Winter Hockey Systems

So what is the Right System! So far we have yet to see a Winter Hockey System get it Right.



Body Contact

Quebec
Contact Start Age : Age 14 Competitive Levels
Quebec Starts Way too late at the major Bantam level. We can see the difference when Quebec in Summer Hockey take to the ice. They have a hard time adapting to the concept and miss the fine point for the reason for contact. The late Start put them at a disadvantage.


Ontario
Contact Start Age : Age 9
Certain parts of Ontario start at the minor atom. This is too early ... The kids are lacking skating and puck handling skills... We see this in the summer when Ontario kids play against Quebec kids... The Quebec kids generally skate better and handle the puck better in the mid age groups.


Possible Solution
Both Systems should install a non-collision style hockey for the Atom to Minor Peewee Levels, whereas the elements and principale of contact game are implemented but with out the face to face contact.. So rubbing or angling out would be permitted ... At the Major Peewee Level full Contact should be implemented.



Age Catergories
Quebec needs to get back inline with the rest of the World. The 5 year pilot is not working as it is penalizing kids in their own system. The Quebec system bottle neck and almost comes back inline at the midget level as midget AAA teams can on carry a few "Lates" (kids born from October 1st to December 31st.). Thus at the end of it all Quebec's lates are penalizes by their own system. The other factor is that early in Peewee and Bantam because hockey is about the icing the best team many teams have a unhealthy amount of lates since they are the biggest and strongest most times. So a 2 Peewee AA teams that have 15 lates then have to funnel down to 2 to 3 lates. The Quebec system in most cases is developping players that will not be there in the end anyways. I am sure then when they get to Midget they are wondering where all the new faces came from..


Streaming
Quebec lacks a bit in this area. The would like to have a more kids playing. But like is not like that ... There should be a level for everyone ... Elite Level, Competitive Level, Development level, Recreational and House league. Example right now in Quebec is that at the early levels there is Development and Recreational Levels only... The Elite level kids are lumped into with Competitive and Development Kids. Plus you have House league kids forced to play Developemental and Recreational.. Meaning if you would like to play one time a week and not practice plus stay in your town only... that is not possible .. you must travel up to 2 hours too.. Meanwhile on the top end there is no level for them to improve ... coaches have a problem of teaching those kids


Borders
Unlike soccer or girl's hockey where kids are free to go to whatever team the please Boys hockey restricts movement. Now this can be good and it can be bad. we see at soccer teams emplode based on bad coaching, management or teams losing their players to other teams, so it is not clear that type of system works as usually you can ended up with a division of 2 or 3 teams and thus a lack of parity. it is a survival of the fitesse system. But a strict border system has some problems too. There are a few players that because of politics (friends of the coach are chosen, parents with money etc)are stuck within a system that does not allow them to progress. Since the player selection process can resemble a russian figure skating scandal, and the process that can be highly objectionable. Some players depending on the coaching year by year can be up or can be down. And we are talking about blantent offensives and not borderline cases. There is no room to allow these kids to possibly find a place where they can escape these politics. Even Cross Province transfers are not accepted. whereas the level of Hockey is available in Ontario but not In Quebec, or you would prefer play for a competitive level whom travel within the Ottawa Region due to cost and time is much better, instead of playing in a league that closest game is 2 hours away. Or even you live 20 minutes from an Ontario town where there is an equivilent level but are forced to travel 1 1/2 to play for a competive team because it is the closest team to you on the Quebec side.


AAA and AA

It will be interesting to see hockey this year's Ottawa Pilot project works .. With so few teams having to play each team 7 times during the year may get a little boring. In many of the levels the strength of the new team can be a minor improvement on the previous AA because some players shied away from trying out, or there was a strong AA team mixed with a Weaker Association thus the contribution was not much... Also it looks like there will be more 2 horse races out of the league of 5. Not nearly the parity one would like to see.. Possibily the old format of AA with 4 imports may have worked better.



Summer Hockey and Winter Hockey

The way Winter Hockey is setup at the early age groups tends to add fuel to Summer Hockey.. "if winter hockey was so good, then we would not need to play summer Hockey". But to the contrary it really takes some time for the level of hockey in the winter to get up to snuff. The way schedules are setup now team starts the selection process in August and in the months of January and February there are less games and most kids are done end of February. Of course there are alway some parents that want their kids to play 12 months of the year ... Where is the Balance?