USA Hockey DL 32

It solves one problem for logical parents of 2012/2013 bantam skaters: I don’t have an extra $25-$30k laying around for superfluous travel to ice rinks in New York, Arizona, Texas,California and Colorado etc. Guess my kid is playing high school. No more decisions to make.

Well intentioned. But too many cooks in the kitchen making the rules here. This is going to be a disaster. Instead of reigning in tier 1 they are going to end up creating a “pre junior” junior league. Kids are going to be billeting even more in midget. These programs are going to end up trying to ask for a premium on their fees. Costs going to go up more. Disappointing.

USA hockey looked into facilities, financial heath of org etc….TI was never going to make the cut

This seems like it doesn't really solve anything that wasn't already solved. USA Hockey said this was meant to provide a high level league for the tip top kids. But top teams already play top teams. Outside of state tournaments and occasional showcase mismatches, team managers only schedule teams in the same MHR band. Go look at MHR for any birthyear and you'll see that the top 10 teams basically play each other over and over.

This change also ignores that some teams are really good at specific birthyears and terrible at others. So all this did was force kids from good teams that didn't make DL to leave and join bad teams that did. Lame.

2 Chicago teams seems like too many.

Yes. This construct was created specifically for teams like Phantoms..... And in the Chicago area, weren't kids on the development AAA teams until they could make their way to Green or Red anyways? This just solidified what we already knew.

I think it is saying these are the real teams. The top 640 kids at each age group. If your kid can't make this type of team you should stick to AA and save some money until you can.

Not saying there is anything wrong with this , but this seems unnecessary at a minimum. You already have endless showcases and nonstop games and camps for top AAA teams and players. Year round just nonstop stuff. If a kid is good at 16 , he will show up ... its impossible that he doesnt.

So now , thanks to USA hockey NDL -- teams that already played each other, now play each other ? ( hattip earlier post )

But now they have extra patch and a few billets ? OK. Great. SSM is in , Did we not know good players end up there? Were coaches oblivious to Shattucks before this NDL?

Im not sure what this achieves. Plus you dont even have a good chunk of the MN kids ? ( yes SSM but they are not truly MN, national academy team )

Im sure smarter minds than me have an answer but I would like to hear in simple King's English

"WHAT PROBLEM DOES THIS SOLVE??"

Counterpoint: The Chicago Storm and TI would smash the Jr Coyotes, Compuware, Blue Jackets, Capitols, Jr. Flyers, and Fox Motors at every birthyear I'm familiar with. So now the 40th best 15 year old in one of the largest hockey markets in the world has to move to Phoenix to participate in this special USA Hockey league?

To me it looks like they picked some AAA teams that generally play each other and put them in a new league where they play each other. I guess it’s their special league that all AAA teams don’t get to play in. App for 15u and 17u only. Not sure what the diff is.

Youth hockey gonna youth hockey. All this is going to do is increase costs and increase politics.

I think people are missing the point. They are trying to bring order to chaos and make hockey more affordable. There does not need to be 100+ AAA programs across the country. Many of which are glorified A or AA level teams.USAH is saying 32 teams is all you need to secure a development pipeline. The rest of you who are not good enough should stick with your local and hopefully cheaper AA program. If your kid is truly elite and athletic they will find you. Which leaves the bubble kids and under in the lurch, but so be it.

@Anonymous wrote:

I think the poster is saying not all AAA are real AAA. And they drew the line somewhere at 32. Right, wrong or indifferent. I think on this board alone people constantly make fun of the proliferation of AAA, Elite, Select and all the other nonsensical naming conventions to take a parent's money. This is someone doing something about it. Like other posters said, outside of these teams and maybe a few others, they stick to MHR and are not playing the fake AAA teams unless they have to or it is convenient as a warmup.

I agree on the premise, but taking 19/23 T1EHL teams really just seems like a re-branding for no good reason at all

Wait! what if there was a national combine and a draft and……

Spot on!

@Anonymous wrote:

Why does everyone think local AAA would go away? Less talent maybe, but they won’t be going away.

No one thinks it’s “going away”.

You’ll always get ambitious squirt and peewee parents. And PE guys and tiger moms at the older ages

From conversations I’ve had there are a lot of tapped out Bantam parents. like others have said, high school + other sports sounds better.

As a parent of a kid on team that’s slated for DL next season, there’s a new urgency amongst kids that now, more than ever, every skate is a tryout and a poor performance in a game moving forward puts a target on your back. Forget about national recruiting for a moment; kids talk, and they all know that every standout at TI, Storm and Fury is going to try to take a spot at Reapers or Mission.

Only 2 Chicago teams seems low. TI isn't better than Compuware?

I thought TI would get in. But either way, it seems like Chicago should have more than 2 teams. Detroit has 4. Seems like Boston also got screwed, but maybe that's because more kids there go to prep schools.

Madison Capitols will pick up some Chicago area kids

I bet some kids go to Culver too. That's not too far. Still, 2 Chicago teams seems nuts. There are 2 Denver teams.

Seems they are relying on history and name recognition for part of the inclusion process. Capitols and Compuware seem to be a couple of those inclusions

There's going to be a huge shakeup at the 16u level next year because of this, will be interested to see how it works out.

For those of us new to hockey, can someone explain what all this actually means? What is the purpose of the "development league" and what does it mean for a club to be in it? Is this like creating a AAAA tier? Are you just more likely to get "noticed" when you are on a team in this league? Also why was this created in the first place, was there something broken that needed fixing?

I counted 14/23 T1EHL teams in the new USADL. The only big differences seem to be that they have to play 60% of their games within the USADL (which isn't a huge change for the T1EHL teams anyway) and those organizations won't be offering 16U, which still seems really odd to me anyway as they can have all of the other birth year teams (13O, 14U, 15O, 17U, 18U)

I believe the intention is to concentrate and funnel more of the top players. Create more restrictions on training and events attended. Ultimately ridiculous because this eliminates the “local AAA program” for a lot of kids because billets and their families from around the country at all age levels who happen to have more money or NHL pedigree will be coming to take their spot. It affects everyone not just midget age. We all know crazy dads of 2018’s are making calls today to get U9 spots at USAHDL clubs next year

everyone will argue if you have the talent no one would beat you out, but we all know that’s not true