nemesis8679

Somebody needs to close this team and it's owner down.

I'm curious what oversight this actual "league" has in how owners handle the teams?

No matter who is playing where, let's not lose the focus here.... Jaison Kelly is a con artist. He's taking advantage of people once again. Now he's exploiting "semi-pro" hockey players by making them pay him to play. That doesn't sound "semi-pro" to me. So the players throw in 25 bucks per practice? Is this every player doing this? Wow.

Exactly. With a known conman at the helm.

It didn't take long to figure out how this con works. At least for the Pittsburgh team. Get a roster of players to sell a bunch of sponsorships, and let them keep some money from "commissions" they receive from that and selling tickets. As long as the sponsorships and tickets minus commission are big or numerous enough to cover ice time, the owner is good. If the rink becomes a "sponsor", maybe get a break on ice time. Brady's Run being a community rink and not being the busiest place in the region would probably do that. That probably had more to do with the move from Printscape than anything else. I'm sure the ice is cheaper there straight off the bat. Probably a bank loan or two in there as well. If it works, fine. If not, keep the sponsorship money, claim bankruptcy, and fold the team. Without having to do much work or put out money yourself.

Well, that's the one for forging insurance papers. Not sure why it posted twice. I fixed it. Here's the one for scamming people at his car dealership. Neither one is something a good person would do, or something he did once that could've been an honest mistake or just a one-time bad choice. https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:b1fb1bfe-7010-4ded-a587-80a040d4a1fc

From the Union Hockey League's website: "The Union Hockey League is hybrid league, a mix between semi-professional hockey and senior hockey, with players being compensated for travel and other expenses via a ticket sales split but allowing them to retain their amateur status. Players can also make a substantial commission by selling season tickets and partnerships. " So, I guess they earn their own money by hawking tickets, and if ticket sales aren't great, they're on their own with expenses?

Very shady? I'd go a step further and say a history of being a criminal. I'd find some other beer league to play in. I wouldn't give this guy a dime or trust him with anything. This isn't someone who simply made a bad decision or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a pattern of deceptive and fraudulent behavior. The guy's a conman. Of course since it's white collar money crimes, he'll continue to get slaps on the wrist and be able to keep up the next grift as fast as he can come up with them. If you want to have a laugh, find the video of the "contract signing" on the team's Facebook page. Dude is like straight out of central casting as a crooked used-car dealer. If I was those players, I'd be very apprehensive of signing anything knowing his prior history of forgery and not honoring them. Apparently since he can't sell insurance or cars in the state of PA anymore, he does "exotic animal" show & tells at nursing homes and birthday parties now. I wouldn't let this huckster get within 50 yards of a vulnerable old person. I pre-emptively feel bad for whoever is getting fleeced in this hockey venture. Here's a couple of his easily-found run-ins with the law. https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:3361510b-442f-49bd-bdae-24affc29943e https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:b1fb1bfe-7010-4ded-a587-80a040d4a1fc

No it doesn't. Looks like there's about 30 people there.

The guy is a hedge-fund bro. Of course he's a self-serving idiot. 🤷

Interesting, even though Johnson's own teammates were supportive of Petgrave.

THF has an insane amount of teams compared to most of them. Double or more than most. Some have 4 or 5 teams. I'm sure that could have an affect somehow. Or maybe not. I'm not a statistician. Just seems like all things aren't equal when there's that much disparity in a seemingly important category.

That's the crazy thing. They have a lot of kids starting at "elite" 8u or whatever. Not many, or any, left by 16u-18u most years. By 12u-14u, they arent developed as much as other players from elsewhere, and they start getting cut loose in favor of outsiders. The ones that have made it somewhere truly impressive had more development outside of Pens, and probably would've succeeded going further with or without the Pens Elite. But, regardless where they pull their older players from and probably because of it, they're the most legit AAA option in the area and it's really not even close.

My point was it sounds like a big deal to a lot of people, while mostly not amounting to anything. But it looks good on the lcd tv's in the Cranberry lobby.

Sure, but to where? It also looks better than it is because people don't understand what "tendered" means. But I agree they move more kids on to somewhere else than any other teams. They should, they're pulling from a much larger geographical pool than other teams.

So you're supposedly here to learn about hockey, however don't want to listen to and disregard people who have lived it and experienced it for years? Got it.

That's good. Preds, Icemen, or Vengeance be playing either of those organizations?

Because it has ruined hockey and hockey development in this area. And yeah, some kids went to tryouts and got placed on a team. That's great. But if you think for a second all those teams are taking the best kids available for every position, you either have your head in the sand, are misinformed, or have a kid that is on a AA team that is there firstly because of encumbancy or another connection and secondly because of hockey. There's a lot of AA players (and some AAA as well) in this area that wouldn't even crack the first line or first d-pairing on the "lower" team. But you probably don't want to hear that.

Both ways have their pros and cons, but MHR seems to get it pretty close as the season progresses. But at the same time, you'll pull your hair out trying to makes sense of everything. Hockey has so many variables, you can have a team beat another team ranked quite higher by several goals while the next game against a much lower ranked team you can lose to. You can lose to a much higher ranked team and watch a team you clobbered beat that team. You can get generally pretty close, but there's too many variables to be 100% accurate for either system.

You and I both know that the teams around here, at least, aren't going to play each other unless tournament fate somewhere pits them against each other. We all know why.

Bro, who cares if they can skate or not. They have the extra "A", right? You don't want to play on one of the lowly "A" teams and actually be able to contribute to the team, you know?

By the same token, Johnson's own teammates, who were at or on the ice and know more about hockey than anybody on this forum, are sticking by Petgrave not having done this on purpose. In a statement released on the day of the incident, the Panthers, who play in the Elite Ice Hockey League, said the death was a “freak accident” and they were “devastated”. But in response to claims on social media that Petgrave had deliberately kicked Johnson, Panthers player Victor Bjorkung made his own statement, saying he did not blame him for the incident. He told Swedish newspaper Expressen: “What Matt (Petgrave) has experienced is unimaginable. I don’t understand how some people can behave, it’s inhuman. I have texted him and expressed how I feel about everything and I support him. No one in our team thinks it’s his fault, quite the opposite. We are a big family and he can contact us if he needs it. I was a couple of metres away, so if anyone experienced it as it really was, then it was me.”

I recall there was ONE game my kid played against a Badgers team where their players and parents acted like human beings the whole game. It really was shocking. I was pretty surprised.

I could point out that unfortunately what happened wasn't part of a fiction television drama.

He did distance himself. I would've, too, probably. While it's true a guilty person might do that, they also might not. Taken on its own, that means nothing. Many times these freak-accident kind of things look or appear bizarre, or don't play out how we logically think they would, because the circumstance itself is bizarre. It's how accidents happen. Only Petgrave knows 100% guaranteed whether he meant to do it or not. But I still think if we're basing assumptions on a video from one angle, there's nothing there to say it was intentional. Saying about "the type of player he is" means nothing here. There's many, many players of that type and has been and will be. If that were a Lady Byng nominee instead of Petgrave, would we be having this conversation?