Pints Hockey

Dear Captains:

We are guilty of poor communication and last minute planning and I am writing this email to apologize and explain what is going on.

Apology:

I take full responsibility for our poor communication. There is no doubt in my mind that had we communicated better that some of the issues we are currently facing would be relatively easy to solve and or wouldn’t be issues.

I am planning to implement an Adult League Hockey Steering Committee soon as well as insist that we have regular captain’s meetings. Together I am confident that we can make our Adult Hockey league one of the best in the industry.

What is going on:

As many of you know, our Platinum league is in trouble. We are down to three teams this summer that used one game slot per week. There doesn’t seem to be consensus on how to resolve the problems with this league and the solutions that have been presented do not seem feasible.

I am planning to host a meeting with the Platinum captains to discuss this issue and hopefully come up with a solution, but I have to prepare for the possibility that we won’t have a Platinum league. If we aren’t able to have a Platinum league, we will offer Platinum level “drop in” on Monday nights.

I sent out a survey recently asking for feedback about whether we should allow a Skatetown team and also about how we could improve. One common thread to the feedback had to do with parity. We are in the process of summarizing the feedback we received and developing plans to address your concerns and recommendations.

Given the consistency and amount of feedback we received about parity and because of the possibility that the Platinum league might fail, we decided that we needed to address the issue of parity immediately.

One significant concern is that if the Platinum league failed, the Platinum players would trickle down to Gold A and cause a cascading effect that would devastate the league.

As part of my research on how to handle these issues, I contacted a number of leading Ice Arena operators around the nation to get input on how they are dealing with these issues. The overwhelming recommendation that we received was to address the parity issue by requiring players to play only at their appropriate skill level.

We then decided that we would be eliminating the rule that allows up to 5 upper level players on a roster. Since we have a significant number of players that play in more than one league, we realize that this change would impact our bottom line by reducing the number of teams we may have, but we feel strongly that it is the right thing to do for the health of the league, so we will be making this change.

Most Hockey Directors that I spoke to rate players themselves, but I wanted to involve the captains in this process, which is why I asked Simon to send out the email asking for your ranking. Unfortunately because there was no explanation to why we wanted these rankings, we haven’t gotten much feedback.

We would still like your input if you have time so we can publish a list of players and their ranking so you can form your teams for the upcoming season. We plan to have this ranking out by August 31st so do your best to get us your rankings no later than August 27th. If you aren’t able to rank a player because you don’t know them or know their skill level, skip that player.

The captain meetings schedules are listed below.

Bronze August 24th, 8:00pm

Silver B August 29th 8:30pm

Silver A August 27th 8:00pm

Gold B August 26th 8:00pm

Gold A August 28th 8:00pm

Platinum August 25th 7:30

At those meetings we will discuss the following:

* We will offer a payment plan for players that pay an individual fee
* Teams must declare a team or individual fee by the start of the season
* No refunds will be provided for people that pay on an individual fee basis or team fee
* There will be no prorating for players that sign up after the season begins
* Matching home and away jerseys must be worn. We will sell inexpensive jerseys with numbers in the pro shop for at or near our cost to help make this rule easier to comply with
* There will be a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 16 players on teams that pay on an individual fee basis
* We will allow up to 19 players on a team that pays a team fee
* We will place players on teams that elect the individual fee and captains and players need to accept these players
* Referees
* Stats
* Ice Quality
* Late games
* Suspensions/penalties/penalty review
* Adult League Hockey Steering Committee
* Outside barbecues & alcohol
* End of season prizes
* Payment timing next season

Once again I apologize for the poor communication and lateness of these changes but I feel strongly that we must make these changes for the long term benefit of this program.

Sincerely,

Scott Slavensky

p.s. The winter season will be starting on September 14th.