Youth Hockey Tournaments A Total Waste Of Money

[Guest]

We just finished a tier 3 tournament where two of the four teams were tier 1... Guess which teams made the championship game...

. that seems to be normal than anything and it seems to be at  age levels bantam  and below from my experience some coaches are more concerned about having trophies instead of gloving the kids a challenge

[Guest]

What is a tier3 tournament? is that for house and scholastic teams?

[Guest]

I have coached for the last 3 decades & felt the same way about tournaments as you. I was the head coach and parents FOUGHT with me to go to away tournaments early in my coaching career.

I agree that the season is too long. Making the playoffs for the league was the team goal. If we didn’t make the playoffs, I wasn’t doing any more tournaments.

My rule was no tournaments during Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We did one travel tournament per season that was more than a 2 hour drive.

As my kids got older, I became an assistant coach on their teams. The head coaches would not do preseason games in the summer, but would do two or three tournaments before the season started in order for the team to bond, and get ready for the league season. We went to Canada and the New England area before the season and played some great teams. It gave us an idea of our talent level. The best part about going early in the season was we didn’t have to deal with snow while traveling.

When all four of my children played their last youth hockey game, we would always reflect on their careers. Not once did any of my children talk about wins, losses, playoffs, championships, etc. What did they talk about? They talked about the fun memories of tournaments and the friends they made from other high schools.

Being involved with youth hockey, as a parent is exhausting. I completely agree. However, now that it is over for us we have so many incredible memories and friends that we wouldn’t have had if it weren’t for Hockey. Try to cherish this time.

[Guest]

The hotels would be very angry if people stopped going to tournaments.
Money is better spent on local development at all age groups... not hotel drunkfests around a few conference room knee hockey games and some bad hockey, too.

[Guest]

The biggest gripe I have with the tournaments is the parity of the teams in the divisions.  All too often I’ve seen tournaments where they don’t have enough teams signed up and the tournament organizers bring in another team that should be playing in a higher division that just rolls over everyone - not fair for the kids who are B players having to play against A teams, or A teams who have to play against AAA/AA teams.

Yup driving from NY to Hershey for a St Patty's tournament with our true 18A team to see one team that has played a 18AA/AAA schedule. Do better Travel Champs.

[Guest]

The biggest gripe I have with the tournaments is the parity of the teams in the divisions.  All too often I’ve seen tournaments where they don’t have enough teams signed up and the tournament organizers bring in another team that should be playing in a higher division that just rolls over everyone - not fair for the kids who are B players having to play against A teams, or A teams who have to play against AAA/AA teams.

Yup driving from NY to Hershey for a St Patty's tournament with our true 18A team to see one team that has played a 18AA/AAA schedule. Do better Travel Champs.

No skin in the game, but was curious which teams were signed up for this. Just did a quick look on MHR to see who these teams are and there is no reason for Reston to play this tournament. What are they looking to get out of it? I could see if this was a a really good Squirt or PW team and you wanted to take them to Hershey for the non-hockey things you can do there, but come on, find a more competitive tournament to play.
I managed a lot of my son's teams. I would not commit to a tournament unless I knew it was going to be competitive. For the sites that didn't publish the registered teams, I would email the tournament people and get a list. I would look at the their schedules and see who they played and try to determine how we would do. Obviously, it is a lot of guess work, but most of the coaches for the teams he was on thought I did a good job with it. One year I had a bunch of parents who wanted to go to Nashville for a tournament. They just wanted to get a way for a weekend to party. I knew our coach didn't want to drive that far so I shot it down without even telling him about it. A few of parents went to him with the idea and being the nice guy he is, said we would look into it. He texts me that night about it. I told him that I tried to shoot it down. He said to look into and see if it would be worth it.  I start researching it and within a day I find out there are 3 other teams registered, 1 B and 2 "light" travel teams. We were a very high A team. I report back to the coach and he was like, fuck that, lets find something better. I tell the parents that weekend a few of them were really mad at me. They didn't care about competition, they just wanted to go to Nashville. On top of it, we had already done an away tournament earlier that year so there was a few people who didn't even want to go a 2nd time. I think we ended up playing a local tournament that weekend and from what I remember, it was very good. It ended up being all out of state teams and the games were all close. We ended up losing in OT of championship, but that was a lot better than destroying teams in that other tournament. And it kicked off a long winning streak that ended with them winning the district final.

[Guest]

I like to have a mix - two local and two travel.  That keeps the cost a bit lower and gives the kids a chance to play in some more games.  With our league schedule that’s pretty much the most that you can do during the season (excluding any off-season tourneys)

This is what we do as well.