aaaahockey

I have not seen your film yet but will. I am still a firm believer that waiting until boys start to turn into men to allow checking is a terrible mistake versus teaching and allowing checking fundamentals at least at squirt minor.

I, for one, loved Backcheck's satire and he thoroughly linked some fun backup

Yep - baseball, lacrosse, soccer all have equivalents. Some sports even have national brands that make pens look like small peanuts.

The weather

I might get flamed for this but honestly more south hills options for decent hockey teams would be good especially if they move and don't try to do an additional tier 1 team. I think Pittsburgh could support (at least at some ages) 2 tier one teams, one in the north and one in the south. If they were really creative.they could create tournament teams that combined the top half of each.

Capitol Raiders

Rinkrats ?

The independent ice rentals will always be more. Think about it from your own business perspective - if someone comes in and says here I'll buy out 75% of your available ice for the season you would certainly cut them a better deal than Johnny Hockey's dad trying to squeeze in some extra skate time for Johnny just because of the sheer amount of ice the organization is renting. Someone should develop ice rental software that operates like airlines do and adjusts the price according to the demand (time of day and season along with other rentals) in order to always set the optimal price and you would probably be able to rent everything you could staff.

What is your goal? This goes back to the comment that we would be better off having many more rec teams and many fewer travel teams. For the vast majority of hockey players (everywhere and in western PA) the goal is to have fun.

And again wtf does it matter? I mean looking at my youngest playing rec baseball a couple years ago - he played 14 games and had 4 practices and had a great time. What are we trying to do? Let kids have fun for gods sake.

This is an underated idea - we should have half the travel teams and 10 times the rec teams.

I think you are making a lot of good points here. One caveat I think you should also remember, however, is that parents who are invested enough to run for a board are probably already getting their kids outside development opportunities or paying for the extra As somewhere. Often I've seen kids, especially at the minor level but even at the lower A major level completely checked out and the parents don't want to spend the extra $ for skills coaching or development even WITHIN the organization. They are just having fun.

I think your first squirt year just tryout and they will offer you a practice spot if you are just under the cut. That's how the younger kids I knew who did it got in at all ages.

If you decide to play in PAHL (my suggestion at that age) North Pittsburgh usually has pretty good AA teams

I'm not sure anyone at PPE makes that much. Don't forget many of them get good salaries 50k+ but also have alternate jobs (scouting, sales, recruiting, etc) that double+ those salaries.

In case anyone missed it:

I don't want to over dramatize this because I haven't seen every team or every kid but from what I have seen at the squirt and peewee levels (changes as they get older) these teams do struggle to play a team game. There is a lot of puck hogging, selfish play, skating down the boards with heads down, over decking, and it works well against medium to high talent and they lose against the elite talent (which is why despite being ranked in the top 10 they feel a need to bring in outside help as the kids age). That being said the kids are very skilled so it does work sometimes. A lot of this may be driven by the fact that ever kid feels they need to be the best in order not to be cut next year and kids measure best by how many goals they score not how many times they attempt passes or play defense.

Lebo went back to AA PAHL or did they stay independent? That's big news to me.

Somebody made the GOP really grumpy.

Not if you were required to play geographically as suggested above. Then everyone would either have to play there or quit playing hockey. That's not a good choice.

The problem with only being able to play at a geographic rink closest to you is: What happens when some programs put effort into finding good coaches or more ice/practice or scheduling? You are just stuck with whatever crappy coach the organization throws out there? Some organizations are run atrociously and unprofessionally as well. I, for one, am happy to have choices where my kids play.

Agreed and frankly with Esmark starting the money grab with 08-12 birth year teams this year they aren't far behind all these other faux teams. It's a shame Pens aren't willing to actually try to grow the sport locally rather than poach the best rich kids

I think at squirt it isn't a big deal because everyone makes it if I were coaching and I was looking at standings for playoffs I wouldn't take someone who was missing 25% of our games. And I'm coming from a perspective of them being average to top players. If you are just rounding out rosters whatever.

I know a lot of times the girls miss multiple games every year. I guess it's a coach decision as to who you take but it would bother me if Iost one of my players half the games to another team.

I might be missing context on this but often the girls are on the first team. Ive seen that at Southpointe, Lebo, SHAHA (the girls above were on peewee 1) and Mon Valley to name a few