AHF April 30-May 1 Parity Tournament

[Guest]

How effective will this tournament be for placing teams in the fall knowing teams will be missing kids due to spring sports?

[Guest]

Is the parity tourney for bubble teams, for instance if you're AA I can't imagine you would play in Gold, but for bubble silver / gold I could see where this is helpful.  Last year there were teams in 16 gold that should have been silver, but the top gold teams were not AA teams either.

[Guest]

Is the parity tourney for bubble teams, for instance if you're AA I can't imagine you would play in Gold, but for bubble silver / gold I could see where this is helpful.  Last year there were teams in 16 gold that should have been silver, but the top gold teams were not AA teams either.

But how effective is it if a bubble team or their competition is affected by missing players?

[Guest]

This will be our 1st yr and from what we were told the organization puts you in a division of their choice and the AHF uses the parity tournament for strength of schedule.

[Guest]

It’s not perfect, but they are trying.  No one can account for every scenario.  It’s youth hockey for goodness sake.  Just let your kid enjoy playing.

[Guest]

I was wondering how these dates would work for the Maryland teams. The teams staying in the CBHL but are half in AHF. Tryouts in MD are starting end of this week and will run for about the next 2 weeks. Will everyone even have a team put together to go to this parity event? Does everyone go and play? Or maybe it will be only for teams who are full time AHF? so may questions.

[Guest]

I don't think anyone is expecting this to be perfect. It is new and there aren't a lot of details out there, so everyone is trying to understand.  My son's team last year was most definitely in a division too high. They were smashed in AHF, I think there was 1 or 2 teams below them. A parity showcase my have beneficial to them. It is hard to enjoy playing when you are at the bottom of your division and have to go and play 4 games in one weekend against the top 2 teams in the division. This was not a showcase and was towards the end of the season. it was an unnecessary smackdown of these kids. It was the fault of AHF for not doing what they stated they would do at the beginning, which was to move teams around as needed in order to create better competition. It was the fault of our organization for not speaking up. But, it was the kids that suffered. I hope the AHF does better next year.

[Guest]

It’s not perfect, but they are trying.  No one can account for every scenario.  It’s youth hockey for goodness sake.  Just let your kid enjoy playing.

Easy to say.  Hockey is expensive and time consuming.  For kids who end up on teams that are too good for their division or not good enough for their division, it makes for a long and developmentally challenging season.

Luckily my child hasn’t been on the losing end of this scenario but I couldn’t imagine driving my kid all over the place to get his a#$ handed to him every week and just hope his team could put up a goal or two if they were lucky.

[Guest]

My kid is playing in the Ahf the first time this year.  The club chose that, not me.  I’ve been in the situation where his team has been at the bottom of the standings and I know it's not fun.  Hopefully this parity tournament will sort out a few of those teams that just don’t belong and move them up or down.

[Guest]

Has anybody received a schedule?