Wes

My bet is that the rates stay low and as things warm up the virus will continue to go away.

I don't like any league, hockey, softball, or whatever, that has zero oversight of what goes on with the teams in each league. In otherwords, as long as the players are USA Hockey registered (and don't carry suspensions), the league could give to $hits about the shenanigans that go on inside each high schools hockey organization. The PIHL doesn't require (to my knowledge, and yes I have years of experience), any involvement of the parent to the organization, in the case of the PIHL, the school districts themselves. I would go a step further and believe that the majority of school districts have no idea how their own PIHL teams are run. So why does this all matter? We have HS teams operating with the school logos, and the districts have no oversight about them. At least with the WPIAL (whom I also don't like) and the PIAA (for the most part I'm ok with), they have a lot of oversight and involvement with the school districts into the teams they field. PIHL=allows rogue operation of hockey teams. All the time you have the WPIAL ruling kids ineligible and then the PIAA overturns easily 66% or more of that because the WPIAL is like a State trying to override the Constitution (eg WPIAL rules do NOT override the PIAA rules in most cases). So this then comes back to why the PIHL is so damn adamant about trying to play finals games, when no other sport is trying to do this. What is the motivation here to try and do this when the players won't have touched ice in ~3 months at least by the time Wolf's lock down has ended. At the 10,000 foot view it would seem like a few power brokers are trying to push for this... when in order to actually pull it off would require breaking rules of the PIHL and USA Hockey. Why press on with this? Again no accountability to anyone. Hope that clarifies things LOL

I'd say this has about a 1% chance of happening. The fact that they're still discussing this is enough to justify cleaning house with their leadership.

Agreed, but why is there a brand new article in the Trib with the PIHL still hoping to play? Why, out of ALL sports, is the PIHL the one who thinks they can still pull this off?

@The King Agreed- so what the PIHL wants to do is rewrite (or suspend) their own bylaws about who is eligible to play, and usurp the USA Hockey rules in the same area, to play 1 game at each level?? Absolute stupidity. If the PIHL presses forward on this the whole PHIL board needs to be immediately replaced. Since when is 1 game more important than the integrity of the whole organization?

Posey is not a reputable person to say the least. Tells one person one thing and another person something totally different. Wastes a lot of time for parents. I would NEVER send my kid to be coached by him. But good luck to those who do.

Highly ridiculous given the memo PB posted with the death breakdown. I didn't see anywhere in there that kids 5-19 were being devastated by this virus.

Amen to this: I've seen a bunch of these AAA teams and WPA only have enough AAA players to field 2 teams. But 5 organizations and SSA (who has to resort to recruiting players outside of the region) and a ton of AA/AAA hybrid programs. So about 60 percent of these people are being sold a bill of goods, spending thousands for that extra A. Costing their kids an opportunity to enjoy their HS years instead of sitting in hotel rooms most weekends.

These issues will continue on forever until the school boards have oversight of the high school club sports. Club sports that operate under the school's logo and name ought to have some accountability to the district, instead of operating as rogue organizations. However, a number of hockey orgs themselves have power brokers in key positions (president...) and they call shots that aren't always to the benefit of the teams (or the overall org). We have discussed that issue on these boards for years.

100% accurate for Latrobe hockey as well. Lots of nepotism and favoritism.

Not really. I don't like that org at all. Wouldn't spend any $$ with them. To each their own.

Esmark will recruit (which is fine) and load up their team and then let kids go on 12/31 when replacing them with fresh bodies...

I agree with the statement above. I have tried before to get information on how to apply to be the midam registrar for WPA but heard back **crickets**. I have no idea who the people are that run the midam district but it certainly seems to be a closed club. Nobody's bio is posted and I have no idea what the qualifications are to even hold position at MA.

My guess is that we'll be hearing soon that the rest of the Pens cup and flyers cup playoff and PA state cup are cancelled. If they don't get them on by early April, it's pointless to wait beyond that since none of the players will have skated for weeks with all the rink closures and the rinks right now are closed indefinitely.

I have to agree that later tryouts may be a good thing to experience. I do agree that kids can change a lot in a few months and I also kind of like naming the team and starting practice a week later. I think that might reduce tryout hopscotch.

Wow oh wow that is a real shame these players won’t get to participate in this great tourney.

The Icemen 18uAA finished the mid-ams at 2-2, same record as Allegheny's team and the Preds 2 team, and Allegheny's team cost a whole lot less to play on than either of those two. So much for all the travel and expenses, they couldn't even advance out of districts.

I've offered to CIA to troubleshoot their network setup but heard >crickets<

I agree with you about the app, that it is better than the website itself... but it doesn't help with low outbound bandwidth rinks... video from Center Ice on LB via the app stutters and hangs quite frequently and I don't see this with any other rink that I tune into regularly.

The main problem I see when using livebarn is that the upstream speed that some of these rinks have is abysmal and causes the LB games to stutter or run at a lower framerate, resulting in jittery video. Center Ice is one that fits into that boat. They need to upgrade the upstream side of their internet connection to be able to properly handle 3 rinks worth of streaming video.

Erie Sports Bank (the new rink up there) doesn't have it yet.

Without any names... any more detail to this? Such as more details on the blowup??

unless someone has a different view (from the stands, for example), not sure how you can suspend/take action with just the Livebarn feed. The exact action of his arm/hand and touching the girl in the shoulder (or wherever) is hidden. So we don't know for sure if she ran into his arm and fell or he did something bad. I'm not trying to get that coach off the hook, but I don't see enough to make the leap with the Livebarn angles.

Any comment @RedRidingHood ? {insert sound of crickets here}

I found it on Livebarn. RMU. Stadium Rink, 11-30-19, 6:40pm.