Captain America

Thank you for the lighter option.   White text on a dark background is difficult for many people. 
 

Saucey is spot on.  Most families that have hockey players play for two teams, school and travel.  That is 4-5 days per week.  Then you watch or go to Pens games.  Add in other outside interests and It just doesn’t leave much room for college hockey viewing, unfortunately.  

 

I hate the BY model.  I am the middle school coach for a local team and I have several 06 players who are on a winning BY travel team, a playoff team, a large organization team.  They are the best players on their travel team.   I watched a few of their AA games and was shocked at the disparity between top player and bottom player, and those in between.  It looked no different to me than the disparity that you see on all Tier 3 middle school teams.  The top 3-4 players on the team carried the others and that's not good for development of anyone.  If these top 06 players had been placed on a team with the better 05 players in the organization it would have been much more beneficial to their development.  Likewise, the "lesser" skilled 06 players would have benefited from playing with other "lesser" skilled 05 players.   In other words, several of these kids should have been on A Major teams with mixed age rather than BY AA.   I realize this is a common theme in all of the posts here, I'm simply agreeing with it wholeheartedly.  I think Saucey's response was spot on.  FWIW, I do not have a son on my middle school team.  For my son, (he's a midget player), I've always wanted him to be on a team where he is in the middle of the pack talentwise... a few players better, and a few who are weaker.  

Butler Valley Dawgs 16U team 2 (289) is 0-7.  4 goals for, 60 goals against.   A Major Gold.   Two placement games isn't enough.  

Huskies does not have a 16U this year.  Couldn't get enough skaters.   

It appears that Kiski, Connellsville, Shaler, Ringgold and Freeport are some of the teams that will not have MS teams this year.  Not sure if its a lack of numbers or the 25% rule.    

I’m wondering the same thing.  It’s no fun to cut a skilled kid from the middle school team simply because you’ve hit your limit of a certain birth year.   Our school wouldn’t have had a team last year under this rule.  It’s my understanding that Mid Am is responsible for this.   PIHL doesn’t want this rule at all....there has been an exception granted each year allowing 9 pee wee birth year kids per team for the last several years and Mid Am is refusing to grant the exception this year.   This will kill some MS teams for sure.