Wes

12 hours ago, sadday4hockey said:

Am I missing something here?

The surrounding properties that @Danner27 referenced. 

Seems like they're trying to take the HA rink for pennies on the dollar... 

@Danner27 that makes sense from the political standpoint, since it is well known that the same party that runs the city also is/was loved by the Pens owners as well as DM.

I was thinking along the lines that at one point in the past that the pens might start acquiring nearby houses/properties in order to build parking or a garage at some point.

Now with that group of pens personnel & owners all gone, and the team being owned by out-of-staters with little to zero a$$ kissing needed, it makes sense that they aren't as interested in the property.

Gotcha- I think I was sleepy 🙂

I don't want any rink to close, just wish HA had better access.

11 hours ago, aaaahockey said:

Your overall point is well taken but I don't think anyone is going to sail in and drop anchors to play hockey in a harbor either. 

@aaaahockey maybe I'm a bit sleepy this AM.  What exactly do you mean?

I've been to pretty much every rink in western PA/WV/OH area, and many in OH Cleveland/Akron area as well as other rinks on the east coast, and none are like Hunt armory in terms of their location and total lack of parking.  Unless I live really close to HA, there's little chance I would ever want to go there.

I would drive an extra 10-15 min and go to Harmarville Alpha (or other rinks) for lessons, hockey, etc.  because at least I can park right next to those buildings, and they're all in pretty safe areas.

To me this was a doomed concept from the start, no matter who was running it.  If there's no parking and it's in the middle of an old, landlocked neighborhood, it's just not going to work out.  I recall looking this up on the map years back when the topic was first brought up and obviously you're thinking where are you going to park 50 cars??

The pens would have been better off building a normal structure and putting up a new rink somewhere with parking than this questionable concept.

on the other hand, it wouldn't suprise me if the pens got some financial government backing to do this since the pens over the last 20 years have lots of hooks into local politics (via one party).

otherwise there's no reason to spend money.

It looks like an EXCELLENT venue from the photo in the link above.  Just a shame you can't park there.

It would be a big turn off to me if I was bringing mites/squirts and then had to park blocks away.

Not to mention I wouldn't feel super safe walking multiple blocks in that neighborhood at night.

Couple of musings... 

I guess the plan to build a garage under the ice sheet never materialized.

Parking is still a major problem.

I really have no idea why the pens would want to buy a rink that is landlocked with zero parking.

4 hours ago, Loach said:

At the older ages, the few who move on to the USA Hockey camps are likely known prior to the tryouts, and yes, they typically play on the top AAA teams. In general, they are the best at the camp. 

I will 100% agree with that based on what I witnessed when my son did these mid-am tryouts.  Also, the kids that for sure knew they were making it didn't even try hard, and still made it.  If they have pre-selected people it becomes a big waste of time and money for parents who's kids won't even be looked at.

Felt that it was an honor to be picked by the org to go to the midam tryouts but thought it was a waste of time.

Reminded me of our high school tryouts which were also a total joke of pre-selected nonsense.  Literally 12-14 kids dicked around at those and still made the varsity team. 

3 hours ago, HereWithPopcorn said:

Bingo.  And what team does the son of the Rebellion's President play on?  Oh yeah, Lebo.  There is your smoking gun folks explaining the situation.

What?  WTF would the SPR's president's son play for a different org?  Sounds crazy!

5 hours ago, hockeyisgreat said:

11 declines sounds like more than a few! From what I am reading it sounds like less than half of the team would have been holdovers and the other half would be new players!  The big problem is when kids tryout and have no intention of playing for that team if picked.  What I still don't understand is why those 11 declined after the phone call from the coach.  Something just doesn't add up.  Is there more to the story? The other thing I don't understand is why they just didn't keep last years team intact!  How many new players did they need?

As a longtime former team manager at the AA level, that does seem very odd... I've never heard of that extreme amount of declines, ever.  I think perhaps 1 or 2, but usually at the AA level I've rarely seen more than a very few declines.  From the teams I worked with the acceptance rate was easily over 90% most of the time, which meant maybe 1-2 would decline if that out of a team of 20.

All in all, it is a real shame for the SPR org that this all fell apart and they will need to do some analysis as to what went wrong. 

As a side note, the org that we were most tied to over the years for my son (a 2002 goalie), always had outside evaluators come and evaluate the players.  I always felt that was the one org who truly picked teams on a relatively fair basis from what I could see.  Players weren't permitted to wear the gear of the org while trying out and the evaluators only saw the tryout numbers on their jerseys.  This way it was as "unbiased" as possible, if that is fully possible.  

Of course I would always very closely watch the goalie tryouts and even though some years there would be 10-13 goalies tryout for a certain age level, it was fairly easy to rank the goalies from the top down.  I had no stake in the player choices, but I nearly always was right on the top goalies each year and most of the time my personal rankings would spot on match what the outside evaluators picked for each team.

@bb2j3z  Who did the player evaluations at SPR tryouts for the upper teams?  Org staff or outside people?

How do teams get selected to go to high school nationals?  What's the criteria?

6 hours ago, Murray Chadwick said:

Parking at Delmont shouldn’t be a problem. Lol. 

That place can't even handle a standard tournament in terms of parking even with the small parking addition they did in the rear.  And to top it off there is literally nowhere nearby that people can park and walk. That not a venue that I would have chosen for Nationals.

1 hour ago, Saucey said:

Your organization selects your kid. So the Icemen, for example, send whoever wants to go it would seem. Other organizations are a bit more discerning.

Teams are set and the kids play games. Some teams are pretty bad. The 'sorting' process should be a little more focused, I think, more vetting. My family found it to be a huge waste of time and money.

Was a total waste of time for us, going for 2 days to Ohio.

AA Son (goalie) was selected who was the top 18uAA goalie at that org at the time out of ~12 goalies at that level.  Had the 2nd best save % during all the preliminary events (I tracked all their shots/saves the whole weekend as I was bored and I was a former goalie dad LOL).

Wasn't even picked as one of the top 4 goalies to go the final game for the final choices.

Conversely one of the 2 goalies picked was the "tall goalie" from PPE who now I think plays in Erie.  He put in very little effort at the tryouts and frankly stunk but was picked to go on.  The only possible way this could happen is that this kid knew he was advancing and didn't give a crap of an effort.

Both of us agreed it was all pre-picked and a total waste of a hotel and the time spent that weekend.

He got a nice goalie jersey to wear out of it.  Wore a few times and into the closet with all the other 50 camp jerseys.

So glad we're beyond that!

I'd prefer a change back to when the best candidate for the job was hired, with no regard given to color/race/etc.  But I am probably going to get blasted for saying that.

I think the best person should always get the job or we are promoting mediocrity in the name of "equality".  How is an employer supposed to force various groups to apply, especially if they aren't qualified or less qualified?  

Let the slappage begin.

3 hours ago, RoyalTraveller said:

Hornets had a rule in place that allowed a max of 3 out of town kids on any team. PPE adopted that rule when the Hornets were taken over. Morehouse abolished that rule because he thought it more important for his son to win a national championship. At that moment the goal of the organization went from developing Pittsburgh kids to winning banners. Almost all the current coaches were brought in to recruit the areas they come from. They do a good job recruiting. Not one has a resume of developing hockey players. They don't give 2 shits about developing your child!! They only care about job security and the inflated paychecks they could never earn anywhere else. Why do you think they ran off the GOOD Pittsburgh coaches that have been there. Mooney, Zeiler, Taibi, etc... Wise up people!

That rule (only 3 out of towners) bit the dust around 2015-2016.  All of a sudden the PPE girls teams started being >66% out of town girls, and routinely only around 5-7 in total would be at practices.  My daughter got a TON out of those workout practices (couldn't do any teamwork stuff), but it was a joke.  Girls would fly in to wherever that weekend's tourney was, and would play only those games together.  Little cohesiveness as a unit and not much bonding as they were never together more than a few hours. 

My daughter switched to D2 AA hockey and had WAY MORE fun and made much more progress than on the PPE.  On PPE she was 4th line.  On AA she was first line, PP, and PK and got recruited to play college hockey.  So, no I don't feel like PPE does much of anything for local kids.

1 hour ago, sadday4hockey said:

Nothing like driving from Erie to South Bend so you can play the other team from Erie.

SMFH

As soon as the schedule was released as a former team mgr I'd be on the phone immediately.  What a waste.

5 hours ago, nemesis8679 said:

Too be honest, maybe having BB employees in charge will clean up that garbage organization and the homer refs will be reigned in. 

Not sure what levels you had problems with Homer Refs at Center Ice.  My son played there and I pretty much felt we always got reverse homered in our own rink. (this was at 14aa, 16aa and 18aa)...  By far the worst rinks in terms of homering were Indiana and Armstrong from ~2014-2020.

36 minutes ago, PUCKCOVID19 said:

to bad AIRPORT ice Arena isnt around bc we all know Black Bear would have scooped that rink up asap 

Correct, they were just a little late to the expansion game, and too bad for that.  Hated to lose a decent double sheet of ice.  That rink had a lot possibility with a little TLC by the owners.

Good question.  In all my years as a team manager I've never heard of a Team PA.

21 hours ago, sadday4hockey said:

 

Add in Switaj, Santora, Colligan and Borkowski and you have 3 Centuries of failures. The problem is, they don't hold open and public elections. 5-6 people control EVERYTHING that happens and will continue to until they are ousted.

5+ years ago I wanted to try and get a registrar position with Mid-Am.  I asked around in the PAHL and they told me contact Mid-Am.  I emailed a few people at Mid-Am office.  Crickets.  Zero reply.  I then asked a local person who was a board member, how do I apply to be a mid-am registrar?  Crickets.

I gave up.  Which is what they want anyone interested in helping with MA to do.  Go away.

21 hours ago, Danner27 said:

How many things can Dave Fryer be in charge of ? The chma, che & piho. He’s set to to be the next Pahl president next year. one of the few good things pihl has done - remove him years ago. 

When a person is so intertwined into things (DF), it usually isn't a good thing.  As one can easily see, the nepotism runs deep in the world of hockey. I don't care for his work with CHE and yet he's now going to run PAHL too... glad I no longer have kids in that org.  It was bad enough under Darcee.

This incident of the coach throwing the stick and gloves reminds me of an incident in 18uAA last year at PIA, where the Preds and Huskies teams got in quite a heated game, culminated by cheap shots by the Preds onto a Huskies player (hit to the head/boarding) which resulted in a shoving match.  (Read below)

The HC of the Huskies stood up on the bench and was holding a water bottle, and did not do anything other than yell at the officials that they aren't calling the cheap shots.

Huskies HC - who was not penalized during the game - gets a hearing with the league (Which I attended as the team manager), and they accused him of improper behavior for "thinking about" throwing a water bottle.  Remember - thought police!

In the meeting were PAHL staff from Armstrong and Indiana, and those personnel - who either coached and/or had players on competing 18uAA teams - threw the book at our coach and suspended him for 10 games.  He didn't throw the bottle!!!  We were VERY unhappy that personnel from teams we were in a battle with in the division wouldn't recuse themselves.  They didn't and they screwed our team over.

I questioned the PAHL personnel during the meeting about their rules and how they can find someone guilty of "naughty thoughts". 

PAHL= deer in the headlights look to me.  Couldn't answer me.

So fast forward to this coach throwing a stick and gloves on the ice.  

If we go on the basis of what happened to the Huskies HC, this coach should at minimum be gone for the year, if not permanent.

My guess is he won't be hit hard due to his position with PIHO.

Buddy-buddy at it's finest.

https://www.pihoref.com/management

RE: the hit.  At that young age unfortunately this happens quite often.  large range of kid sizes and it was an unfortunate hit. 

RE: The dummy on the bench.  Clearly needs to be removed from being coach and being the officiating director.  That was horrible.