Day 1 from USA Hockey's National Championships in Amherst NY
It looks like the Amherst Youth Hockey Association has put an awful lot of effort into hosting this event. Forty-eight teams from across the country have converged and I appreciate the effort it takes to do this right. My hats off to Amherst Youth Hockey.
USA Hockey now requires, or so I've heard, that the host city have a 4 rink pad arena in order to host all 4 divisions of peewee and bantam. I'm not sure that this is true (maybe I should ask someone...), but there are reasons why I like it. There was a lot of great hockey played in one place. I was in Fort Wayne for the peewee Tier II games last year and this is definitely better. But I'm sure it becomes much more difficult to execute. You either succeed more impressively or fail more spectacularly when hosting them all at once venue.
When hosting Nationals, here are a couple absolutes. Facility. You must have a rink to host it. The Amherst Pepsi Center is not the greatest facility, but it definitely passes, even with a National spotlight. I'm not sure that the Great Lakes Sport City in Fraser Michigan, hosting the Midgets, would get a passing grade, but Amherst does. Host. Amherst Youth Hockey seems to be well organized and up to the challenge. Their hockey teams won't likely see too many victories, but they are competitive. Hotels. You must have rooms for the teams. I suspect this is more difficult than one would think. With 48 teams, let's say 44 traveling from outside the Metro area, you need about 900, maybe even 1000 rooms. Most won't be booked until the last 1-2 weeks before the event. Again, this can't be easy, but this was a clear problem. More than a couple hotels were nothing short of absolutely disgusting. How do I know that more than a couple were that bad, because we personally visited them looking for one better than the mold-infested, crumbling structure that we stayed in the first night. And I heard a number of teams say similar things about their hotels.
The hockey was good, but there too I have a couple complaints. Let's start with the three M's of hockey. Minnesota, Massachusetts and Michigan. The Minnkota district of USA Hockey has kids six months older than USA Hockey allows and can't send any local teams. Since all kids in Minnesota must essentially play within their school district during the fall-winter season, there is no AAA hockey. With one exception, Shuttuck - St Mary's, an elite prep school only five years ago saw Sidney Crosby put on their jersey and lace them up. They have a Bantam AAA team that seems to get an annual invite (usually well deserved), but they don't play a single game to qualify best I know. But with only four kids from the state of Minnesota on the team, one can hardly say that they represent Minnesota more than New York (where three of their kids call home). Still, it would be nice to see Minnesota Hockey represented at Nationals. Massachusetts might be worse. Most of the AAA teams from the state are not eligible for Nationals. Only those playing in the "state league" can try to make Nationals. There are about 12 teams in this league and some would struggle to win a AA league game in Florida, Texas or California. Still, they can generally field one or more competitive teams. What is absolutely making me scratch my head is their Tier II entry. Massachusetts sends their minor AAA state champ as the Tier II entrant. These teams lost by a combined score of 23-0 in the two games they played today. USA Hockey needs to sit down and have a little talk with the Massachusetts district and get something worked out. Someone should be embarrassed. Michigan's problems pail in comparison, but I'll throw something out there on them too. Michigan seems to only rarely send their best teams to Nationals. I wonder if their qualifying events lend themselves to upsets or surprise teams. I think Michigan does a fair amount of good stuff, but recently they've struggled on the National stage. In 2004 they won Nationals at all four peewee and bantam divisions, since then they have not won one. Neither has Massachusetts or Minnesota. California won three National championships last year. The Rocky Mountain district has won three, from three different states, over the past couple years. Zero for MA, MI and MN combined.
MYHockey is 19-3 in the 22 games where results are known. I'm not sure the outcome of two games. The USA Hockey website is still missing about a half dozen game scores. I don't mean to sound too judgmental, but there is no excuse for it. Fans at home around the country want to know what's going on in Buffalo, post timely results!
Enough for tonight, more tomorrow!
