Corsi

Really, "the ultimate consequence", actually that's incorrect. The lowest consequence for a spear is the call which was made, a 5 minute major and a game misconduct. The "ultimate consequence" escalates to a match penalty. Yes, "everyone in attendance was dumbfounded" might be correct because they were watching the play up ice as opposed to away from the puck. The rear official that made the call is 100% doing the job that he is out there for, which is to be especially vigilant for penalties which occur away from the play. Regardless of if the spear was "violent" or "soft", a spear is a spear.

You forgot wasting your money and "drinking the Kool-Aid"!

I agree with the premise that good players are found one way or another, but I would argue that each of the "low level AAA teams" you are referencing have a few players (2-4) that could play for a 30 "AAA" team and contribute (not sure where your cut off is for "low level"). Those kids that are playing at the "AAA" level have a better chance of "being found" than players at "AA" simply because the events they attend are usually attended by other "AAA" programs which lend themselves to being watched by more eyes than a "AA" or "A" event.

My response was to this "I feel like it should be the other way around. Any responsible HS coach should advise his players to avoid that train wreck A chase." The "I feel like it should be the other way around." is what my post was trying to point out. Players and families, for the most part put their priority on the travel/amateur team over their PIHL team, because of the difference in level of play. I agree with you that there is value in having players participate in both.

Thank you, that is similar to what I heard about both Preds and SHAHA. Not sure about SHAHA's policy with JV, but that seems correct as far as varsity goes.

The problem with that is the level of play on travel hockey teams is higher than local HS, especially when you move away from the higher PIHL divisions. Also, if the player has any kind of goal of playing at a higher level, junior and college coaches are not sending their people to watch a PIHL game on a Thursday night, but will have people in Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh for a weekend to watch "AAA" tournament games. I understand the desire to play with and in front of your friends from school, but the decision should be based on what an individual player's future goals are.

I can't speak to what Vengance or the rumored Esmark team is going to do, but I know people involved with both SHAHA and Preds at that BY and they have been told that both teams will be "High School Friendly", which I would think means that there's an ability to play both and if there's a conflict it is dealt with when the conflict comes up.

This stuff happens every year around this time.

The 09 team that competed as Tier 2 this past season is being advertised as moving up to Tier 1 AAA next season. The extra "A" must mean extra cost.

PAHL scoresheets during the regular season are done by volunteers (usually parents from the hometeam), I believe in the PAHL playoffs it has to be a volunteer that is not affiliated with either teams that are playing, but I may be incorrect.

If the stats are published or not, parents and coaches already question scoring decisions. I still officiate games, and at the younger age groups I get questioned more about awarding secondary assists than I do about getting calls right in a lot of games. As far as shots goes, that has always been arbitrary even at the NHL level (I can remember the stories about the way NJ was legendary for some of the shot totals they came up with in the 2000's), so that will never be agreed upon. I disagree with the idea of giving out awards for scoring accomplishments because we already see players (and parents) who are ONLY concerned with how many goals their little player scores and that would only perpetuate selfish play. The bare minimum should be that the stats should be published and updated each week during the season. At the very least, this would provide a single source regardless if people are satisfied with the accuracy. People aren't always happy with the accuracy of the stats the NHL publishes, that's the cost of doing business.

That same "glitch" has appeared on and off on the PAHL site over the years. While I'm no longer involved with PAHL, when I was, I was partially responsible with submitting an organizations preferred placement prior to placement games. The first season I did this I questioned why when they asked for each team's roster they also requested what team and what level (B, A, AA, AAA) each player had played at the previous season (not sure if PAHL still requires this). The reply I received was that it was mainly for players that were coming in from an organization outside of PAHL, because "they already have stats on every player in PAHL". I then asked why PAHL doesn't post them anywhere and the response was "because they are afraid that other teams are going to start recruiting kids".

Without being familiar with the make-up of all of the PAHL/Independent Tier 2 teams, I'm not sure how many players from non Tier 1 teams even received evaluation invites... Yes, if their is a limited number of spots for Tier 2 players, then that alone makes it difficult to advance.

PAHL vs. PIHL is probably a bad example because PIHL plays during the week, while PAHL is on weekends. Missing PAHL practices for PIHL games (during the week) has traditionally been where there's a conflict. Beyond that it is if there's a PIHL game on a Thursday night and the PAHL team is leaving for an out-of-town tournament that requires them to leave on Thursday. The issue that is being raised here is playing on multiple teams that both play the vast majority of games on weekends, thus leading to conflicts.

Yes, my understanding is MidAm asks for... Name, Height/Weight, Stats (GP, G, A, Pts), Prior Team, and Future Team (if known). PPE is the highest ranked team in the District, but that doesn't mean that the other programs don't have individual players that can play at that level. Making a blanket statement about it being a waste of time doesn't make any sense.

I get the idea about having people from outside MidAm run the camp, but the gloves, socks, helmets argument doesn't matter. At each age group they distribute a "scouting book" which identifies the players, gives vitals (height/weight), as well as stats. I know the statistics are not guaranteed to be accurate, but players are already able to be identified based off of what MidAm provides to those in attendance. Worrying about helmet and glove color is irrelevant at that point when all relevant identifying information is provided/available.

Yes, they probably will be behind the programs that I mentioned (except maybe Niagara) but as was pointed out by other members, D1 hockey is the one sport that is not as divided into "have's and have not's". The Michigan's, Minnesota's, BU's, and Denver's are going to be the programs that recruit the 18 year old's that get drafted in June, but because of the role of junior hockey, teams like Quinnipiac, Union, and Providence can compete and win by bringing in players that are 20-21 years old and compete at a championship level. RMU could and can compete with those teams, and having better facilities would help with attracting better players.

Being on campus is a huge recruiting tool for the teams, as well as having a "state of the art facility". If you go to PSU, ND, Denver, even Niagara University their facilities and RMU's are not even in the same class. RMU is dramatically behind when it comes to where they are playing. As far as what will happen to the the current complex when the on-campus facility opens... Even if the Island Complex is currently profitable, I would wonder if the cost to staff and maintain two separate facilities would force a sale to Black Bear (or another group).

The statement in the Trib explicitly says the following, "The 100,000-square-foot development also would house enhanced training and locker room facilities, offices, plus regional amenities to meet the needs of youth and amateur hockey players." As soon as this building would open, I would think Black Bear would be waiting with their checkbook. If I remember correctly they had, at some point, made an offer or had reached out about the current rink during the controversy when the Men's and Women's teams were dissolved.

"Are they really concerned about getting sued here"... that should answer your question about the context, of course the fear is that they would get sued.

Yes, the MidAm site states explicitly that "higher ranked teams will receive more spots at evaluations", which makes sense. I believe the 09 group will be split up into 8 teams, which does seem like too many kids to evaluate in such a short period of time. You cannot chose who is attending based off of stats, because of the discrepancy in the level of play across teams. In theory, the harder the schedule the more difficult it will be to put up numbers and vice versa. The kids on a team that faces stiffer competition should not be penalized because of that just as a players on a team that plays a weaker schedule should not get a boost. Evaluators won't be able to see who the "right ones" are in that short of a time period. The evaluation is normally very, very game heavy, so they are looking for the kids that perform the best in game situations. I like this format because it eliminates the players that focus only on what they learn in skills clinics and are great at stick handling through cones, but don't know how to really play in a game situation. Nothing is going to be perfect, but at least this format makes sense.

A coach can ask all kinds of questions, but that doesn't mean that he will always get a response or an explanation. The game needs to be kept moving, so taking time to have a conversation every time a coach has a question or wants an explanation for a call is impossible to have. The majority of questions coaches have are not of the "why did you make that call" sort of thing, they are of the "the other team just did the same thing a period and a half ago and didn't get called, so why are you calling us for it now" type of question. That is a conversation where there's no good outcome for either the coach or the official. No one is going to get an answer that they like in that situation.

Yes, an official has the authority to tell a team that he is only going to talk to one of the designated captains or only the head coach. In my coaching days, I had a number of officials tell me and my other coaches that they would only be speaking with the head coach. This was their way to keep the amount of grief they heard from the benches to a minimum. To answer your first question, a ref has NO obligation to explain a call to a player. I've had coaches get on me because "I didn't explain the call to the player". My response back to him was "that is called coaching and that is what you are here to do, I'm just here to call the game". I will always clearly say what the call was, but I'm not going to have a 5 minute conversation rehashing the play and why I made the call. I'll also only discuss calls if the coach is doing it in a respectful way. If they are screaming at me or my partner, I just ignore them and tell them that we will have conversation when they can do it at a "normal volume".

Lowering the amount officials are being paid would only make the ref shortage worse. I don't think you are going to find people to take time out of their day to do games, especially at the hours many of these games occur. For me to do a 7AM game, I need to be at the rink no later than 6:30 to get ready, and then we add in travel time, I'm probably getting up at 5:30 to do that 7AM game. The amount of money officials make is to give them an incentive to do the games. I would venture to say that by lowering what officials make, would lead to no coverage for games with start times before 9AM and as I stated before... If the officials don't show up, nobody gets to play.

Nothing has been posted as of yet and according to some friends who officiate games, there has not been any dates/times sent to prospective referees yet to gauge availability.