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I have interviewed a lot of District Directors and Association presidents the past couple weeks and have given my opinion how things will probably shake out. The Big 9 associations really hold the cards in how this shakes out: Edina, Minnetonka, OMG, Wayzata, Rochester, Moorhead, Woodbury, White Bear and Stillwater.

http://youthhockeyhub.com/new-aaa-notes/

The whole thing is silly. Best I can tell it's about dads who don't want their kids to B players. So, let's change A to AA and B to A.

What's a big 9 association?

Prior Lake and Minneapolis, among others, are bigger associations. And, in the Prior Lake example, better than a few you mentioned.

The big 9 are the associations I think will go AA and A next year. They have the depth, their boards have the fortitude and/or have given indication what they will do. Like I said, I think it's about 80-90% right with some fluctuation.

I gave heavy consideration to PL, ER, and MPLS, but my local knowledge on these programs suggests that they won't go that way. My guess is that PL and MPLS will go that direction in a year.

As for PL being better than some of my Big 9, you could make a case.

Rosemount/Farm/Blaine/Cent/STMA/ nice programs that can play w/and beat all of the above. Yes I understand, AA/A........

I posted my projected bids by district earlier today. Have a read in case you're bored:

http://youthhockeyhub.com/hypothetical- ... rict-bids/

Comments ?
I like to think that I have a pretty open mind, but I don't like this.

What's a bid? Is that a place for politics to become involved?

Here is the issue I see with the AA/A split. When it was first introduced it was to keep the bigger associations as having the AA teams and the smaller associations at the A so they are all able to compete at the appropriate level. They were not going to let the bigger schools also field a second team at the A level if they had a AA team. Which would give the smaller associates a chance to compete in a state tournament and regional tournament. If they allow them to have teams at both the AA and A level then why would the smaller associations compete at the A level knowing full well that when they play these teams at the B1 level in the past and were unable to beat their top B1 team they would not be able to compete against them at the A level. I think it will be interesting to see how they decide to work this and hope that it works out, but I just don't see it happening

First off I don't really care one way or another how MN Hockey splits associations up because my son only has 1 year left as a Bantam......

Here is the part I don't understand. They want to split up based upon HS designation but how does HS size relate to youth hockey association size?

Here is an example that I looked up with 2 associations on either side of the split.

St. Michael (my association) had last year at the Bantam level, 44 players.
and 52 players at the PW level for a total of 96 players

Hermantown had by their website 38 players at Bantams, and 54 players at the PW level for a total of 92 players.

Now these 2 association are on the opposite side of the cut for AA/A based upon the HS split and therefor the MN hockey split (before any declaring of move up/down and I would guess they are both going to opt for the AA based on the PW success).

Night Train wrote:The whole thing is silly. Best I can tell it's about dads who don't want their kids to B players. So, let's change A to AA and B to A.

What's a big 9 association?

Prior Lake and Minneapolis, among others, are bigger associations. And, in the Prior Lake example, better than a few you mentioned.

Dads of big ass. kids, or moms of small ass. kids who are way too involved?