I'm kinda curious what happened at the annual mtg this past weekend. Nothing posted on BTHL web site yet.

Of primary interest is the infamous "table". Personally, I think it needs to be scrapped altogether and replaced by a system that uses a preseason tourney/season to determine division. I've watched my kids play in way too many lopsided games and hate it no matter what side we're on. It's not about how many kids of a certain age you have, it's about competitive/contested games. BTHL appears more concerned about unarguable rules than competitive games. I can't see how that's good for anyone.

Personally, I have no problem with Butler County fielding a Peewee AA team and a Squirt B team, if that's where they belong. Same for all the other orgs. As we've argued elsewhere, is it size of metro area, size of youth hockey playing population in metro area, or size of enrolled hockey players in org? I really don't care, none will work more than 75% of the time. Give me competitive hockey games any day!

Am I alone on this one?

I agree that the buckeye "table" doesn't work very well, but on the other hand what attempt at parity ever does? I read where every league has the same isssue - Lttle Ceasars, MWEHL, etc. Even our house association which goes to great lengths to achieve parity (unbiased evaluations and rankings followed by blind player draft) still seems to result in one team being 12 and 1 while another is 1 and 12 in each age group.
In other words no matter how hard you try to level the playing field by artificially boosting one organization and hamstringing another; you still can't account for intangibles (individual improvement, superior coaching etc).
For instance, I bet if you drafted 5 teams from existing kids at the Buckeye squirt level and tried your darndest to keep them even; by the end of the season there would be a superior team and a weak team. - Some kids would improve drastically while others would not. One coach would turn his kids into world beaters while another coach make little improvement in his team.
This (parity) will always be a hot button topic. Face it, if there were no losers there would be no winners. If your team ends up 1 and 12 in your league then reevaluate your playing level. If you run over all your league opponents, likewise, change your M.O. Your not doing your players any favors.
I fear that the Buckeye officials are beginning to alienate some member organizations who try to do things right; but are still bullied into a level et which they do not belong. Just because a team did end up 12 and 1 doesn't mean they cheated or were chasing hardware.

Hockeydad,

You make a good point about the intangibles. We see the same results even in our house leagues, where we do as much as possible to make the teams as even as we can. No matter where the teams START, some will end up doing better than expected, and some worse.

BTHL has several problems. First, they are made up of a lot of smaller organizations, and 5-6 large organizations. The smaller organizations generally field one or at most two teams per age group, while the larger ones may have 4-5 teams per age group. The larger organizations generally don't have problems putting their top teams in AA, but their issues have to do with not wanting to have multiple teams from the same organization playing against each other (bad for the organization as it tends to alienate parents and players). They may have two AA teams from a quality perspective, but there are lots of problems with having to teams from the same organization in the same division fighting with each other. Unfortunately, there is no "minor" division for those second teams.

The smaller organizations are often struggling to field a team, and have entirely different sets of problems
and issues. Compound this by the fact that some of the smaller organizations have in the past "sandbagged",
and you get issues. If you look at the BTHL results historically, it's not hard to figure out which organizations are doing this -- they are the teams that are always 12-0 in A, year after year...

One possible way to resolve the problem would be to go to Birth year teams. The larger organizations (Columbus, Cleveland, Indy, etc) are already pretty much doing this, as we're eventually gonna go AAA at some point. So,
have the large organizations field birth year teams, and forget the AA/A/B part. Put all of the first pick
birth year teams in their own divisions (ie, 90, 91, 92, etc). Now the problem is where to place the medium
and smaller teams in those divisions, and what to do with the 3rd/4th/5th teams from the larger organizations.

I suspect that a table could be used for that, based on number of kids in a particular birth year, or number
who played 1st division last year, or some other such formula. I've not given this a lot of thought, but
it probably could be made to work with the right formula.

In other words, why bother trying to treat the large and small organizations the same. They have different
goals, and different priorities. So, recognize the differences, and find a system which allows them all
to play together.

-Scott

Not a bad suggestion. You might be on to something. There is no question that having birth year teams solves a lot of problems.

Myhockeyman's suggestion of preseason rankings from preseason tournaments would work if everyone entered a tournament in August. - I don't think that is a reality. The ranking system that he employs would be great if you could carry it over from one year to the next.

Buckeye spent last year being inflexible (ie. not entertaining any exceptions). That was probably a necessity. Now it may be time to allow exceptions when a team can convincingly demonstrate that they deserve an exception.

Otherwise we will see more and more teams playing independant. Just a prediction.

I agree 100% that you cannot treat large, medium, small all the same. I think you should look at numbers in each age group. Some medium may have 70 kids in pee wees and only 40 in squirts. As we all know not all want to play travel. I also fell any Travel only program that has other programs in the same area should be large no matter how many players they have. A lot of the Travel Only Small that are put as Medium because they are travel only have more then are whole association.

With a little more thought you may be onto something with Large going to birth year.

The real "problem" faced by the BTHL is the geographic area covered by the league. The leagues in Cleveland and Detroit not only have many MORE TEAMS, they both cover a much SMALLER GEOGRAPHIC AREA. Think about it, no one in Toledo (OH) wants to travel 6-7 hours one way to play a league game in Charleston (WV) or Evansville (IN).

Everyone wants competitive games and from what I've seen we do as good of job as the other leagues at placing teams where they belong. The biggest issue for teams not participating in the BTHL has been the travel distances. With the 3 cities mentioned we ideally need to split into 3 geographic divisions. I don't ever see a time when there will be enough teams in this area to form those geographic divisions while at the same time further split our playing levels ("B"/"A"/"AA") into major and minor divisions.

Excellent points by hockeydad2 and SSharkey. As for teams from the same association playing each other, BTHL has been very good at placing teams in separate divisions so that that would only occur in the BTHL tournament, if ever. So that isn't too big of a problem.

The reality is that birth year team is the way to go for the larger organizations, which by its very operation "hamstrings" the larger organizations and should help balance competitiveness. For the system to work, SSharkey is dead on -- the large organizations should go to birth year teams with their first teams (for example one 92 team, one 93 team). Then the third, fourth, etc. teams and all medium and small organizations could have combined birth year teams that are placed pursuant to some chart. But in all instances (and this is my only real complaint with BTHL), there MUST be a some level of flexibility to address the exceptions or abberations. For example, Cardinal's second squirt AA team last year should never have to endure an 0-17 season due to an inflexible chart. Anyone could have seen that coming from a mile away. It left a lot of kids discouraged and that's completely contrary to everything I think we all believe in.

With all of that said, BTHL still does a very good job and should be commended. I think, however, as hockey grows in the Midwest, SSharkey is correct, we will start to see AAA birth year teams trying to compete at higher levels. To do that, however, the first step has to be to create a birth year team.

quote:

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For example, Cardinal's second squirt AA team last year should never have to endure an 0-17 season due to an inflexible chart. Anyone could have seen that coming from a mile away. It left a lot of kids discouraged and that's completely contrary to everything I think we all believe in.

With all of that said, BTHL still does a very good job and should be commended. I think, however, as hockey grows in the Midwest, SSharkey is correct, we will start to see AAA birth year teams trying to compete at higher levels. To do that, however, the first step has to be to create a birth year team.

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My understanding is that the second team could have played at A by the chart and elected to play AA. I may be wrong here.

I agree that BTHL is to BLACK and WHITE and does not lead themselves open to any exceptions. I feel they do a great job for the task at hand. I think more board members should come from small associations to have some say. I hope that more teams don't just go independent as I feel they will if BTHL does not become flexable.