I actually mentioned 3 teams. I guess counting not your strong point? ;-)
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'competitive'.
AA is definitely hard when you are in a smaller market and are fielding AAA teams. It's tough to do both (see other discussion currently going on in bantam forum), and that definitely hurts the sharks. Frankly, I wasn't even considering tier 2 - who cares about an orgs second level team when it comes to competitiveness, really. And it's mostly just a factor of addressable market.
It also looks like you are just considering CAHA games too which is also not smart, particularly for tier 1 - with only 3 teams in California and both the kings and ducks (admittedly) strong usually at tier 1, it's way too small a sample size to judge the sharks. California AAA team play a small minority of their games against other California teams. Use myhockeyrankings. That's what it's for, and it tends to be good.
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For tier 1, it's always the same pattern in the rankings. There are about 120 tier 1 teams in the country.
The top 15-20 or so teams are in a 'cut above' and really should be AAAA (or AAA-elite...) or something. Teams like Honeybaked, etc. Crazy records, and tough for other teams to beat, as they draw from all across the country.
The ducks are occasionally in that ranking range, but usually borderline. The kings very occasionally. Then from positions 20 or so down to 55 or so you get the bulk of the 'good' tier 1 teams. On any given day, any of those teams can beat any other, and this is shown to be true in tournament after tournament (eg. #48 15AAA sharks beat the #23 Jr Preds last weekend). This is where the sharks AAA clubs tend to be - almost always between 30 and 50 in the country.
Much beyond 55 to 60 you get 'weak' AAA teams. You sometimes see one or two sharks or kings teams in that region. Beyond about 80-90 you have teams that should be considering AA (or, I guess some years are just anomalies for clubs). Very rare for California teams to be there.
If it weren't the 'gate' to get to regionals, nobody in California playing tier 1 would really cares that much about the 'inside California' competition. Too small a pool. That's why the teams compete in tier1elite (though that league is struggling right now.)