CAUTION While they protect themselves with disclosures on their policies and information page of their website, they blatantly ignore their own claims. As a House B team, we (and 2 other teams in our division) faced a Canadian "B" team. The organization was well aware of their abilities because they acknowledged the team played in the Mite A division the previous year. This year being there was no Mite A division playing,
instead of placing them in the Mite AA classification, which they clearly would have dominated, they knowingly placed them in the House division (where they annihilated every team with the exception of 1 by 10 plus goals). It's obviously all about the profit for this company with no regard for the young future stars of the game.

I would like to hear if anyone has anything to add regarding Shootout Hockey tournaments. We are considering entering one in February but when I spoke to one of the organizers he was very vague with answers regarding teams that have played in the tournament in the past and such. I would hate to make flight arrangements only to find out that our all minor team is going to have to play all AA major teams.

This may be a little late, but I am still posting it in case anyone does a search.

We just got back from a Big Bear tournament in Ann Arbor, MI where we took our Mite House B team. This year, in the "Mite B" class there were 8 teams, 7 of which were fairly well matched up with most games ending in just a couple of goals differential. There was, however, a team from Mentor OH that was a Travel A team that pretty much annihalated everyone and swept the tournament.

The funny thing there is that the tournament officials claim that Mentor registered their Cardinals as House B, whereas their coach, along with several of the parents we spoke with, all claim that they numerous calls to the tournament officials to complain about having to play house teams, but were blown off by the tournanment staff.

All-in-all, it was still a good tournament as 3 of the 5 games we played were good match ups, and the 2 we played against the Mentor Cardinals were very educational for our kids. Truth be told, I think our kids learned more by playing the first game against a clearly supperior team, then they can learns in weeks of practice/even games...