Bob Loblaw

Road paved, new bathrooms, new locker rooms, new ice surface, new boards, good food at the concession, water purifier, just basic improvements. It's a good thing that there is so much ice around, these high school teams have so many options.

When my kid was a mite their were two levels, Group 1 was the better and mostly older kids, and Group 2 we're the newer and mostly younger skaters. Now I see organizations putting up Elite Red Mite teams. Are you kidding me? This is a trickle down effect of organizations starting AAA squirt and peewee teams to keep up with the Joneses because their kid wasn't good enough to make the Pens, who by the way started this whole mess by offering "Elite" teams below the bantam level. The future NHL parents are getting crazier by the birth year, and all the organizations are seeing dollar signs. I witnessed a woman at a learn to skate crying and begging the instructor to move her kid up because "he will never catch up to the others". The kid was like 4! I don't see it getting any better, honestly. Not as long as people are throwing down the cash for extra A's.

It does include goalies unfortunately. Organizations now have kids who are able to play hockey in a developmental, nom-checking setting relegated to a practice squad, or even worse turned away because of their birth year.

The team is looking for a handful of 05/06 players to field a second team. At this point, the team, as well as a lot of other teams in pihl, are being handcuffed by the Mid-Am second year peewee rule. They can draw from anywhere, but generally draw from Catholic/private grade schools, and schools and organizations that are unable to field teams. If anyone is interested in playing, or knows anyone who might be, you can message me with questions, or contact NCTROJANHOCKEY@GMAIL.COM

Curious what you mean by "a program that's not building the right way"? The majority of the high school team started as middle school players four years ago when the program started back up. Curious what you consider "the right way"?

Maybe he is the 05 Renegade Coach from a few years back that masqueraded as a hockey mom.

Is it the same coach that screamed for his players to "take off their heads" when he coached for the Renegades 04 last season?

Pahl didn't do the refs any favors by implementing the fair play point. All that did was cause them to be scrutinized even more. Refs are indeed human, and do not have the luxury of video replay. Any wrong or questionable calls are put under the spotlight even more because they have the possibility of affecting a teams post season. It's a flawed system that passes the buck so the league doesn't have to be the bad guy and deal with the repeat offenders who actually are the problem.

Yeah, you don't even want to know what that JV team full of upper-classmen and Excel ringers did against the fifth placed team last night. Never mind that hard fought 1-0 win against the sixth place team the week before. #justbeatingeveryoneupasusual

12 underclassmen, 6 juniors and 4 seniors on the active roster. So what side if the fence you gonna ride today troll boy? Crying that there is talk about a possible varsity squad or crying that there is a JV team? Either way, a little troll like you will still whine. Show yourself to the door son, come back when you have some facts. K

I'm gonna set the record straight with you son, since you like to throw up links. FACT: The program is only three years old and never had a varsity team. Kind of hard to do at that stage when you don't have the upper-classmen to do it. You want to point out how Central is so much better, it's a lot easier when you have been around for a long time and you have an all boy enrollment that eclipses North Catholic. Next, let's talk about the middle school teams, since you know so much about them. Most people including pihl realize that middle school teams change from year to year especially with small schools. Here's another fact for you. Last year's team was compromised of all eighth graders except for 2. Of the 15 skater roster, 10 of those kids were from Catholic Schools. 1 was from a public school, but planned on, and did enroll at North as a freshman. 4 came from Knoch, who didn't have the numbers to field a team. Fact: when pihl placed the team, it had 11 skaters, hardly a juggernaut. The Knoch kids came after it became apparent they wouldn't have a team. With that being said, everybody was well aware we were in the wrong division, and we tried to change it but it was too late. Happens every year, teams get placed wrong. It's easy to do at that level. Fact: The coach was very adamant about not running the score up on other teams, something that couldn't be said about some other teams in that the tier that were placed low. Fact: the team went out of their way to play scrimmages and tournaments with upper tier teams because it was good for our players. Fact: the team opted up to high division 2 in the playoffs because it was the right thing to do.(and lost by the way) That brings us to this season. Obviously the middle school team had to regenerate after losing so many older players. But what I really want to address are your "mind numbing similarities". Do you actually look at the links you put up? If you did you would see that the JV division is super tight. Look at the gf/ga. Look at the scores of the games. How in the hell can you make the accusation that the JV team is beating everyone up? The FACTS state otherwise.

5 of those eighth graders from last year's middle school team are playing on the JV team this season.

Maybe you should come to a board meeting and give your input to help make it a better organization instead of being anonymous troll spouting off untruths on a message board.

I'm beginning to wonder if you can read. Isn't that what I said?

The Excel Program is between the Penguins and the school. North Catholic Ice Hockey is it's own separate entity, and a club sport, the same as any other high school hockey organization.