Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 1351
New postPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 10:33 am Post subject: Reply with quote
A lot of opinions here... might as well add mine!
Ask any D1 or higher hockey player from Minnesota if high school aged kids should play hockey year-round. I'd be surprised if you can find a single yes. In accordance with that, I think particular care should be taken to allow kids to play separate fall, winter, and spring sports. That could make it difficult to extend the calendar length of the season.
As for games, I think it's only a good idea if we're adding actual hours of ice time. If we're just swapping out games for practice or conditioning time, I don't see the benefit. Also, academic eligibility should NEVER be sacrificed, even though additional hours of ice time will certainly put a strain on homework.
So, in conclusion, I'm all for more ice time (games, practice, length of season, etc.) as long as kids can still play multiple sports and manage their academics.
I agree a 100% with this other than the part about year round hockey. I would say MOST of the d-1 guys played year round hockey. High school in the winter AAA in the summer and Elite in the fall. Is that the right thing.... NO. I'm a big fan of multiple sport athlete's. My son was told by his Elite coach he couldn't play football. It was a Giant disappointment. What I'm saying is AAA is going to start stealing kids if we don't allow more ice time, games,etc. to high school hockey programs. If we don't, well guess what, the worst case scenario is, the MSHSL is left ruling over the few who can't make AAA. The only other thing would be if the MSHSL could set rules that all of the hockey programs in the state must follow but they don't have that kind of power. SSM plays around 40 games with lots of travel and I'm guessing they have some pretty good students. More hockey does not mean poorer grades necessarily. My wish.... Go back to the way it was when I graduated. Football started the 3rd week of August and was done the end of October. Hockey started just before Thanksgiving and ended the second week of March and baseball started two weeks later. It was easy to play all 3 sports. We all know this will never happen again.