Here is the truth. Youth hockey in California has NEVER been more healthy. There are more kids playing at all levels and more competitive teams fielded than EVER before. I’ve never said CAHA or the Sharks are perfect. Far from it but it’s ridiculous all the whining and complaining that happens on these boards. Enjoy the journey as the road for all of these kids leads to beer league (which is awesome by the way).
ALL hockey leads to Beer league if you play the game long enough. For some people the Beer league includes ex-NHL and former D1, Jr. and euro, swedish and finnish pros. Meaningless defeatist slogan truth be told. There is nothing wrong with kids having a dream, and goals that might exceed their grasp when all is said and done. And yet there are kids who grew up playing youth hockey in Cali who have been in the NHL recently, will eventually be in the NHL, or are in the NHL currently. I'm not going to list them, and it's also besides the point. Many kids play AAA in states around the country, and California is the only state I know of that artificially restricts and depresses the number of teams. The ratio of AAA players to total players is far below that of the more established hockey leagues and systems and the guidelines set out by USA Hockey. Once again, CAHA is run by people who think they know something that nobody else around the country does.
I don’t know who the coach is that came on but just because he provides an opinion or shares a conversation also doesn’t mean that the content is an absolute truth. Of course there is only 1 goalie, 1 PP group, 1 PK group, 1 set of top D. How often do you think they are out there in a 14 to 0 game?
If you actually bothered to read what was written, the coach related what D1 & D3 college coaches are saying.
You want / need competitive games. 3-2, 1-0 not 10-0 or 13-2. That’s what the flight system tried to address. That’s why they make it hard for organizations to field AAA teams. It’s not easy to pull off.
It's a fantasy that people with no apparent experience talk about. The wonderful magical world of complete parity. When you look at just about any division anywhere with 6-8 teams or more, you're going to find that someone comes in first and someone comes in last, and more often than not there's a median point where goal differential is positive vs. negative.
Before the institution of Tier2 Flighting, there were teams that were pushed down. The mechanics already existed, and if anything CAHA has been less successful in negotiating with those teams since the Flighting began. And of course there are the teams that wanted to drop and were forced not to....
The issue is that CAHA's tier2 evaluation has missed the mark for 2 out of 2 years now, as well as the fact that Tier2/Flight2 bears no resemblance to Tier2 competition throughout the rest of the country and is the kludgiest and worst implemented ruleset that exists in youth hockey.
As I also stated clearly there is a simple improvement if people insist, and that is to transition to Tier2 Birthyear divisions, which in general predict the relative level of competition in Tier2 year over year at both Peewee and Bantam. We can use WW as an example, even though WW is no different than most Tier2 teams in amount of flux the team experiences:
-Won state championship with primarily PW Major team
-Allocated to Flight2 as First year Bantams
-Top half of Flight1 Bantams with mostly '04 team
You could look at the strong teams in PWAA as well, and see that the majority of the top teams are primarily '06
There will always be hybrid teams that have a foot in each camp, but it should come as a surprise to noone that the bottom Bantam AA Flight2 teams are primarily minor year with a few '04's and that the primarily '04 teams like the Saints, GSE2, Bears1 and WW have beat up on the bottom group. CAHA knew the constitution of the teams and still rushed to put 2 core '05 teams into Flight1 and look how that worked out.
CAHA's goal with this system and many of these rules is all about discouraging AAA teams and many AA teams. That this would be by design speaks for itself. CAHA should be a neutral party rather than the Godfather bestowing its blessings on the biggest programs and meddling and discouraging the smaller clubs at every turn. It's laughably predictable that CAHA's latest fiasco is trying to browbeat the 8th place Wave PWAA team over their participation in the most illustrious PW tournament in youth hockey, in completely needless fashion. That's how CAHA and their little buddies in SCAHA roll -- never missing a chance to make parents angry apparently.