aaaahockey

See the new thread I made. I'm happy, if we can agree on a definition, to figure out who are legit AAA.

Adding: The first team that I see that calls themselves AA shows up at 64 but they don't really start showing up until after 100. The Pittsburgh Vengeance are the only local team ranked below AA teams (Shaha, Allegheny, and Arctic Foxes) and they came in at a whopping 182. Everyone should clearly be able to agree they should have played PAHL. I also don't see a Preds 07 AAA team. Their top team was ranked 207.

Since the Pens post is leading us in this direction, I decided to do the work. I only looked at 2007 (Bantam Major) last year in the MyHockeyRankings. As most of you know, the rating tells you how many goals you are expected to beat another team. If we are saying to be "legit" AAA you shouldn't get blown out at the top, we run into a pretty immediate problem as there are some truly elite teams out there. Shattuck St. Mary's is a 99.99. #3 Pens elite should lose to them by a goal every time, on average. That is insane talent and a huge dropoff. Consider much lower in the rankings a 1 goal difference goes from 182-224. By the time we get only to #19. the Flyers, they should lose to Shattuck by 5 goals (and Pens by 4) on average. Not very competitive. The Flyers, however, at #19 could play everyone down to #47 and only win by 2 goals on average. And #47 could play basically anyone in the top 100 and have a 2 goal average win but still lose to Shattuck by 7. That means #100 could have a roughly 4 goal, on average, game against #19, which depending on your perspective is a blowout or not. In fact, for the Flyers at #17 to beat a team by 5 goals or more, they would have to play teams below 146. All that to be said, trying to pigeonhole who is AAA is silly. What we can all agree on is that having too many AAA teams waters down the local competition (PAHL). Sometimes I wish it was more like lacrosse where you had travel teams in a completely different season (maybe before or after the local clubs).

I can't imagine someone buying it to tear it down and build a new rink if they paid anything close to what I heard Murphy was asking. There is a lot of land out there in the middle of nowhere that would have to be cheaper unless there is something else to salvage in the building.

Thanks for the update.

Those parents aren't even aiming for the NHL. They just want to pay thousands of dollars to get their butts kicked in the Brick tournament in a couple years ?

I think you are correct about this. The 06 SHAHA team is good. The problem is the organization got the big head and now has low level AAA at 07, 08, and 09 levels. They seem to want to copy the Preds model which is not what anyone needs to do.

Patrick Wey played for Boston College and later a few NHL games.

Esmark moving to the newly acquired Rostraver rink and rebranded as the Rostraver Rockets ?

Any updates on this one?

I'm a different thread here, someone said the owner denied it and said the rink was still for sale. So there are at least two different stories floating around and I guess only time will tell.

Everyone taking notes from the Preds. Can't win PAHL and still take your teams independent. Follow the money.

I second this. Ive also seen gold kids cut who weren't dominating in AA either (I think most were good but you would expect them to dominate and I've only seen that in one or two kids).

That's kind of why I'm curious. I heard they did pretty well last year. Did they retain the team? Lose kids? Pick up anyone? Think PAHL would be better at the major birthyear?

Yes south Pittsburgh 10s were independent last year and came back to PAHL this year to play AA. I don't know why but I'd be interested to hear the reasons from someone involved.

Don't worry some Pens squirt dad's will have it all sorted out and numerically ranked by week 1.

https://www.nhl.com/penguins/news/penguins-take-youth-summer-hockey-camp-to-sweden/c-335178244?s=09 Next thing we know Esmark is all Eastern Europeans and Pens Elite is all Scandinavians. Vengeance losing out on the global demand ?

Actually the terrible thing according to the news article is that he actually isn't in trouble due to weird age of consent laws. At a bare minimum they should include some sort of power imbalance thing in here for coaches, teachers, etc.

To all the Dad Coaches. What a thankless job!

This should say "starting at" because you then have to start paying regular team fees for ice and other things. And I don't mean just SHAHA, this is true of all the "AAA" teams including Pens. And if you are worried your kid is on the bubble, get ready to pay for every extra workout, skills training, and in the case of Pens even school ?

Are you including travel? That makes a big difference. I could see 6-8 for all the fees etc without including the travel. Going to be substantially higher depending on game schedules.

https://myhockeyrankings.com/news.php?b=902 Looks like they will stop giving out numerical ranking numbers for first year peewee and under. Thoughts? Does this address some people's concern in here?

Non-profit just means they are supposed to do certain things to benefit the community with their revenues. Look at the billions UPMC rakes in every year and they are non-profit as well. Pens Elite brings in a lot of money and pays some nice salaries to their staff and, like UPMC, are always trying to increase revenue.

As far as I'm concerned it would make it hard to find games to schedule for my teams. I love the rankings. It's a great tool to use to find competitive games. I don't like how people use them to drive the fever craziness though.

https://myhockeyrankings.com/news.php?b=901