There is no allegiance whatsoever. My son tried out for Simi AAA (yes I said the rink and don't care), one year and there were 12 goalies there, 12. After tryouts, we were informed that one goalie was already signed and being brought in from Finland. Finland? Really? We live 10 miles away. Then he tried out for AA there. 5 goalies. He was the best of the five. He was not signed, even though he had been called by one of the coaches the week before to come out. Their explanation was they had to sign their goalie from the past year who decided to come out and they had to sign a 2000 instead of a 99.
I know first-hand that it is 100% factual, because my son was there as well. These are kids after all, our kids, and we allow clubs and coaches to manipulate and lie to them.
I don't doubt it for a minute, especially after witnessing the tryouts personally
For goalies especially, it does have a lot to do with who you know and where you played last year and did you show an interest in a new team during the season and even in the off season. As a parent, you have to be pro-active - way more than you think to get a goalie on a coach's radar. This means (politely) talking to other coaches during the end of one season and finding out where their heads are at for next season. That's how we got on a team once, just based on a 5-minute conversation I had with a coach at a tournament where I said "we're not sure where we'll end up, but we'd like you to consider us if we show up."
Now we're at Prep School and it's just as true there about 'who you know' to get to the next level (jrs or college) - if you want to know how to get into prep school PM me separately. We're emailing JRs and Colleges and having some limited success in getting responses, but when our school coach emails someone, it's almost 100% response. And our goalie coach has been helpful, he's a NAHL scout as well so he has a lot of connections. But before you go to a NAHL camp, make sure you know the situation - do they have returning goalies? how did they do last year? If you want to go just for the experience, that's cool, but coaches have very unpredictable ways of selecting their goalies. We went to a camp earlier this month and there were 12 goalies. At the end they narrow it down to top 4 and those get invited back to main camp. We were there for 4 days and he played in 8 periods of play and let in 5 goals, by far the fewest of any goalie (and I watched every game and every goalie). Other kids were telling him he was by far the best goalie out there and was a shoo-in to get invited back. In the end, they picked 3 local kids who were awful and 1 kid who was pretty good. Later we found out that they expect both of their goalies from last year to return so they just didn't care who they picked because it was already decided who they wanted.
At least we got 8 games in and had a pretty good time being together. We have a few more camps to attend, and we're doing our homework now. Our prep-school coach is helping us with a few colleges and those seem promising.
Just let me remind everyone who is thinking of playing beyond 16 or 18AAA - it is a huge commitment! Every kid who has gotten into the NAHL, USHL, WHL or other Tier2/Tier1 league has to make tremendous sacrifices. Money, time away from home, missing school, missing girlfriends missing family. All of it. Your kid must be 100% committed to the end goal or it won't work. I have incredible respect for any kid that makes it that far as I know how much my kid has given up and the discussions around the family table about college and family. But he wants it so he's willing to work incredibly hard to make it happen and so he has my respect and admiration.