fafa fohi

I am out of town next week hanging with the in-laws ..........god help me. I was hoping a 12'er and streaming some tournament hockey at Alpha would get me through it, but then I thought - Alpha is hosting a tournament next week and is the only major Pittsburgh area rink that I know of that does not use Live Barn. WTF? With as many teams as they have over there with in-house, Renegades and Vengeance and no Live Barn?

It works both ways. There's plenty of anabolic coaches and parents out there that want to brag about their kids being in a division where they don't belong. Ask the parents from last years 2007 BY Renegades team how their season went. Going 8-28-3 in PW AA just so they can wear an extra A didn't work out so well for them. And to think there were those within SCIR that felt they should have two, yes two teams in PW AA ( 06 and 07 ) was absolute nonsense.

I always thought jokes were supposed to be funny........”tough guy.”

No, it is what a bloated four time bone spur draft dodger calls “the perfect” scenario. keep the politics out of this son - that’s what Twitter is for.

If a "tenant" backed out of ice time at FP, someone else would step right in within minutes. Not enough ice to meet the current demand.

"Already dreading tryouts" for a U12 player and the season just started. Sorry everyone, but I find this entire thread to be completely absurd.

For those of you following PIHL, burghhockey.com is a decent site to get info on what is going on.

Parents, be careful for what you wish for when it comes to your players team moving up a division or two. Anabolic coaches wanting to don a AA moniker may end up biting off more they can chew just so they can tell everyone their son / team plays at the AA level, or just a higher level than they really should be at. Your player will get more out of a winning season at A Major Black than a disastrous one at AA. Ask the players / parent of last years Renegades 07 team which had no business playing AA. And that was driven by coaches

When I have to do a Google search to find out who won the tournament because the PIHL website had not even updated the game scores from Monday (three days after the games were over), that's a problem. And it's inexcusable.

The PIHL website is a disaster and never updates regularly. I guess more of the same for 2019-20 as I had to go elsewhere to find out who actually won the tournament.

The renovations for bathrooms at Baeirl are completed and outside of UPMC, the mens is a pretty frigging nice bathroom. Cannot attest to the ladies however I assume they are done as well. PAHL placement games just started so from a timing standpoint I am not going to complain about that. Well done boys at Baeirl.

Key word - "barns." Props to the ownership groups at Frozen Pond and Baeirl for making significant improvements in their facilities. Both rinks have gone through major changes while other rinks continue to rake in funds while their owners put nothing back into the rink from an improvement standpoint.

Last night I watched part of the U-14 Icemen vs Charlotte Rush game. Fun game to watch, and Rush were leading 1-0 at the end of the first period when I left. Icemen forwards looked aggressive and fast, however they couldn't sustain a rush as most of the time was spend in their own end. If they have a weakness its their D line. Anyone know the final score? Since Icemen are playing as an Ind. what's the word on PAHL U-14, particularly AA and BY 06.........who looks good so far?

Anyone with some insight on the U18 level, particularly AA? Now that my youngest is no longer playing I’m curious as to who appears to be the strength of the division.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there are local teams that haven’t played a single game yet - no placement games nor scrimmages and won’t play until this coming weekend or the next. When my two sons played both had at least a scrimmage or two before placement games as an act of preparation. However, ten games into the season sounds excessive to me.

Some kids use MS as their intro into ice hockey. Over the years I have seen such a wide disparity of talent from smaller schools that field only one MS team and need all of the bodies they can get, and in many cases you have inline players taking the ice for the first time while you have other players on the same team that have skated since they were five. With schools that have enough players to form two teams like SV and PR, their #1 teams are usually quite good with a relatively solid talent across the board. That is not always the case for some of these smaller schools fighting just to get one goalie and three lines.

I understand that, however let's not dismiss the fact that this is a stupid rule. And playing an "independent" schedule means no playoffs and I heard most kids that were left without a MS team have already moved on............

QV no longer has a MS team and I believe it was more due to the new PIHL rule that first year MS players ( 07's for this year ) cannot occupy more than 25% of the total roster. Stupid rule, as you are telling a quality 07 player that may have a better skill set than a 06 or 05 player that they cannot play because of this.

Wow has BV fallen on hard times or what..........their #1 teams falling to other orgs #3 teams.

If it is at Ice Castle the only way I am going is if they open that bar of theirs for some early bloody's.

They were an 07 BY team, went 8-28 and should have been in a lower division. Sometimes ego gets in the way of sound reasoning, especially if a team gets whacked in placement games by teams in the division they were originally placed and don't petition to move down.

On the list you provided, Allegheny, Renegades, Foxes, NP and Preds have two teams in "Group 1" for U14 however there is no way these organizations will have two teams at the AA level, so the "group 1" moniker is misleading. AA Major will consist of 05 teams (some teams may have a couple of 06 players ) while AA Minor will consist of 06 BY teams. Everything else looks right as at the other levels there doesn't appear to be two teams from the same org in Group 1. Either way there will be shifting based on placement game performance.

You can start here, then click on USA Boys and filter as needed for the age group you want in Tier 2. There will be some shifting in the alignments after placement games are completed. https://myhockeyrankings.com/division_info.php?y=2019&d=318

Thanks for posting this. Do you have links for other age divisions?

PPE Black is not AAA, so you helped make my point. Black is glorified AA hockey with pretty uniforms and nice equipment bags with a price tag 4X to 5X that of a high PAHL level team. Why do you think they abandoned the "Black" moniker and are now only labeled by the name of the head coach on their own website? I heard last season that a couple of Black teams lost to PAHL #1 and #2 teams from the same organization. How do you think those PPE Black parents felt after that? I wasn't coming down on you specifically, its more about the culture that is amateur hockey in western PA. And if your son is doing what he wants to do and playing where he wants to play, that's good for him and for you.