USA Hockey proposed rule change

USA Hockey proposes to change when players are taught to check.The new rule says that players should not be taught how to check until they reach the bantam level. This will allow players at the lower levels to focus on skating, passing, and positioning. This will change the physical aspects of hockey at the high school level and not necessarily for the best.

The Advantage of a League website

There are advantages to your league having a website. Here are a few of those advantages: You can see how your opponents are doing, you can see who is getting suspended and out of town parents or other relatives can see how their kids are doing. Another advantage of your league having a website is it allows the parents of incoming freshmen to find contact information for the school their child will be attending and contacting the team. In a way it is a recruiting tool and I have just this week received my first email from incoming parents.
   I believe all leagues should have a website.

Looking Forward

While we were selling programs at the Caps game a couple of my players said" Coach I have been recruiting for us at my school".  I told the players that I appreciate what they have done but their work is not done. I told them I would like each of them to send me an email with the players they have recruited include in this email each players name, position, how long they have played hockey and what grade they are in. Now I will wait and see who my players have recruited.

Selling Caps programs

Friday night my players sold programs at the Washington Capitals game. The programs cost $2 each and we get to keep all the money we make minus the $200 that the Capitals stake us with. It was an interesting night. We sold quite a few programs, some people gave us $5 dollars for one program and said keep the rest as a donation and there was one unfortunate instances when one of the coaches from a team we played walked up to buy a program and when he realized who was selling the programs he said " no thanks I do not need one from you guys". I was disappointed that a opposing coach would react that way. This is a fund-raising event that the kids will volunteer for and it is fun too.

Need to raise money

Ice Hockey in Maryland is a sport not directly supported by the school systems like football and basketball is. As a result teams do fundraisers to try and off set the costs. One of our more successful fundraisers is selling programs at a Washington Capitals game. I really do appreciate the support of the Capitals. It usually gives my team enough money to cover our required deposit for ice time for next year. It also gives my players a chance to spend time together off the ice which they do not get to do much of because they attend different schools.
     Does anyone have other fundraisers that do not include baking? I would love to hear about them.

Season in Review

Now that I have taken couple days away from thinking about high school hockey. I spent my morning commute thinking about the just ended season. I realized  couple of things about the season 1) My team did not play well against physical teams 2) To win we need to stay out of the penalty box 3) The value of practice time for the underclassmen. I am not sure how much playing in the pre-season tournament helped my team. I will have to think carefully about playing in the Frederick Cup next fall.
     Next fall I will have a team that will have no seniors but I will have a good core of juniors so it should be interesting.

The Last Game

The last game did not go exactly as planned. The team we played came out being very physical something my team does not handle well. We spent most of the second period killing penalties. It seems despite being very physical and hitting my players very high they did not get any penalties. Due to their high hitting I lost one of my players to a possible concussion. I brought the high hitting to the referees attention but they did not seem to care or be concerned. I thought we had scored a goal but the referee waved off the goal and said the puck came out of the net. I said that could happen if the puck hit the back bar and came back out which is what happened. The referee looked at me confused and said no goal coach. We did lose the game and a number of my team's parents said this was the most physical game they had seen.