I like and appreciate all the comments here.
Instead of rules, rules, and rules, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, nth question should be "is this good for players and developing players?" That is all that matters.
A few things to ponder:
- Individual players are recruited and advance. Not teams. Scouts and next level coaches don't care about the team national standing. Whenever I do contract scouting or write reports for NZ or for a team, I have NEVER included the score of the game, who won, or what the MHR ranking was for the teams. It is simply focused on individual players.
- Each AAA team can ONLY have 1 starting goalie, 1 top line, 1 primary PP, 1 primary PK, 1 top D-pair, etc. So the comment to me this past summer from a group of NCAA D1 coaches was "if everyone knows this, why is California going the opposite direction? We would like to see them expand to double or triple the number of AAA teams so that more players get developed for the next level and eventually for us at the D1 level." - that should be the ONLY type of input people need to be convinced of how to develop more players.
- We are so focused on everything and anything EXCEPT developing more great individual players. Flights and letters and rules and everything else is a moot point unless you get kids playing multiple sports and get them more than two multi-team shared practices per week and 30 games per season.
Keep expressing opinions and pursuing the right environment and culture. I will have more comments posted on this topic on my page later this week. Important stuff. I love the topic and sincerely appreciate it.