I would like to start a discussion in hopes that this input will get back to the Buckeye leadership for consideration.

1. Do you think it is necessary to have a consolation bracket for the Buckeye tournament? Is it okay to just play one game and if you lose you go home? Does your opinion change based on level? Do you need it at the Mite Level and not at the Midget Level? Should a team be able to elect not to play in the Buckeye tournament if they provide enough advance notice?

2. Would you like to see a pre-season tournament added to help with determining what level your team should play at? It would be particularly interesting to hear from parents/coaches of the teams that either did very, very well in their division or very poorly in their division. Do you think it would have been more beneficial to play at a higher/lower level for your team? Do you think a pre-season tournament would be a better evaluation than the size of the organization and the number of second years?

quote:

Originally posted by hockey.freak:
I would like to start a discussion in hopes that this input will get back to the Buckeye leadership for consideration.

I am not part of the BTHL in any capacity so I do not speak for them but my son did play in the league for 2 years prior to this year so I will throw my 2 cents in for conversation sake if you dont mind.

quote:

1. Do you think it is necessary to have a consolation bracket for the Buckeye tournament? Is it okay to just play one game and if you lose you go home? Does your opinion change based on level? Do you need it at the Mite Level and not at the Midget Level? Should a team be able to elect not to play in the Buckeye tournament if they provide enough advance notice?

Personaly I think the consolation bracket is a good thing. Here is why.

• The wide variety of talent on the teams is broad. Some teams are just way better than the others. Some of these teams get spanked every game. Having a consolation bracket will give these kids a chance to enjoy playing hockey with teams that are more to thier level.
• Some teams come from 3-4 hours away. Get hotel rooms, take time off of work, re-arrange family schedules etc. I dont think it is fair (and frankly quite unrealistic) to tell them to do this to play only one game.

As for the year end tournament, why would you even want to play in the league if you dont even want to play in the year end tournament??

quote:

2. Would you like to see a pre-season tournament added to help with determining what level your team should play at? It would be particularly interesting to hear from parents/coaches of the teams that either did very, very well in their division or very poorly in their division. Do you think it would have been more beneficial to play at a higher/lower level for your team? Do you think a pre-season tournament would be a better evaluation than the size of the organization and the number of second years?

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

A "one and out" tournament is a bad idea. The Commish makes valid points. I'd like to add that each team in the Buckeye pays a the same fees (at least at the same age group). Part of these fees pay for the tournament. It is bad enough that some teams, in brackets with 14+ teams get 4 or 5 games in the tournament, while others with 5 or 6 teams might only get 2 games.
I don't know ho wto fix it, so I'm not complaining. Also, it tends to work itself out if you stay in the BTHL long enough. Some years my sons have had only two games, while in others they had 5 games. But going to a "one and out" would make it much worse.

As an official, I like the consolation bracket for Mites and squirts but for PW and above, the consolation games historically have been bad ideas. I would recommend that they do it similar to the Tier 1 tournaments. It is a 1 and done and everyone pays the same entry fee. But if you lose your first game you get a certain amount of money back. Win one and lose one, you get a different amout back. Basically the longer you play they keep more of your money, lose and you go home and get a refund.

The idea of a preseason seeding tournament is interesting. However it probably whould best be a 4 game round robin play to maximize the information it could provide and not necessarily have a true championship. The goal would be to have as many teams play as many games as possible to sort out differences. One difficulty is when organizations start their year. Some teams start in June and some start in October. By January the relative strengths may be different that in September.

The concern with Buckeye is that from year to year the level of competiton can dramatically change (the make up of teams can dramatically change).

For example look at PeeWeeA.

Last year my son's team was the organization's 2nd PeeWee team (the 1st team played LCAHL)and consisted of 8 1st year peewees and 6 2nd year peewees, all who did not make the higher team. They went 1-17-2 in Buckeye PeeWee A (although they were a better team than their record indicated as overall their GA average was about 2.1 and their GF average was 1.8 - an indication of their play was their 1-0 tournament loss to the Dayton Bluehawks who went 19-1-4). While they were quite successful outside of Buckeye, the league was a long year.

This year Buckeye changes rules and allowed this organization to play its 1st team peewee as a PeeWee A team. 5 of last year's 1st year returned as 2nd years. 3 of the 1st years who played LCAHL joined the team as 2nd years. They added a second year who did not play travel last year. They added 7 1st years (including both goalies). This team just went 22-2 in Peewee A.

While it is a better team than last year, the level of competition is much different. The Cincinatti PeeWee A team this year was was 8-14-2 (last years PeeWee A team was 17-4-3). This year's Bluehawks were 12-11-1 (last year's PeeWee A team was 19-1-4 and they are 22-0-2 as PeeWeeAA this year) The Columbus Blue Jackets did not field a PeeWee A team in Buckeye (last year team was were 18-1-1 and they are 13-7-2 as PeeWeeAA this year) The Fort Wayne Komets, The Fort Wayne River Rats, BG and Sylvania did not field PeeWee A teams.

Absent a better system (preseason tournament), I understand and fully support Buckeye's attempt to differentiate by organization sizes. When an organization wants to field 2 teams and only has 32-35 kids willing to play, virtually everyone makes one of the teams. It is usually very hard to compete against organizations that are several times bigger (upto 15 times bigger than some of the small organizations). However they are anomolies. Big organizations for a variety of reasons have off years, small organizartions have exceptional years.

I would like to see a preseason round robin type tournament (I agree with Saroh; no championship) to better place the teams. I think this is especially important when you have the two-year increment in play. These coaches may not necessarily know their talent as well as those coaches who coach a one-year increment and coach the same kids year in and year out.

Our coach took a gamble this year and played us up a bracket in the Bantam AA rather than Bantam A. This was due to our doing as well as we did at the PeeWee AA level a year ago. Based on our organization size and the number of second years, we could have played Bantam A. There have been many more competitive and tough games. I believe our players have really had to step up and could not take any game for granted. A much more worthwhile experience for everyone involved. His gamble paid off but if there had been a round robin to start the year off, it may have been an easier decision and one more coaches might have made.

I believe every player, coach and parent wants as competitive a schedule as possible and perhaps fine tuning the league with a pre-season round robin might help.

As far as the Buckeye tournament, I do not believe the consolation bracket adds any benefit. I would rather see the larger groups broken down into smaller tournaments of closer abilities and all brackets allowed to play double elimination. At least this way, if you lose you can still try to fight your way back in the hunt to be tournament champion. I know that it would probably be cost prohibitive but I would like to see some other things tried to see if something better can be developed.

As far as a pre-season tourney, there could be some real benefits to it.

However, you've got to back up the date before the scheduling meetings, which really has you playing pickup hockey, as many rosters are barely set by that time.

Personally, if it can be done, here is how I would use the pre-season tourney...

After the normal process for determining AA A and B levels...

Everyone would play 2 or 3 games within their own level (A, AA, B). Semifinals/Finals (depending number of pools) would be seeded 1 vs 1 2 vs 2 3 vs 3 etc unlike normal elimination seedings to quickly determine who is the strongest of the strong and the weakest of the weak.

The team in A and B levels winning all of their games (i.e. champions) would be required to move up a level. AA and A level teams losing all of their games would be strongly recommended or required to move down a level.

Such a system could possibly serve to weed out the 20-0 and 0-20 teams before scheduling occurs, as usually the strongest A team can play AA with some success and the weakest A team can usually compete effectively in B.

I think it could be a good sanity check.

I'm not a fan of double elimination tourneys for a league tourney. After 20 or 24 games, you generally have a good fix on who is really good and who isn't. And if a really good team puts up a stinker game in a tourney, they deserve to go home early and not get a second chance.

Double elimination tourneys though are great for situations where you don't know if you've got the best 2 teams in the same pool with only 1 advancing. In this case (even where the #1 and #2 teams play in the first game) you get that opportunity for redemption in a championship game.

The idea of a pre-season tournament could accomplish some things that no grid could ever do...actually place teams on the ice and see if they are similar in competition, or not. The grid tries its best to aggregate similar teams based on size and age composition, but as we all know teams of similar age from similar size organizations may be very different in what level they can compete...

take a look at the standings and notice the # of teams who had 80+ percent wins or 80+ percent losses (and keep in mind most of these are 6 team divisions) - what the numbers below show is that at virtually every single age group and playing level their is a large percentage of teams who were either not challenged or were in way over their heads...rather than force teams into a bracket and then make them suffer or be bored all season long, why not play some games in Sept\Oct, actually see how teams compete and then place - check out the Cleveland Suburban Hockey League website, they do this and you dont see the level of skewed numbers you will see below:

Midget AA

Cincy 15-2
Columbus 15-2
Newark 1-16

Midget A

Lou 18-1
Lex 16-4
Dayton 3-14
Troy 1-19


Midget 16

Columbus 19-1
Cincy 18-3
Findlay 2-19

Bantam AA

Butler 13-2
Cincy 3-13
Sylvania 1-17

Bantam A

Lou 21-3
Lex 20-3
Indy 2-20
Troy 0-23


Pee Wee AA

Dayton 22-0
Indy 3-18

Pee Wee A

Findlay 22-2
Indy 16-4
Bloom 15-3
Cincy 4-18
Newark 2-19


Pee Wee B

Indy 16-2
Findlay 16-3
Cincy 2-13
Troy 1-14


Squirt AA

Dayton 17-0
Indy 0-16


Squirt A

Indy 15-1
Evans 13-14
Columbus 1-19
Dayton 1-10