Hockey Nerd

While just about every part of North America has a different has its own idea of when the fall/winter hockey season begins, MYHockey has anointed August 20, 2008 as the kick-off to the 2008-09 season.

With the kick-off of a new season, comes excitement, hope and anticipation. It is a great time of year! Kids are working hard in practice. Coaches are trying to get the kids ready for the new season. Pre-season tournaments are being researched. For the most part, everyone still has a positive attitude.

MYHockey does not try to perform a pre-season ranking. A team's ranking is based upon the 2008-09 season game scores only, there is no carry over from last season and no weighting done based upon the league affiliation. The first rankings of the 2008-09 season will be released on October 1, 2008. Until then, teams will be listed, but not ranked. You will have the opportunity to verify team information, league information, and help us get early season game results updated accurately in preparation for the initial release.

As you check out the site, please consider helping. First, as you check out the list of team, let us know if we have missed any. This might include teams that have changed their names over the off-season, teams that have switched leagues, or teams playing at a competitive level for the first time. For the teams that are listed, you can submit team websites. Most viewers love to check out team websites, but they change so significantly from year to year, we are forced to start over and rebuild the list of links to team websites.

As the season kicks off this for most teams in the next few weeks, please consider volunteering to help enter game scores. Additional information can be found on the "Report Scores" page.

One last note. MYHockey has been reading its email and viewing the poll results. Many of you are interested in MYHockey expanding to cover new areas and we continue work to meet your interests. For the first time, MYHockey will be covering Squirt Minors (Atom Minor for you Canadians), Girls, US High School Hockey and College Hockey. That growth puts us at close to 7500 teams for the season. You will see the site continue to morph as it expands to handle our constant growth. Do not hesitate to drop us a line if something appears broken or if you would like to help expand or improve the site. We are always open to suggestions to improve MYHockey.

Best of luck to all teams this season!

The MYHockey Rankings Invitational Tournament Series schedule has been posted. The 2008-09 line-up should once again prove exciting.

The Pre-Season Challenge Tournaments start with Peewee, Bantam and Midget Minor AAA battle in Pittsburgh in late August. The Pre-Season Challenge Tournaments then turn their focus to Tier II in September. Holland will host the Peewee Minor Challenge September 19-21 and the Midget Minor Challenge September 26-28. Indianapolis will host the Bantam Minor Challenge September 26-28, while the Squirt Major and Minor, Peewee Major and Bantam Major Pre-Season Challenge Tournaments will take place in the Chicago area September 26-28. These tournaments will be a great way to start the season and give your team an opportunity to see where it stacks up against the competition.

The MYHockey Rankings Midwinter Classic Tournaments will be held January 17-19 at a couple different venues. Pittsburgh will host the Squirt and Bantam Major tournaments. Rochester will host the Peewee Major and Chicago will Peewee, Bantam and Midget Minor tournaments. These tune-ups should get teams back in the groove after the holidays and get them ready for the post-season.

Putting on a great tournament is a ton of work. I know because I have done it. While a great experience, it is extremely difficult to manage at the same time I run MYHockey. That’s why the MYHockeyRankings.com Tournament Series is run by Advanced Tournaments. Jim and the guys at Advanced Tournaments are simply the best at running these kind of tournaments. They understand and use MYHockey, going the extra mile to make tournaments competitive and exciting.

I highly encourage you to take a look at the MYHockey Rankings Tournament Series. Hope to see you at the rink this fall.

MYHockey's Hockey Nerd column has been upgraded to real blog software and is now a real internet blog.

The Hockey Nerd column was updated in order to give the general public a chance to provide feedback and add valuable information and contributions to the content published by Hockey Nerd. I regret that it has taken this long to facilitate feedback from you, but I hope that you can embrace it now that the capability is there. Hockey Nerd definitely does not have the market cornered on comprehensive thinking about youth hockey. I get emails today from a number of you on the columns. Some of that feedback would benefit the larger community and would be better published online. Other feedback may be more appropriate in email, but you can decide.

Feedback is moderated and approved before being posted. It may take a day or two to appear on the site. Some feedback may elicit a response from me and others will be posted without comment. Inappropriate comments will simply be deleted. If you see yourself posting comments on a regular basis and would like an ID, request an ID when at the login screen and I'll create one for you. Having an ID also enables you to receive certain notifications. You can also remain anonymous. An email address, while not required, is always helpful in that it enables me to clarify issues or provide private feedback if more appropriate. Email addresses are not displayed to the general public and are for administrative purposes only. They will not be sold or used inappropriately.

Hockey Nerd will continue to publish articles on a regular basis throughout the summer months. Topics will vary from site improvements to hockey world current issues. I hope you will provide feedback should anything I write push your buttons.

The MYHockey Tournament Directory is an important piece of the MYHockey puzzle. Tournament game scores are the single most important source of "cross-over" games that enables MYHockey to assess the relative strength of each league, and it's individual teams. Midway through the season it is easy for MYHockey to assess the best team in the MWEHL or GTHL or EHF league, but it requires tournament scores to determine how the best teams from each of these league compare to one another. While those may be high profile leagues, those scores are important at every level that MYHockey covers.

MYHockey recognized tournament winners in the Trophies section of the Team Details/Information page. The way the system works is that only tournament winners are identified and it's done automatically based upon which tournaments are listed in the directory and which teams have been assigned as winners of a tournament division. I respond to a few dozen emails each season telling individuals that I need to have basic information about a tournament before I can enter it into the system and recognize their team for winning it.

One of the complaints about the directory has been its shear size. During the 2007-08 season there were over 400 entries. Only tournaments at the Tier 1 (AAA) or the most competitive level of Tier 2 (often called AA) are included. While I am a strong supporter of recreation and lower level travel hockey (essentially all elite players and teams are a product of these basic building blocks of youth hockey), the MYHockey Tournament Directory is not a "pay to list" directory open to all tournaments. It is designed to assist individuals and teams at the more competitive levels of youth hockey. Still, with 400 plus entries per season, the list is long and it can be hard to locate what you are looking for.

MYHockey has:

• Modified the listing to be presented month by month
• Updated it to reflect division at age levels followed by MYHockey for the 2008-09 season
• Added a backlog of requested tournaments to the directory

Additional enhancements are planned for later in the season. Stay tuned. In the mean time, do not hesitate to submit tournaments to the directory by using the link at the bottom of the MYHockey Tournament Directory.

Let me say up front that I am not USA Hockey's biggest fan. I scratch my head at some decisions and have not had very good luck at all getting someone to talk to me intelligently about them when I have asked questions face to face or via email.

That said, I do think the Development Program(s) run by USA Hockey and its Districts deserves some praise. They are doing what most of us want from USA Hockey. USA Hockey gives kids (and parents) the opportunity to develop and to understand what it takes to be successful in the sport today.

First some notes. Not all districts run their Development Programs the same way. Some may be done better than others. I have some familiarity, both first hand and second hand, with how a number of them are done. Many people will always complain about the results of these tryouts, but be honest with yourself and ask how easy you think it really is to differentiate between all the players. They must draw a line somewhere and people will always disagree. As a matter of fact, I think they get it wrong about 20% of the time, but that doesn't make the activity any less valuable. Districts that have neutral third party judges (people who don't know any of the kids involved) earn the respect of the participants, even when they may have some questionable picks. The districts that use people who already know the kids in some capacity (current coaches, prep school coaches, parents, friends, etc) are often attacked for their bias, whether or not it really exists.

Why am I calling out the Development Program for kudos? I think the single biggest reason is it takes thousands of kids who all excel in their own local environments and gives them the opportunity to showcase their skills in front of a larger audience. Some of these players are classic "big fish in small pond". While they excel where they are at, they learn that other kids in the District have skills at another level. But you would be wrong if you assumed every "big fish in small pond" fit the mold. Some of these kids not only succeed on their teams and in their leagues, they succeed against kids they don't normally see during the regular season. The development program gives these kids and families a chance to see what else is out there. Playing at the highest level possible is not always the best option for every kid, but making informed decisions on where a child should play is important. These programs not only give the kids an opportunity to accurately assess their own abilities, it gives them a chance to build relationships with kids from other cities. In this day and age, kids have cell phones, email addresses, instant messaging accounts, home pages and all the other latest in technology. It is amazing what happens after these events.

Let me call out the Mid-Am District's summer camps. My son attended a couple hockey schools when younger and while the experience was always "fun", he rarely learned much from these "open to the general public" camps. The Mid-Am District does a spring tryout weekend with 150-200 kids per birth year. They then pick an average of 60 skaters to participate in a 5 day summer camp where they may select the Festival team (depending upon the age). They start the camp as early as age 11-12 (they combine the years that young). They stop having the camp at the Select 16 age when other events make it difficult to pull off successfully at the district level, but for five birth years they run 5 day summer camps. At age 14, my son now loves attending these tryouts and camps to catch up with his friends from around the district. They may have started out as strangers years ago, but now kids from all over the district who see each other only a few days a year, text message, email or chat with one another all season long. Additionally, the camps offer the kids an opportunity to hang with 60 or so other kids with the same love of the game who play at a similar level. I challenge the districts that don't yet open up these opportunities up to hundreds of kids and host week-long camps in the summer to strongly consider how to make it work in their district as well.

Thanks USA Hockey for putting together a quality Development Program.