Kings2 and Bears2 are primarily '05 with a handful of solid '04's on each squad. Valencia is about 50/50.
The results of Flight1 are basically what I expected for the most part.
-Bears1
Barely broke a sweat, lost a top player to injury and still rolled. Until we have evidence to the contrary, they are probaly the 3rd best AAA '04 team in California.
The AA contenders:
-Saints1
-Wave
-OCHC1
-GSE2
Mid level group:
For the most part, this is the "any given day" group, where if there wasn't flighting, would be in a dog fight. For a few of the teams in this group that are in the top Flight, it's really going to be hard to say that they are better off, when they will regularly lose to the top 5 by 3-5+ goals.
Some of these teams do have the potential to knock off a team in the upper group on a given day, and for some it's probably not very likely, but either way there's just not a huge gap between the teams in this group, even if some of the coaches and parents have delusional beliefs to the contrary. Not sure if it's going to be blessing or a curse that they won't get to play any Flight2 teams even in SCAHA. After a while, even if the team is improving, it can be hard to see the upside, when the improvement is still at the expense of losing games.
-GSE1
-Kings1
-Kings2
-Bears2
-Ducks1
-Ducks2
-Flyers
-Sharks
-Saints2
-Jr. Reign
Flight2 challenged:
-Empire: showed some improvement and got an injured player back, but still seem a notch below the level needed to string together some wins
-OCHC2: 3 Games down, and they have 1 goal and -23 goal differential. Don't see this getting much better.
Shoutout to Wave2 that were arguably better and had more potential than OCHC2. That team is now defunct, as in, players scattered to other AA teams and not enough players left over to reformulate at A. A job well done CAHA/SCAHA!
It's a long season, and all you can hope for is that kids continue to learn the game, learn to compete, avoid injury, and come out on the other side of it still wanting to play next season.