muckerandgrinder

6 minutes ago, Saucey said:

Oh that is malarkey. Give me a break. I don't buy this narrative. Maybe a coach pulls a team out of disgust with PAHL, but Mom and dad pull their kid because their kid didn't make AA or to chase the extra A or to follow the kids on that team. If PAHL made a bunch of changes....the disgruntled and disillusioned would still leave. 

It's done. The cat is out of the bag. No matter what PAHL does, people will move their kids to chase. They do it once....and they never stop. That isn't to say that there isn't room to improve or change. 

Change needs to happen above PAHL. I think this area needs some rules that make it harder to jump ship every season. But the same people moaning about PAHL will say....oh, no, we need our freedom of choice.

I think there is no pleasing people in this area.Dsmned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

I’m not asking anyone to buy what I’m saying. I do agree that people are going to leave regardless of any changes now.

PAHL needed to adapt a bit when the PAHL/hybrid/ independent teams started years back and they did nothing.

Take a look at the CSDHL. That’s a model in how a league should operate. Their AA teams regularly compete against AAA teams and they are good games. Why? Because the league is run with an eye on adapting to change and they make it appealing for players/families to stay.

15 hours ago, HereWithPopcorn said:

Do people realize that with the PAHL, it is mainly the associations themselves that help to drive things.  While the Board may have some ideas, everything needs to be voted on.  And as Associations bring forward ideas, those get voted on as well.

What happens more times than not is that things get shot down because it is run like the Senate.  Every Association has two votes, but all Associations are created equally.  So an idea that may benefit larger organizations (Foxes, Allegheny, SHAHA, NP), gets shot down by the smaller ones (Wheeling, Indiana, Youngstown, etc).  And vice versa.

The PAHL is intended to be a facilitator of the league.

So if anyone here does have ideas for change besides running for a Board position, have you Association President raise the idea at a meeting.

I was our org. rep for PAHL when my ‘03 was in PW. On the outside it looks like your breakdown on how the league operates. On the inside it’s completely different and changes are met with strong “suggestions” to leave things as is. Basically you will be told that anything that requires any sweat equity outside of the current level will be shut down. The board has their cronies at various organizations and they will have their backing when they need to either push an agenda or shut something down. 
My main suggestions were a) a gradual transition period for the oldest mite group to eventually play a minimum of 2 full ice games at the end of the year.

b) Required transition to checking camp/clinics by each organization for all players moving from PW to bantam. Even just a 1 day clinic to learn how not only to check cleanly but how to take a check. Also to fortify what the purpose of checking is in the game.

That was almost 10 years ago. Glad they added that FPP though.

Discipline and controls for discipline are what matters most to the powers that be.

7 hours ago, Carl Racki said:

Again, the biggest problem with PAHL is all the bogus AAA wanna be teams that left.  If they could get all those teams back you would have an excellent AA league.  Maybe if they did all the PR that the AHF did it would help but I highly doubt it.  That league is not much better.  Their best beat would be to label it as a new AAA and then they would MAYBE get all the faux AAA teams back and have a good league.

For every team/player that has left PAHL there is a team/player that has left as a result of their dislike for the PAHL model. Honestly, I don’t think there would be any “faux” AAA teams if there was another league or AA option in the area at 14-18U that had a focus on adapting to change and growing the game. 

SMH.
I remember when you had to earn AA in PAHL. 

So much hatred for the so-called “faux” AAA teams out there. I’ve said it all along.. a small percentage of the parents on the non-PPE teams still chase the NHL dream, a large portion simply move on out of disgust for PAHL. Not the talent level but how he league is operated. The people running the league are dinosaurs with nothing better to do with their time since their kids aged out 15 years ago. 
No vested interest. No desire to make positive changes. Zero constructive thinking beyond the obvious until it comes to their favorite.. doling out disciplinary actions.
Placements are a joke as well..I’m placing my bets on any team from Cambria, Westmoreland, Wheeling etc. to win any division. Tank the placements and cruise through the regular season while they run the wheels off of their top 2 players who shouldn’t be playing A major whatever because the organization “doesn’t have the talent to support a AA team”.

PAHL is a joke and a bigger problem to local hockey than anything else. 
 

For accountability, I see this two ways. First off, half (or more) of the people who run PIHL are well beyond their glory days and too far disconnected from their kids (or their own) playing days. The refusal to be proactive and implement preventative measures is a direct indication of this. ANYBODY can be reactive and throw out the rule book  after an infraction etc. Staying ahead of the game requires an actual buy in and a modicum of passion for the organization you work for. It all starts at the beginning of the year. Division placement/alignment is a disgrace. But that’s a whole other topic.

My solution? Give team managers a small stipend or league wide discount on tuition of $500 and make it 100% clear to all coaching staffs that they are responsible for valid rosters. Generally, the managers do a thankless job because they genuinely care. But give them a small perk and elevate their authority a bit. Too many are treated like grunts by their coaches and cave in to shady roster moves etc…

Not a perfect solution and open to interpretation for sure. 

6 hours ago, No Politics said:

I'm not saying full-ice practices should be the norm, but kids DO need at least a portion of practice time to be full-ice.  When I used to coach, it was about a 75/25 split.  We'd have two hours of practice per week (two one-hour practices).  One practice would be half an hour full-ice, and half an hour half-ice.  The other practice would be five to ten minutes full-ice (skating warm-ups with two teams), then fifty minutes 1/2 ice for each team.  Worked well.

There are too many drills that require full (or at least 3/4) ice, and too many team concepts require full-ice.  So I think it is correct to say most training can be done with half-ice, but there is no replacing that necessary full-ice component.

It's not an either/or argument.

To my point exactly. And the older kids definitely need full ice but not all of the time. How people can expect 75% of practices to be full ice baffles me. Then again, during the season most full ice practices offered are usually at 7-8 a.m. or 8-9 p.m. Per my experiences, the parents salivating over full ice are the same ones who complain about it being too early or hitting in the way of their Saturday evening plans. 
And as previously stated, the way things are around here anymore, if a team had 30 full ice slots their coaches and managers would use 25 of them for games instead of practice. Then everyone would be butt hurt about only having 5 full ice slots. Lol
Thus is life in youth hockey. 

8 hours ago, hockeyisgreat said:

Preds definitely have issues with Ice time for AA teams.  Beware and ask questions about ice time.  I know of more than one AA Preds team that was lucky to get a half ice slot per week and maybe a full ice slot once a month.  If you check their website no where do they tell you what practice time you will get.   

Was thinking about trying out there but unless you are Faux AAA you won't get ice time.  Buyer beware!!!!

Depends on who you talk to I guess. Always had 2-3 per week when my son played there. As a matter of fact we left hornets for that specific reason. Got sick of having 7 a.m. practices on the mini rink at at Mt. Lebanon.

I did ask around with people I know with kids there and generally people seem happy with their ice time. 2-3 practices per week August through end of Sept. and minimum 2 per week during the season. Buddy with a kid on the bottom squirt team said the only weeks they had less practice were weeks that tournaments were at the rink. Also said AAA teams get more consistent ice but they pay for it.

SHAHA people do seem generally happy with their practice slots as well. Having less going on at Spencer seems to benefit the existing teams. Hope the Y doesn’t close that rink as they have been saying for years.

I don’t get the infatuation with full ice practices either. If you have a good coach they can utilize the 1/2 sheets and tie it together when they have full ice.

And don’t forget the “game mania” going on with PAHL. People want to complain about not getting full Ice slots but every time they do they feel compelled to invite a team for a scrimmage, thus losing a practice on a full sheet.

4 hours ago, RJUSHL said:

Thanks for chiming in on this board. I know a lot of the south hills teams (Preds, SHAHA, Lebo, Rebellion) have had some major ice time crunches this past season, with a lot of them scheduling ice at RMU, Rostraver, Armory, etc. With the additional ice sheet is it pretty much guaranteed that all the AA teams will have at least two practices per week? Maybe more?

I know SHAHA never had issues with ice time when it was two sheets. Now that they are down to one, some of their teams do utilize Rostraver a bit. As far as Lebo goes, I know some people that have regularly scheduled early weekday practices at RMU. 
Not really buying into an ice crunch at Preds though. Wasn’t even close to being an issue when my son played there at PW and bantam (it definitely was when he was at Hornets). I know a fair amount of people with kids on all of the teams listed above and ice touches have never an issue at Preds. 

Numbers would seem to back it up. All four have mites, host HS teams and have adult league as well.

Rebellion (1 sheet) 17 teams 

SHAHA (1 sheet) 20 teams

Predators (2 sheets) 18 teams

Hornets (1 sheet) 19 teams
 

PIHL, PAHL, MidAm etc…. any entity where you have a bunch of people in charge that have kids who aged out 10-15 years ago is a recipe for disaster. Straight up vanilla thinking and zero thought of adapting to change (unless it’s discipline of course… they love that aspect of it). The antiquated website for MidAm speaks volumes.

1 hour ago, bb2j3z said:

Nothing planned yet for Rebellion teams for next season.   Currently the SPHC board as a whole does not feel like it's in the best interest of our families to do so nor are we getting any pressure from BB to join.   Yes, there will be some of our girls teams during full or partial seasons in AGHF.  There may be a Rebellion team that may want to buck the trend and go AHF, but it would have to be a team decision made by coaches and parents.   It's going to be a lot more travel in AHF and maybe not in the best interest of the player's development.

 

Makes sense but I’m going to play devils advocate here…

Biggest complaint I hear out of the Rebellion people is the amount of games that they play and kids getting burned out. 
 Looked it up and some of the younger teams at PW and squirt are at 50+ (some pushing 60) games already. Add in scheduled games listed and playoffs you are looking at 65-70 games. That’s entirely too many for young kids. Not disputing anything but capping the amount of games your team plays at a reasonable amount is a true sign of a buy in for developing players. Games are fun. Development happens in practice.
I’m not saying just the Rebellion either. Over scheduling games is an epidemic across the board and in my opinion more so than travel. 
Basically, travel gets in the way of parent developing their savings accounts.
Playing a nearly NHL sized schedule can get in the way of developing your players at practice.

PPE caps @ 55 games correct?

Updated per Instagram

I managed a few team along the way when my kid played and I’ll tell you this. There are coaches who don’t know or have selective hearing when it comes to roster rules. Trying to have guys in the lineup that were serving a one game suspension and adding players from other teams for tournaments without submitting an approved tourney roster were hand in hand my biggest battles.

I knew the rules and put my foot down every time. Why, because while there is a good chance you may get away with it (outside of PAHL), there’s the chance that someone calls you out and you risk jeopardizing the whole season. Totally unfair to the team to have leadership that either does not know the rules or ignores the rules.

Exhibit A1 right here.

1 hour ago, PirateMan said:

Some of you guys might be the biggest losers I've ever seen. @Danner27, genuine question, when you get home from work is the first thing you do hop on the great western pa hockey forum. Like find a real hobby jeez. I clicked on your comments cause you 1.2k of them and god they're hard to look at. Bro thinks hes some alpha male on this random ass forum cause he uses big words and always "talked to a guy" about a topic. You argue with the same 10 losers over random bullshit. It's just comical. That's it.

To echo someone’s sentiments before, Danner can be abrasive but ultimately brings more value than a guy who probably a)“talked to a guy” and learned about this board b)joined said board two days ago c) creeped a members profile and after reading his posts d) put some serious F. Lee Bailey work into piecing together Danner’s posting schedule/habits and e)called a bunch of people losers on his 3rd post.

Now. THAT’S comical.

Honestly… we need THE KING to come back for just this thread lol

Sorry about the multiple posts folks, just had knee surgery and I’m laid up and slightly medicated with nothing better to do today.

6 minutes ago, AvonworthFan123 said:

On top of what I was saying. You are all braindead, spineless, cowardly, pussball women. I can assure you I am the only alpha male in this shitshow of a thread. Montour needs to be punished and if the PIHL isn't going to do anything, then I'm going to have to step in. Trust me, you don't want to see me step in because all hell will break lose and some people will be seriously hurt. (not a threat)

Oh, for the love of god. PLEASE step in. We can set up a gofundme for your campaign right here. How could we start it…. Hmmm…

“Are you sick and tired of non alpha males in your high school hockey organization?!?! The brain dead, the spineless.. GASP! THE PUSSBALL WOMEN getting in the way?  Well now is the time for action! Donate to AVONWORTHFAN FOR PIHL PRESIDENT!…”

18 minutes ago, Overqualified said:

40 years of coaching and playing professionally 

Winner Winner chicken diner

Wait a minute now… if I’m doing my math correctly nobody around here really can do anything “professionally” until they are 18 which added to “over 40 years” makes you around 60 years old and still this engaged in HS hockey?

First off, most 60 year olds I know think a “message board” is something to do with their voicemail.

And really, at your age the only chicken dinner you should be winning at is the early bird senior special at Eat ‘n Park.

Like others said, please clarify your resume Obi Wan Overqualified.

This might be the best thread ever. Like… the Danbury Trashers of threads. Cringeworthy but beyond entertaining. Not to mention, this page has now acquired at least 4-5 brand new experts to help navigate the mite and squirt crowd through the upcoming years . Please do not shut it down admins. ?

On 2/19/2023 at 5:05 PM, aaaahockey said:

I went out with my brother to watch some 09 "AAA" teams in Johnstown this weekend. Have to say it was honestly some good hockey.  Very competitive games including some Philly teams and more locally Esmark, Preds, and SHAHA.  Esmark ended up winning the championship.  The games were excellent and competitive and made me wish we had a high level league where these types of teams could play regularly.  Maybe it is coming now that SHAHA and esmark are competitive with the Pens teams but as a region we really need to get our crap together.  

Agreed. Coworker has an ‘09 that played in Johnstown this weekend as well. Said it was a great tournament.

She mentioned that there was also a 2011 division with Pens black, Esmark, Preds and a few other teams with Preds taking home the hardware.

Happy to see some of these teams finally playing each other. Should have been happening at the younger ages for years.

My guess is that half of the kids playing at some of the schools mentioned are doing it because THEY want to and the other half are playing because their parents want them to.
 Don’t underestimate the fact that hundreds and hundreds of parents have been on the PPE/Esmark youth hockey train for years and can’t come to grips that the real D1 and NHL dream and sell job has to end. Not for the player but for the parents. They’ve spent so many years thumping their chests about their kid dominating at squirt through midget and looking down their nose at PAHL and their “faux” buddies that they just can’t come to grips with reality. Why? Because it’s always been about them and not their son or daughter. (Don’t even get me started on the idiotic “gap year” so you can show up at your local rink sporting a hoodie or hat of some nondescript “junior” team in Alabama that had a tryout camp that you had to pay for your kid to go to… oh yeah, and his “advisor” told you and your wife that he is the only 5 tool player on the Muskrats squad)
Listen, I’m all about people having hockey as a part of their life. And I’ll never tell a young kid that they have no chance to make it to the NHL. But at the same time, people can’t come here and bash “faux” and PAHL teams but talk seriously about college club hockey being anything but a couple more years of putting on a jersey and being part of a team. 
And honestly, I who would want to spend another 4 years (while paying tuition) with disgruntled PPE/Excel castoffs reminding everyone how much better they are than you. Even though they ended up in the same place as the “faux” boys. It’s bad enough when they can’t handle checking at bantam and get relegated to your PAHL team. Get out while you can. 
lol

On that note, cheers to all of the young men and women still playing after high school because they love the game. 

24 minutes ago, sadday4hockey said:

It's probably all a moot point. If Printscape hasn't ordered all the equipment like months ago, good luck getting ice in 2023.

 

This is what I’ve been thinking the whole time. 
Again… I’m rooting for it to happen because the more rinks the better but this Printscape business is like someone telling everyone that Rt. 28 will be done tomorrow even though there are 7 million cones, signs and tons of heavy machinery still present.

No speculation there. Simply tangible evidence lol

Ok. 
In the theme of the thread..

WAIT A SECOND…..

Esmark 11U can play a whole weekend of what everyone likes to call “faux” AAA and this is somehow this is declared some kind of victory? Tri State is #178 and the Pens are #70. But I guess since it’s the B team of the vaunted  Pens organization it’s legit? 
Hey… with the roster makeup that someone stated earlier good for them. That said, can’t have it both ways here people. If any other local organization claimed that they had “won” that weekend they would be ridiculed and the whole thing would have been downplayed and/or written off.

Esmark had always been the bullies of the block  after Pens from PW on but they always had first pick after PPE at PW minor. Unfortunately this season there were at least 5-6 other established or semi established 10U BY options (AA and AAA) on both sides of the city.
Many people decided to stay put and for the first time Esmark has to gradually build. I’m sure Pens black people chasing that extra A will be heading there but some will probably look to go elsewhere as well. 
After being on their high horse for so many years Esmark has to work their way up for the first time and I’m curious to see how it all shakes out. 

On a side bar. Can somebody please start a thread…

”I’M REALLY NOT INVOLVED WITH THE REBELLION BUT IM HERE TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT ONLYA A PRINTSCAPE(SECOND SHEET! maybe…)BLACK BEAR/TEAM ON THE 79 CORRIDOR WILL SAVE THE SOUTH HILLS AND INSTANTLY CREATE A VIABLE AAA PROGRAM!”

Holy hell. We get the point. Ad nauseum…

Could it possibly be that  Vengeance, SHAHA and Preds started BY teams at 10U which is something Esmark never had to contend with in previous years.

They used to get first crack after Pens and ex Pens + solid PAHL kids that wanted to play Tier 1 for years.

Not to mention trips to Blaine, Minnesota to play league games.

The Rochester, Cleveland, Buffalo one Philly circuit may have more appeal in lieu of.

Might be better options for the families with younger kids to stay closer to home for practice as well.

Not to mention the prospect of getting cut mid season..

First off.. I can’t believe that a spring hockey topic has gone of this tangent. 
But now that we are here riddle me this.
If the AA kids in this instance apparently “cannot keep up with the faux AAA players” why should they all have use their time and money to play with them in PAHL during the season?

BTW… backchecking… I’m pretty sure you started this post with your opinion already set in stone. I always thought that playing against better players was a good thing. Sorry your team didn’t run away with the summer sizzler banner.

1 hour ago, BACKCHECKING said:

 Most of the AA players cannot keep up with players on the “Faux AAA” teams 

I’m amazed at how many spring/summer tournaments there are these days. It has to be nearly impossible to make competitive divisions with rosters being all over the place. 
I always had my kid doing private and group lessons this time of year because it gave him the freedom to play lax and baseball. Still skated 2-3 times a week plus dry land but the schedule was semi-flexible. 
And from what I see these days, you have a lot of kids who could use less 12-2 games and more work on their individual skills. 
At all levels.

2 minutes ago, Ihearthockey said:

Aren't most kids on these "AAA" teams AA players at one point? PW minor is still young enough where it's not crazy to think that some AA PAHL kids can make these teams.  Just my opinion.

Yes. I agree 100%. My son followed that very same trajectory. Checking was the game changer for him and he thrived when the game got faster and more physical while others dropped by the wayside. He played AAA until he graduated. And yes. He plays beer league and has a blast.
I just heard that Esmark rostered a bunch of AA players and was scouring for others after other teams tryouts were over. 
Still… nothing wrong with that either as long as you play a schedule that is on par with your level of skill.

Pretty sure that is not Esmark’s way of doing things though.

AA players can definitely move up to Tier 1. But a whole team of them playing high end opponents all season might not be the best idea.

Again, this is one person with a few cocktails in them telling me this so who knows how much truth there is. 
That’s why I asked. Curiosity got the best of me lol