One week and counting! On the morning of October 3, 2007, MYHockey will release its first of 28 weekly rankings. For those new to the site, MYHockey makes ranking updates weekly during the season. Every Wednesday morning, barring technical glitches, the site will be updated with new rankings/ratings. Wednesdays, however, are not the only day MYHockey is updated. Throughout the week, volunteers enter game scores. Scores entered on or after Wednesday are not immediately reflected in any site statistics, but are shown on the scores page of each team. In this manner, you can validate that scores entered this week for your team are accurate. You can also keep tabs during the week on any updates that volunteers have made. As many of you are aware, mistakes happen. Many have already been made and corrected and hopefully many more mistakes can now be prevented because we have openly been recording game scores for the past month. With so many volunteers and web site viewers, most mistakes take only a few days to disappear.

Next Wednesday, over half the teams in MYHockey today will "disappear". They will disappear from the rankings because they have played fewer than five recorded games. With fewer than five games recorded, the accuracy of the rankings is usually not credible. That does not mean that the team is no longer in the system. All teams will remain in the system (assuming they still exist), they will simply be waiting for more than five games to be entered before reappearing on the rankings. These teams can still be found in the system by locating the association or league that they are affiliated with (using the appropriate menu items on the left hand side of each MYHockey page). It is not a perfect system, but it works and is an improvement over how things have worked in the past.

The 2007 season will be MYHockey's fifth season. Fifth? Believe it or not, MYHockey started during the 2003-04 season. It was primitive and included about 200 teams. During the 2003-04 season, it is possible that only a dozen people ever visited the site. The math was still being worked out. The concept was questionable. In 2004-05 MYHockey expanded to 500 teams and two age levels. It was still primitive, but a few hundred people visited the site on a regular basis. The 2005-06 season was a breakout season. MYHockey was no longer an underground website. It expanded nationwide, including Ontario, and began organizing the information in ways never before attempted. The use of volunteers was attempted for the first time as viewers asked, "how can I help?" Nearly 1400 teams were input into the system and 22,000 game scores were recorded. The 2006-07 season saw continued growth as 2200 teams and over 40,000 game scores were added in Squirts - Bantams. The 2007-08 season will see continued growth. With Midgets already on board, MYHockey has currently more than 3000 teams. It is expected that 70,000 game scores will be entered during the season and thousands of visitors will continue to enjoy the wealth of information at there fingertips.

As we prepare for yet another season, MYHockey has a couple requests of you. First, like the spirits we consume on the weekends, consume in moderation. No, you are not asked to limit your surfing time to x number of minutes. MYHockey is asking that you refrain from taking the rankings too literally. Whether first, last, or somewhere in the middle, the rankings identify a team's relative capabilities. MYHockey has made it a science, but its not. Second, it is about development and not your ranking. Please do NOT hang around with other parents or coaches dreaming up ways to improve your team's ranking. Please do hang out with these people discussing ways to improve the development of the kids on your team. That concept goes hand-in-hand with the third request. Please realize and help others realize that it is not where you start but where you finish. If you are a part of a USA National-bound team, Tier I or Tier II, the goal should be making it further than anyone expects. How do you accomplish this goal? Development. Not by winning at all costs in October. I will touch on these ideas more later, but I did want to start you thinking. Additionally, MYHockey asks that you be patient. Errors are made. Volunteers find that life gets in the way. Scores are not always input in a timely manner. Things are not always perfect. Rankings are not always accurate. Try not avoid the emotion and explore why things are as they are. It might be that mistakes were made. It might be that the recorded game scores do not reflect your team's ability. It might be that your coach is emphasizing development over ranking. It might be a lot of things. Talk about it as a group if you like, but do not be consumed with it. Consume yourself in the experience of youth hockey. Explore ways to make it more valuable and positive for your children. Do your part to make hockey the coolest sport on earth.