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Preds birth year teams all playing independent schedule


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49 minutes ago, stickboy said:

A step to end this independent AA and faux AAA BS is to remove all Tier 2 and AAA rankings below No. 50 (and thats’s a stretch) from My Hockey Rankings.  There’s no point in ranking these teams as they are irrelevant on a national scale. 

That might help some. But as long as parents get to thump their chests that their prodigy is x,y,z level higher than their buddies, it’s going to be a problem. 

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1 hour ago, stickboy said:

A step to end this independent AA and faux AAA BS is to remove all Tier 2 and AAA rankings below No. 50 (and thats’s a stretch) from My Hockey Rankings.  There’s no point in ranking these teams as they are irrelevant on a national scale. 

I disagree with this only in and of as much as I have found the rankings REALLY helpful in finding teams + or -30 of mine in the rankings to play for very competitive games. 

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1 hour ago, aaaahockey said:

I disagree with this only in and of as much as I have found the rankings REALLY helpful in finding teams + or -30 of mine in the rankings to play for very competitive games. 

I understand, and the rankings are useful in finding competitive games. But in that 60 team range that you are finding competitive games, are there not local teams (even PAHL teams)?  I’d have to imagine there are 5-10.

 

 

 

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12 year old “powerhouse teams” ? ?

teams ranked below 50 in tier 1 are basically very good AA teams. When you get into that 75 and further range, they turn into mediocre AA teams that the majority of top 30 AA teams will beat. I just noticed (U18) team Ohio tier 2 AA beat the vengeance tier 1 “AAA” team. It’s all about the extra “A” for parents, it’s not so much the kids. 

 

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8 hours ago, twoboys said:

I would rather play the same 3 teams 12 times and have competitive games.  Than play 20 games and only have 4 that are competitive.  Most of the my friends that have kids that play AA have moved organizations at least once.  I think the way to save AA is to shrink it.  Make it a big deal to play AA.  People will drive it if the team is worth it.      

That's also why you add teams from other regions, attract back some who claim they play AAA for the travel. Don't need a separate independent schedule, then. 

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5 hours ago, stickboy said:

A step to end this independent AA and faux AAA BS is to remove all Tier 2 and AAA rankings below No. 50 (and thats’s a stretch) from My Hockey Rankings.  There’s no point in ranking these teams as they are irrelevant on a national scale. 

Yeah, but those rankings are useful for teams to figure out appropriate tournaments and other teams to play. 

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6 hours ago, Saucey said:

Yeah, but those rankings are useful for teams to figure out appropriate tournaments and other teams to play. 

Exactly. I know MHR takes flak for the chest-thumping parents who just focus on which team is above who. But, those rankings are a real godsend for any diligent coach or manager trying to find appropriate competition. Even among teams well below the top 50, there is a considerable range of talent and MHR can help a lot in figuring the schedule out. Do not get rid of the rankings because of idiots.

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Lots of eye rolling and "faux" this and "faux" that. It's always interesting how quickly some people are willing to reveal their own insecurities.

In terms of making PAHL AA stronger, the most interesting idea to me is to have AA Minor and AA Major divisions at the 10U and 12U levels. This didn't make a lot of sense until all the larger organizations started putting together BY teams as soon as a kid was a squirt. Thinking of Allegheny, North Pgh, Renegades, SHAHA, Preds, and many other of the larger organizations, don't they put together BY teams immediately? We can argue about whether or not that's a good thing, but the reality is that it's just not going to change. So how can PAHL adapt? I think Minor BY teams would stick around and play PAHL if they had a Minor AA division. A lot of those teams don't want to bump down a division or two and play mostly kids a year older.

What would be the negative impact of having AA Major and AA Minor divisions at the 10U and 12U levels? I know there are some negatives. But keeping teams in PAHL may outweigh those.

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42 minutes ago, RJUSHL said:

Lots of eye rolling and "faux" this and "faux" that. It's always interesting how quickly some people are willing to reveal their own insecurities.

In terms of making PAHL AA stronger, the most interesting idea to me is to have AA Minor and AA Major divisions at the 10U and 12U levels. This didn't make a lot of sense until all the larger organizations started putting together BY teams as soon as a kid was a squirt. Thinking of Allegheny, North Pgh, Renegades, SHAHA, Preds, and many other of the larger organizations, don't they put together BY teams immediately? We can argue about whether or not that's a good thing, but the reality is that it's just not going to change. So how can PAHL adapt? I think Minor BY teams would stick around and play PAHL if they had a Minor AA division. A lot of those teams don't want to bump down a division or two and play mostly kids a year older.

What would be the negative impact of having AA Major and AA Minor divisions at the 10U and 12U levels? I know there are some negatives. But keeping teams in PAHL may outweigh those.

I don’t think renaming a turd makes it any less of a turd.  I mean at what point does it stop?  Theoretically we could just rename every level AA and have a AA-AA Major all the way down to a AA-B Minor and it’s still the same problem. 
 

And I truly do appreciate that you want to improve the product. 

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Going BY at 10U or 12U is a good idea if you are a larger organization with enough players at each year to field teams.  Going BY would be bordering on the impossible for smaller organizations like Beaver County, Altoona, Indiana, State College, etc.  There is also a misconception that being BY equals a higher level of play, it does not especially at 10U/12U where the skill/talent level between AA teams can be enormous, and that is not even considering the skill/talent level between the players on a given team.  When the skill gap from team to team becomes too large, that is when you are going to see teams go independent at the younger ages.  I have the feeling from talking to parents that the frustration is with teams being misplaced within a given division and games not being competitive.  I think we can all agree that nobody wants to get up at 6AM on a Saturday/Sunday morning just to go to a rink and watch your players team either win or lose 7-0.  

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The thing with this early age birth year stuff is that yes, you have a few standout kids on the team. After that, everyone is more or less interchangeable. You also have some kids that are noticebly better in tryouts than some of the birth year players, but the birth year players aren't going anywhere because they've been on that team since 8 or ten years old and some of those players that are better are coming from somewhere else and aren't even going to be considered. Go to some weekend draft tournaments and you can see how interchangeable a lot of the players are. 

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48 minutes ago, nemesis8679 said:

The thing with this early age birth year stuff is that yes, you have a few standout kids on the team. After that, everyone is more or less interchangeable. You also have some kids that are noticebly better in tryouts than some of the birth year players, but the birth year players aren't going anywhere because they've been on that team since 8 or ten years old and some of those players that are better are coming from somewhere else and aren't even going to be considered. Go to some weekend draft tournaments and you can see how interchangeable a lot of the players are. 

Weekend Draft tournaments sound like fun. Where would I find info?  Thanks

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2 hours ago, Corsi said:

Going BY at 10U or 12U is a good idea if you are a larger organization with enough players at each year to field teams.  Going BY would be bordering on the impossible for smaller organizations like Beaver County, Altoona, Indiana, State College, etc.  

You're absolutely right. Some of those smaller organizations will have a "team 1" that is primarily kids in their major year with a few minor year kids sprinkled in. Some bigger organizations do this as well. Lebo for example in many cases. Those teams would have the option of playing "up" in AA Major. Obviously all AA Minor teams will be verified to make sure all kids are in their minor year.

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Just now, RJUSHL said:

You're absolutely right. Some of those smaller organizations will have a "team 1" that is primarily kids in their major year with a few minor year kids sprinkled in. Some bigger organizations do this as well. Lebo for example in many cases. Those teams would have the option of playing "up" in AA Major. Obviously all AA Minor teams will be verified to make sure all kids are in their minor year.

BY makes sense to me for first year squirts, but only if their only competition is also all first year squirts. For the simple reason that everyone is generally on the same playing field. Obviously you'll still have those stand out kids who played one or two seasons of full ice AAU that have a better idea of how the game is played, but for the most part everyone will be learning as they go. In a perfect world that would be possible in PAHL, but looking at the current teams it appears there's only 3 total 12BY teams this year? (preds,foxes,vipers). Looking at MHR it seems the foxes team is really struggling against mixed year teams, which is no surprise at all.

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2 hours ago, nemesis8679 said:

The thing with this early age birth year stuff is that yes, you have a few standout kids on the team. After that, everyone is more or less interchangeable. You also have some kids that are noticebly better in tryouts than some of the birth year players, but the birth year players aren't going anywhere because they've been on that team since 8 or ten years old and some of those players that are better are coming from somewhere else and aren't even going to be considered. Go to some weekend draft tournaments and you can see how interchangeable a lot of the players are. 

I understand your argument that you think BY teams should go away in most cases. It's a legit argument, but the BY teams aren't going anywhere. Parents and organizations have cast their vote with their wallet. Orgs that started BY teams fairly early grew and gained players. Orgs that didn't have suffered in some cases. The question is how PAHL will deal with the changing landscape.

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2 minutes ago, forbin said:

BY makes sense to me for first year squirts, but only if their only competition is also all first year squirts. For the simple reason that everyone is generally on the same playing field. Obviously you'll still have those stand out kids who played one or two seasons of full ice AAU that have a better idea of how the game is played, but for the most part everyone will be learning as they go. In a perfect world that would be possible in PAHL, but looking at the current teams it appears there's only 3 total 12BY teams this year? (preds,foxes,vipers). Looking at MHR it seems the foxes team is really struggling against mixed year teams, which is no surprise at all.

MHR is picky when it comes to naming minor year birth year teams. The roster must be verified with them. It's a whole process. There are more than three 12 BY teams, just not all have jumped through the hoops yet.

And I think you're right about 2012 and 2010 BY teams struggling against mixed teams. One of the reasons that the Aviators 2010 team initially wanted to play PAHL AA, but after some scrimmages they realize it's just not going to happen. So instead of dropping down to A Major Black or lower, they'll just go independent. That's the problem I'm seeing. (I don't know any of this first hand about the aviators, just heard it from someone so could be wrong.)

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It'd be interesting to know if there are parents or coaches of some better 2012 or 2010 BY teams that decided to go independent instead of playing PAHL, if things would've been different if PAHL offered a AA Minor division. Would they have stayed in PAHL?

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11 minutes ago, RJUSHL said:

It'd be interesting to know if there are parents or coaches of some better 2012 or 2010 BY teams that decided to go independent instead of playing PAHL, if things would've been different if PAHL offered a AA Minor division. Would they have stayed in PAHL?

What’s the resistance to playing A major?

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4 minutes ago, BeaverFalls said:

What’s the resistance to playing A major?

Because then they aren't "better" than A major. Never mind that they aren't AA and will probably be in for a long season. But the water cooler talk must not get that in-depth. 

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31 minutes ago, BeaverFalls said:

What’s the resistance to playing A major?

Don't know for sure but it seems like they don't want to be playing primarily against kids a year older and in an "A" division. I'm just wondering if a AA Minor division would keep them in PAHL.

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