It's ridiculous to attack the loosening of AAA restrictions because it didn't immediately repair a situation that took years to create. And to be accurate for a moment, there aren't lots of AAA teams.
11u: 3
12u: 3
13u: 3
14u: 4
15o: 6
16u: 5
18u: 5
When there were only 3 California AAA teams, lots of kids left the state to play elsewhere. Take the top 5-6 players from just about any team, and have them leave year over year, starting around age 12, and tell me that there won't be a big impact to that team's competitive performance.
Looking at the rankings at this point in the season, is a pretty poor way to judge anything, but unless you are a parent with a kid on a particular team, who gives a crap what the team's national ranking is? These teams play schedules based on the leagues they participate in, so there are limits to the value of a ranking, but it's absolutely ridiculous to expect that at 16's and 18's, california hockey is a failure because we don't have any top 20 teams from the state.
Currently, the #1 ranked SSM U16 team has 5 California players and 2 kids from AZ. The 16's Ducks have multiple kids who were at SSM as well as other out of state programs, who returned this season to play for the Ducks, most likely for this season only. Overall, the trend will likely continue, with kids leaving California for other hockey programs, and having 3 teams or 6 or 8 AAA teams isn't going to make a difference to the kids who are highly recruited and leave.
It might make a difference to a lot of the other families who plan to stay in the state, and perhaps in 3-5 years time, we'll see more people choosing to stay in state, and correspondingly, more competitive teams, purely from a ranking perspective, although again, rankings only give you a general idea of the relative capability of a team.
What's a lot more important to a particular family is the experience of their kid, and not the ranking or reputation of a team. What's more important than playing on a highly ranked team, is experiencing competition, training and improving. If a kid is getting better at the sport, and that is motivation for other things they do in their lives, like academic preparation and achievement, goal setting, teamwork and camaraderie, these are the tangible benefits that go along with a successful hockey experience. If that leads to higher levels of hockey, then that is a bonus.