Happy Hockey Fan

He is an 18-19 year old kid, and I am not sure that shouldn’t have been offsetting minors, I don’t think you need to be that hard on him.

it is still more than what local ACHA teams have. I would venture to say if local teams got more kids from Tier 3 they would become a little better.

Liberty has 7 players from US Tier 3 juniors. Third of the roster. Adrian has 6 from Tier 3. Ohio has 9.

Until local ACHA team fill their rosters with kids that played juniors and come in as 21 year old freshmen and offer free or close to free hockey it will be tough for them to compete against the top teams that do. Local teams have more and more kids that aged out in juniors. But the top teams are filled with kids that have aged out of juniors, and some of those kids have played in some of the higher level junior leagues. The maturity of those teams make a difference. If it cost $2000 to play at one university(what I believe is what the average local ACHA player pays), but another university with comparable educational qualifications and tuition says they want you to go to their school and play hockey for free it obviously gives a big advantage to one of those schools. Local teams are very good in my opinion. But it will always be tough for them to compete at nationals until they can recruit like the top ACHA schools can. And in until they can fill their rosters with 21 year old freshmen, it will be hard to compete as well.

You are correct. Their Single A schools are very big schools. I would venture to say that the west may never win the single A title again because they don’t move teams up and down like here in the west. Bayard Rustin won 6 or 8 straight state titles and are still a single A school. That would never happen here because the school would be moved up AA probably after their first state championship.

Talk about sour grapes. You know what you can’t win unless you win the Pens Cup first…..States.

There was a player for NA last night that PIHL shows only played 4 games during regular season. I saw NA 4 games during the regular season and this kid didn’t play in those games. My question is, did PIHL make a mistake and didn’t list all the games he played? Or are the rules different for AAA than they are in AA?

Most intelligent post I have ever read on this site. Very well said.

I guarantee 9 consecutive years of games being played on the same day. Avonworth has NO JV and Varsity games scheduled at the same time or even same day. I’m not knocking them. That is the way it should be. You said “only” six conflicts for Montour and only three were “actual” because the you interpret what is proper for a a teenage goodie to play. I’ll go with six, because having a 14 year old play two games in net back to back is a whole lot to ask of anyone. You go with three because you obviously don’t care about the well being of a 14 year old. 6 out of 16 games is a lot to cover for a team without a goalie. More than a third of their games without a goalie. Also, six games without a goalie and hardly any forwards because the team is depleted from call ups.

You can have your opinion. I can have mine. Why are you so mad? If you read and understood what I said about the emergency goalie is that he is willing to only be an emergency goalie. He wants nothing to do with playing a full game in net. He has no desire to start at the varsity or JV level. He is an emergency backup, he was willing to do this only. He is a forward on the JV team. If there was a JV game and a varsity game at the same time, he played forward for the JV team. He only has dressed for 2 varsity games and played 8 minutes when someone got hurt. He faced 2 shots and gave up 2 goals. His save percentage is zero. His goals against average is 11.4. But once again, the best answer as for why he didn’t volunteer to be a goalie, he didn’t want to.

I am a Montour fan, not an insider. My kids have graduated. I know the practice habits of the third goalie because I am friends with the family. My knowledge of the fact that PIHL schedules JV and Varsity games at the same time comes from 10 years straight of having kids in the program. It happened every year, time and time again. JV teams have played many games with skeleton rosters, sometimes less than 10 skaters. I don’t know about when the goalie came this year. I do know Montour asked PIHL early on not to schedule games on the same nights because they only had one goalie. I don’t know timing of everything else. I did not mean to imply that PIHL was punishing Montour. My insinuation is that they are lazy and didn’t do the work to figure out a way to not schedule games on the same nights. And as far as Avonworth not having games on the same nights, I was surprised to see that. I figured that they would be in the same predicament as Montour. But somehow, they don’t. Like I said, ten years in a row at Montour, always had both JV and varsity games in same nights. Always, not one year in 10 was there a time that Montour didn’t have games at the same time. If Montour didn’t have games on the same night, they should be playing without the billet. However, since the history of ten years straight having games on the same nights, I can see why they were scrambling for another goalie. Not sure of the timing of schedule and this kid moving into the district. That is something I can’t answer. By the way the varsity backup has played ten games as a starter, he has a 7-3 record, Montour probably would have been pretty good without the billet. Maybe not as good, but still good.

What does this have to do with anything I said? There is a difference between having a choice to play on a poor team, and not having a team to play on because you don’t have a goalie. If you don’t have a goalie, and no one else is willing to play a position they have no experience playing, you don’t even have a team. You were fortunate enough to have enough players and someone willing to play in net, and you had fun. Not the same as a kid that doesn’t have a team to play for, no chance to have fun for them.

The third goalie you mention is a forward on the JV. Hasn’t played as a goalie for JV at all. He is only an emergency goalie. He doesn’t even practice as a goalie. How do you develop a goalie if there is no one willing to play? Do you force someone? How does that work? And once again, if PIHL doesn’t schedule JV and Varsity games on the same night and even at the same time, I guess they don’t need another goalie. But the fact is PIHL DOES schedule Montour games at the same time, but Avonworth has not one JV game on the same day as one of their varsity games.

And if you would have looked further, you would see that their JV and Varsity teams NEVER play on the same night. It is possible when they don’t schedule games at the same time or same day. Not so much when they do.

Once again, I see your point. But let me make a couple more points for letting him play. First, Montour knows it is only going to have one goalie and asks PIHL to schedule games on different nights, which Montour did. PIHL ignores them and schedules games on same nights and even at same time. How does Montour field both teams? This is not fair to the kids that want to play. Your solution of only have one team would work. But once again, that leaves a number of kids that wanted to play unable to play. Is that fair? The second point is, have you ever coached or played on a team with only one goalie? It is a serious problem when the only goalie goes down. You end up playing someone that has never played goalie in net, which is not just an inconvenience, it puts a kid in a spot where injury is highly possible because they don’t know what they are doing. Someone not used to playing the position is now going to be facing 90 MPH slap shots. Not the safest scenario. I do not necessarily disagree with you that this seems unfair. But since PIHL still scheduled games on the same nights and even at the same time, I’ll give them a pass. If PIHL doesn’t schedule games on that same nights, then maybe I’d lean more towards it being unfair.

I understand your point. However, if they didn’t bring in another goalie, they would have only had one goalie for two teams. And PIHL schedules both teams on the same nights, sometimes at the same times. So how was Montour supposed to play two games with one goalie. If PIHL didn’t schedule games like this, maybe they could have done it with one goalie. But even then, that places a lot of stress on a ninth grade goalie, playing all the games and attending all the of practices is a whole lot. PIHL has been doing this for years. I can attest to this because my kids played there for 8 years in a row and it happened consistently every year. So when the varsity had a game and had their cal ups, the JV was left with a skeleton roster and often skated with very few players. Makes for not only a tough game to play for them, it also puts them at risk for more injuries. There is no way that a school that doesn’t have enough kids to fill two full rosters should be playing JV and Varsity games on the same night. Montour had asked PIHL to change this, and they were supposed to do it this year because they only had one goalie. Yet it happened again. If they didn’t add another goalie, they would have had to play a number of games without one. If PIHl can’t figure this out, they will continue to hurt players because they end up on teams with not enough players. There is obviously enough ice time available for this not to be a problem. Thursday nights at RMU are unused by varsity this year, why not schedule some games then so they can have the two teams play on different nights?

Should have mentioned that he lives with a teammate at Esmark. So it is very convenient.

The goalie is billeting with a Montour family. Montour only had one goalie for 2 teams before this kid came in. And PIHL continues to schedule JV and Varsity games on the same night and sometimes even at the same time(last night). Without this goalie, they don’t have one for many JV games this year. Montour has 10 kids skating on JV team. Makes no sense but this a topic for another thread. He is the better of the 2 goalies and has improved the team, but like I said, without him, JV has no goalie for a large number of games. So either Montour “finds” another goalie or their whole JV team suffers because PIHL somehow can’t figure out how to stop scheduling varsity and JV games at the same time. And the JV suffers anyway because the often play with depleted rosters.

I think the information you give is good. But the way you talk about how bad teams are, and by association how bad the players are, could probably be better left out of your comments. I have watched a number of club games through the years, at different levels of both men and women, and I have seen good hockey at all levels. Bad hockey sometimes too. Just because a player or team isn’t at the top of whatever team or league they are on/in doesn’t mean that they are incapable of playing sound hockey and even making amazing plays sometime. By your reasoning the only hockey worth watching has to be NHL.

Esmark has beaten the Pens at the midget level this year and in years past.I think they are doing pretty well compared to the Pens. Especially since their location is not ideal.

Esmark has produced teams that have beaten PPE before. At the older levels they seem to be the program that competes best with PPE around here. And based on the number of kids from the Pgh. area that play for PPE, they should probably be called just PE, drop the Pittsburgh.

North Hills is a good team but lack depth. Their goal tender can steal a game though. The deepest team in this division is actually Montour. They have three lines that score regularly, and their fourth line has produced offense as well. In the lone game between these two teams this year Montour outshot North Hills by a good margin nut the North Hills goalie played out of his mind. Made two of the best saves I have seen all year. The goalie was the difference. Nobody will beat NH if their goalie plays as well as he did in that game. And if any team can shut down NH top player two players they have a good chance of beating them. But that may be a tall task as those two have great scoring ability. Quaker Valley is good but not that deep. Goaltender is outstanding, and as I said previously a great goalie can win any game if they are on. McDowell is a good team, only have seen them once though. And they were dominated by Montour. I haven’t seen any of the games in the other A division, so I don’t have any idea how good they are. I plan on seeing a Fox Chapel game soon. In AAA I think it is anyone’s game here in the East. I have seen Peter’s, North Allegheny Seneca Valley, Mt. Lebanon, Central Catholic and Pine Richland play. Everyone of the games I have seen have been extremely close. I don’t think there is a clear choice for a winner. Haven’t seen enough AA games to make an observation.

He still has a shot. Playing very well. His journey has showed me a lot about how hard it is to “make it”. And also the fact that talent isn’t always the most important factor, connections make all the difference in the world. I am very hopeful that he gets an opportunity at the D1 level. I think he will.

Ray is a very good person. Seems to be a very good coach too. I actually had him as coach waaaaaay back. Early in his coaching career for sure. I hope he wasn’t forced out. Hopefully he ended his career as a coach on his terms.

Not Ty Voit. I didn’t realize he was an 03’. He may be better than the kid I am talking about. But the kid I am talking about, if not better than Ty is the second best 03’ out of Pittsburgh but was cut from top 03’ team and placed on Black. No way that should have ever happened. He is making his way still. I think he has a shot a D1 still. But he was passed over by the USHL where there is no doubt he could have played. I hope they both have great careers ahead of them. And Marc Voit is a really good skating coach. Don’t know much about him as a bench coach. But he can teach skating for sure.