With Columbus & Cinci going Tier 1 and Indy playing in Central States, conventional wisdom would have it that the Buckeye will be weak. I'm curious what others think.

Did good teams from Dayton, BC, and NKY lose many kids to the Tier 1 teams?

With the large amount of change, any serious talk about a pre-season seeding tournament or a split season? The complaint for the past couple years is that there are too many lopsided games in the BTHL. Is the league trying to address this?

lets see...dayton lost a goalie and 3-4 players to tier 1, plus a few to high school (i think). NKY lost a goalie and 2 players (that i know of). i'm pretty sure there are a few others. i have no idea about BC.

mostly not too many lost, aside from the usual number who age out.

oh, those numbers are for midgets only. i don't know about other age levels.

NKY U16 Tier I has drawn kids from Louisville, Cincy, Dayton, Lexington and a couple who had previously played at NKY. And as Woo said, 3 who played at NKY last yr are at Cincy as well, so I suspect the over all U16 numbers will be down in BTHL.

It will be interesting to see how the BTHL "AA" division works this season - traditionally the AA league was dominated by Cincy, Indy and Columbus who often ran over the mid size and smaller programs who tried to compete against the top players\teams at this level, this left big program top teams dissatisfied with their level of competition and the smaller programs unhappy over being forced by the grid to compete against programs with much deeper talent pools.....now the best Cincy\Indy\Columbus players are off playing AAA in another league, plus the grid changes....this coming season will be very, very different in the BTHL for all involved.

I was at the tryouts for three of the non-Central States Indianapolis Peewee teams (one still to be picked). So far looks like Indy will have two AA and two A teams for Buckeye, that may change to one AA and three A yet but that is for others to decide. All three so far look to be very competitive with some very good skaters. I think the consolidation has helped in pooling the talent rather than spreading it too thin like last year.

Originally for this year it appeared that there would be a total of 7 Peewee teams between the Checkers and Arctic Blast. Now there will be 6 so you can see the 7 consolidated into 6, additionally the coaches were able to pick (for the most part) from a pool of all the 93's and 94's. Still a few kinks to workout as it wasn't an ideal process this year but its a start. Should be a fun competitive year for the Peewee's at the A and AA level!

nky. squirts lost just 1 or 2 to cincy. Last year cincy had 6 or 7 house teams to pull from for travel compared to our 3 or 4 playing half-ice. cincy & indy will still be teams to beat but I agree will be more competitive.