seems to be open, for now. There is no safe bet to not cancelled however. We have been cancelled from 2 local tournaments this year because our division got shut down. No way to guestimate what divisions fill and what division won't. If you're concerned about the state line quarantine BS, go to Cleveland. If travel restrictions were given any sort of rudimentary logic, Cleveland would most likely be in the allowed zone, not Philly.

played at Baierl with full benches Saturday. heard RMU lawyers are evaluating the judges ruling. but RMU could use the outdoor rink for PAHL if need be. Not ideal, but if their lawyers are leery and all the other rinks are going to full benches, it might have to be that way for awhile. So I think PAHL will start pretty much normally, the question will be if it can continue for a full season.

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.

it's frightening that this (9th grade civics) needs to be explained. it's even more frightening that we have a governor who's response to a bi-partisan bill supported by the state representatives constituents enough to flip some votes to make it supposedly veto proof is "The Legislature should stop wasting time and pass the governor’s plan to help Pennsylvanians.” so basically, eff you people of PA, do what i say. maybe if Wolf would stop wasting time vetoing the people's desires and creating a system of protections based on logic, the legislature could spend more time looking at his plan.

you beat me to posting this morning, i received this from org president last night. A cooresponding bill for non-school sports and recreation has now been introduced. It is PA House Bill 2832. It is due to be voted on as soon as September 15. We need it to pass with veto-proof majorities as well. According to the bill's sponsor, it will be modified to include indoor sport specific language. If you want to play hockey with full rosters, please contact your legislators for passage of HB2832 in the interests of non-school indoor sports activity operating at 50% capacity instead of a 25 max gathering limit! You can find your representatives here: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/index.cfm Make sure they hear us! so in answer to your question, it is supposedly going to be modified by the sponsor.