Wes

I forgot to mention, that during Jan or Feb of my daughter's first season with PPE (years ago), she was invited to tour SSA along with her other teammates. Out of the several teammates who attended the all day tour and recruitment effort, the girls that turned down SSA also didn't make the team the following season. That is the same season a bunch of CBJ girls came to the tryouts and made the team. Oh, and one more thing, back then the coach of that PPE team was also the coach of SSA. Just sayin' ?

When a top person in the org tells it to your face, and then the opposite happens how does that make me a fool? My kid did well enough without PPE. PPE is filled with politics. We prefer to steer clear of politics. And we don't kiss up to anyone or donate to anyone for our kids to get a spot on a team. Don't give me the garbage about "try harder" and you will make the PPE. Those teams are pretty much set from season to season with only a few spots open. If you'd been on this board for any length of time you'd know this. At any one time a team may have a few openings, but often those are promised to recruited players in advance. I'm done discussing this with you as obviously you just like to attack me when all I am doing is stating the TRUTH about our experience. It has ZERO to do with how hard she tries. She's pretty much the hardest working player on all the teams she's played on. It has everything to do with who you know, who's butt you kiss, your track record in hockey since you were 5 years old, etc.

What I think is that if all of us with PPE stories got together with a producer, we could come up with one heck of a 30 for 30 episode ?

I wouldn't doubt that some of the well off people who filled my daughters PPE team were donating to the Pens foundation. When you have real estate moguls, airplane pilots, etc. and their kids are filling the roster, and they're also going to SSA or other $$ private schools and then flying into tourneys on the weekend to play for PPE, whats a few thousand in $$ to guarantee a spot?

Look, JackA$$, they know DAMN well who is trying out. When all the CBJ girls are wearing CBJ shells and practice jerseys its hard not to notice. At the time this took place the team was only supposed to have a few girls from out of town -- which we were directly told by the PPE staff - that only 2-3 were "out of the area", when in reality more than 70% of the team was out of the area (more than 90 miles from the rink). The Pens mantra of "building local hockey" is a bunch of BS when they willingly and knowingly replace capable local girls with girls from 250 miles away. Importing players from all over the place to play on the PPE teams does ZERO for "building local hockey". And no my daughter doesn't need a participation trophy. She was a leading scorer in the ACHA and on the deans list in college this past season and she busted her A$$ every shift on the ice, which is why she won the Unsung Hero award from her college. Like I already stated, she was far better off skating on the top line, 1st PP and 1st PK for 3 years at AA than being on the 3rd line on PPE and only getting a few shifts a period. She developed far more at the AA level playing with competent line-mates who PRACTICED with the team the whole year rather than having teammates who just showed up for tourneys, and never practiced but played on the first two lines. The chemistry was WAY better.

I personally don't believe that the masks are going to help us average citizens. I try to avoid wearing them as much as possible. Also with the huge amount of testing going on it's no surprise "new" cases continue to show up.

No issues for us. Son only tried out for one team @ 18uAA. All good players showed up. Kids all got along well. Most stress free tryout ever!

No team is perfect that’s for sure but some are far worse than others. Thank goodness there aren’t many of those. And thank goodness I’m done with those sorts of things- mainly the tryouts... Way too much stress for anyone. I sometimes believe the old days rules where you were geographically tied to teams was probably far less stressful on us the parents.

Might be just as good but they certainly have their own issues.

Not a surprise at all...

This exact thing happened to our daughter who played for PPE. She was on the first PPE team ever that played in a USA hockey National final. During tryouts 2 weeks later, multiple girls from Columbus blue jackets show up and my daughter (a local player) gets cut (along with others of course). I've never bought into the "growing hockey in Western PA" stuff that the PPE spout. That's a bunch of garbage. More than half of her team that year lived far away from Pittsburgh. Only about 6-7 girls were in the tri-state area. The other 13-14 were out of the area. They'll drop a local kid quicker than a snap to pickup someone better out of town.

My player is an 02 but he wouldn't touch PPE with a 10 foot pole. Twice in the past he went to tryouts, busted his butt and several goalies who weren't there before showed up for the last session before cuts, gave half an effort and they all make it meanwhile everyone else was cut. He's done with those politics. You can say we were a little heated after driving 90 minutes each way for like 4-5 sessions (TWICE) for this to happen TWICE.

How many goalies just curious? that is SUPER LOW count for the 18's. That would tend to reinforce the idea that people are tired to going to this age group tryouts if the same select bunch make it every year.

I will bet that a bunch of new players (or players that haven't been at the PPE tryouts yet) show up and make the team. That's the typical PPE way things go.

100% agreed.

@The King it was a total parent-centric free-for-all at our high school. Nepotism, favoritism, black balling, gone wild. Disgusting. Which is my point of saying that (most) schools have zero idea what's going on inside those teams.

Wrap yourself and kids in Bubble Wrap. Even safer yet!!

yes, the line above is my thought exactly...

not worried at all! Just finding all these immediate tryouts (other orgs have announced as well in basically the same timeframe) - funny. Technically there's never been a 3 month layoff from hockey, ever, and now BAM we have all these tryouts with little prep time for the kids. Reminds me of PIHL hockey tryouts that are held in the middle of summer LOL. but of course we know that most PIHL teams are pre-picked as well. Glad my kids are past the age of all this rubbish

Absolute farce! Nothing like having tryouts 3 months after the kids last skated with basically no warmup time. I'm sure those will be fair tryouts, um, yeah.

I will elaborate more on our situation later this year. The roster at our school has never been the best 20. It has been the FAVORITE (or friends and family) 20. If you aren't a favorite or friend of a favorite or don't kiss the boards A$$, you literally could be really good and not taken on the team. Therefore you have players on the team who aren't as good as some not on the team and that leads to other issues inside the school bordering on bullying etc. The players know that certain player(s) who are on the varsity team aren't as good as other player(s) who go to the school but aren't on the school's team for F & F / Political reasons. I call it political BS and thank GOD we're done with that all. I will NEVER stoop to that level of having to kiss A$$ for my kid to play on a team.

I would go as far as to say I hope they revise the hockey tourney and make it at least 4 games. The first game is always the toughest because the kids don't play competitively as a team beforehand and if you draw a good team as your first game, you're automatically looking at no higher than silver. The structure of 3 games no playoff is bad.

That sounds like some of the politics with a HS team in our town. School initials are "GL". Loads of double standards... some kids can miss practices for AAA and AA teams and get on the 1st line, others if they miss or late 1 practice for an AAA or AA team they're demoted to the 3rd/4th line. A lot of schools aren't in the business of putting the best 20 players on the ice, which is the problem with PIHL teams and lack of oversight as I mentioned before.

I don't like that it doesn't have playoff or a champ game either, but my kids have both had a great time playing in the event and the West 16u team took Silver last year which was a big accomplishment for them since the EAST team is usually stacked with AAA Flyers kids and basically no AAA kids from Western PA play on the West team. We were looking forward to it this year but oh well.

@ctil20 I too am a Republican and I don't go around here yelling at everyone as liberal or republican. I will go further that I base my decisions on FACTS & LOGIC and not on feelings, love or social justice. Wolf IS an idiot and a stooge and is strong arming counties with very small rates to be shutdown (Beaver) when there is really no logic behind it. Locking down a whole county when literally one building is the main problem is beyond rationale. Your anti-trump ranting is getting really old.