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Currently we allocate 1 hour 10 minutes for each game, but there’s enough people on each team to ensure that going over the hour isn’t a problem in terms of finances.
Lengthening the game by having some/all stop time leads to three problems:
If we made the time allocated for each game longer – let’s say 1 hour 20 mins, then we start to run into problems with fitting games in. At 1 hour 10 minutes, starting at 6pm, we can only fit in 3 games – finishing at 9:30. If it’s 1 hour 20 minutes, it’s still 3 games, but finishes at 10pm. Some of the people that play in the DIHL are pretty young, and we want them to be able to play, but not to be out until 10:30 at night (once you consider getting changed and going home). If it’s longer than 1 hour 20 mins, then we’re looking at ridiculously late times. As well as players, we also have to consider the times that our referees, score people, and other volunteers are willing to be there.
Stop time is much more difficult to run, as the scorebox has to be on task all the time and constantly stopping and starting the clock. Occasionally there are errors, and then the clock needs to be manually adjusted up or down. The people who run our scorebox are wonderful volunteers but I’d be loathe to put more pressure on them. Normally there are at least two people in the box, but sometimes there’s only one running the game timer, penalty timers, and the scoresheet.
Stop time gives us no certainty about when games finish. If we were to stop for goals and penalties, if there’s very few of them then the game finishes early and we’re paying for ice that we’re not using. If there’s lots then stop time gets turned off to ensure that the game finishes on time (or it runs over). And then players will gripe ‘what happened to stop time, there was plenty of time for the game to finish’.
Also remember that the only leagues in NZ that I know of that play stop time, are the National Ice Hockey League, and international games that are played here. I don’t think national finals play stop time, and Southern Ice Hockey League, Erewhon Cup, Easton Cup, etc, are all running time. It would seem strange for the DIHL, which really is just a piddley little local competition (of rising significance!), to be lining up next to the ice blacks in terms of the conditions that we play under!
If people just want more ice hockey for their evening out then probably a better thing to look at would be three 20 minute periods, which is the proper ice hockey times. That would prevent the uncertainty of stop time, make it easier for the box etc. We’ve shortened this for the DIHL because teams are small and we try and cram a lot into a couple of evenings (we originally tried to fit each 45 minute game into an hour, but it’s just not possible with warm-up, two periods breaks, handshake, and a 10 minute groom). However three 20 minute periods would leave us with almost an hour and a half for each game, and then we’re back to time problems of fitting in three games in a night again.
"Ryan":2a0tj58a wrote:I assumed Jason was meaning to keep the game length the same, just play stop time instead of running time. So you’d need to reduce the ‘official’ length of each period to compensate.
Cy and Kurt used to run the DIHL with stop-time in the last two minutes if the scores were within one point which they felt prevented last minute stalling by teams.Ryan,[/quote:2a0tj58a]
Nope. Here’s what he posted:
"Jason":2a0tj58a wrote:That or run stop time games, which is plausible if say you booked two hours a game, and if after the first two periods the game is going to go late then run the clock on the last period.[/quote:2a0tj58a]The two minute rule is the case in inline hockey games that I’ve played, and wouldn’t be impossible.
There’s some interesting ideas there about the splitting of the B grade – I think I like the idea of running a first round, and then splitting the grade in half based on the results from that first round. Because of the short time spans we’d be working with if the DIHL continued not to run all season, you couldn’t run a full first round to put people into the split grades, you’d have to make it shorter.
Perhaps we could look, for an 8 team competition, two pools (I hesitate to call them A and B pools, as that would get too confusing). Everyone plays the other teams in their pool (that’s three weeks). Top two teams from each pool go into B1 grade, bottom two from each pool go into B2 grade, and play each other – another three games. You could then play a 1 week final – top two in each mini-grade play, 3-4 play. That’s a 7 week competition, 7 games, and you’d play five different teams. It has the disadvantage of not playing everyone in the DIHL, but would even things out more in the second half. It’d be very compatible with the A grade, which would run as a 4 team double round-robin, with a 1 week final – also 7 weeks long.
I would be in favour of keeping the A grade largely as it is in terms of working with a number system and evening the teams out that way. And if a B grade team just gets too good for the B grade (say JMs this DIHL), then just lop off their top couple of players, grade them, and make them play A grade next time around (assuming they’re at the right level). At some stage the A grade might increase in size, but I wouldn’t want the drop the level of play at all in the grade (and possibly improve it a little), so that would involve bringing in more ‘talent’ – getting those players who didn’t sign up this time to do so, and exploring the possibility of an outside team playing in it.
We’ve spoken a lot with Phil, our head referee about the problems of the numbers of referees. This DIHL has basically run with four committed referees, and occasional assistance from a few other people. If any one of those people, particularly Phil, had fallen under a bus or gotten sick of us all, we really would have been in trouble. We’re going to try and tie down some details for a referee training course before the next DIHL (we’ll probably wait until the uni students get back, so most likely it’ll be March), and we’ll be working with Phil to take people who do that course and build up their skills and confidence leading into the next DIHL and further competitions. Referees are also paid, so it’s not only putting back into your sport, it’s paying some or all of the costs of your ice hockey for the year. So we’ll be working on a list of people to take that course. Even if you’re not sure if you can commit to doing refereeing, it’d be a good thing for lots of players, as you learn a lot more about the rules of the game through refereeing it (and it gives you a different perspective as well).
I think Phil would point out that no referee is perfect, and we’re all sure that the referees have both missed things at times, and also over-called things. That’s just life! However, he’d also want to point out that particularly in the B grade, a lot of players aren’t very good skaters, and lots of the ‘checking’ and so forth that happens is really just people making their best attempt to play the game and the puck, so there’s often reasons why referees don’t call things when players feel they’ve been taken out.
Jason raises ‘stop time’. This is a nice idea, but I think it’s impractical for a couple of reasons. I like your idea of playing ‘stop time’ and then if time starts to run short, changing to running time. However there’s other issues. I would hold little hope of getting the rink to change their charging system, where we pay for ice time by the hour. So if we make games two hours long, they’ll cost twice as much. Even if there’s twice as much ice time, I’m not sure I’d want to pay $20/game. I know a lot of people struggle to afford what we’re charging at present, let alone making it twice as expensive.
Secondly, if you play stop time and make the games twice as long, you’re going to need to have bigger teams. Phantoms never had two full lines in the whole competition, if we’re spending twice as much time on the ice, we’d need three forward lines at least, and certainly two defensive lines. That means teams are generally going to need to be bigger, which means less teams. And that reduces our flexibility. A grade would have to go down to a 3 team competition, which is a nightmare to run, or to keep it at 4 teams we’d have to lower the level and bring another dozen or so people up from B grade, and then B grade is going to shrink. The flexibility we have with lots of smaller teams is a real advantage, less larger teams limits what we can do in terms of increasing sizes of grades etc.
Lastly, if we add another two teams next year, we’ll be twelve teams. If you timetable 2 hours per game, you can only fit two games in an evening: 6-8, and 8 – 10. Twelve teams would therefore take up three whole evenings, and we share our ice with about half a dozen ice hockey practises, figure skaters, social skaters, social ice hockey, speed skaters, etc etc. As we start to take up more time we move into much less optimal time slots – currently Saturday evening is where that third evening would be. If this happened during the schools competition, which runs May – August, we’d be unlikely to get the ice – there’s only so many times during the week that are outside of school/work times.
I’m not sure what the story would be with a ‘pass’ for as much as you could use access to the rink, but we’ll raise it.
As Ryan said, we appreciate all the feedback and suggestions people have been making. We feel the competition is generally pretty good, but we’re always looking to make it better and this has raised a bunch of good ideas.
Thanks for your feedback John. It’s really good to hear that ice hockey is getting a good profile at the school. Enthusing young people about the sport, and making ice hockey players as much ‘heroes’ (even if it’s just a B grade victory) as the members of the first fifteen is exactly what we want to see. Obviously we won’t mention Logan Park to them!
We could make the grading list available, but it only includes A grade players. So none of the players in your B grade team were graded, and indeed it would have been tremendously difficult for us to do so. It would also need to be kept in mind that it’s just our (relatively) informed opinion, someone else, particularly someone much better informed, might conclude somewhat differently.
If Johnnies had an A and B grade team then that would be the ideal situation. It would set goals for younger players, and provide somewhere for them to progress. I’m sure it would also be good for your better players, to be playing in a team at that level, but maintaining some integrity with other JM players for when they go back to the schools competition etc. You could even start to get really complex and have the top B grade players play up if the A grade was short one week, and vice versa.
Ryan’s mentioned the C grade a few times. I suspect the time of this will come, but my feeling is that it will be a couple of years at least. I see the C grade really as a ‘beginners’ grade, and anyone who’s been playing a year or so and made good progress, should be in the B grade. It would allow people who had only been playing a few weeks to start to play competitive hockey, and it would keep the playing levels of the other two grades tighter. A C grade would therefore rely on lots of new players coming into the sport – new players from high schools, university students, parents, siblings and kids of better players etc.
There’s two issues with it. One is that the more grades you put in, the smaller they are in terms of potential players, and then teams. We have 10 dihl teams at present, lets say we go to 12 next year, well theoretically that’s 3 4 grade competitions. If we don’t get to 12 teams… well everything starts to look pretty small. My feeling is that the B grade should be bigger than the other two, so I’d be tempted to look at it when we are trying for 14 teams – 2008 I suspect.
The other is the larger the number of grades, the smaller the range of acceptable abilities in order to fit into a grade. So instead of 1-5/6-10, the split becomes 1-3/4-6/7-10 (for example). That’s all good if the teams are thrown together from individual entries, but in terms of schools and those sorts of things, a lot might struggle to get a whole team fitting into a grade range of only 3 numbers. One of the things that we’ve found with the DIHL is that schools are really our ‘bonus’ people. Having three schools enter teams this time around has been great, it made the B grade really big. Schools bring in lots of people who wouldn’t normally sign up to the dihl as individuals, so we’d want to be careful that any future changes didn’t make it less likely for schools to enter.
I wonder if, as a preliminary step to a proper grade, there could be an open ‘beginners game’ on a weeknight. Two semi-regular teams could be formed, but people could come and go as they choose. This would be a good lead-in to getting those beginner players up to a dihl level, as they would start to learn about playing in proper games, but it would still be based at their level. It would also exclude those top B grade level players, who tend to skate around beginners with too much ease!
Your point about the middle of the year competing with the schools season is noted. I’m not sure if that prevents a full DIHL season happening, just that we have to be aware that we’re not the only competition running, and think about running a smaller competition during that time, or looking at that as the slot for a contact competition for A grade level players, etc. I don’t think it’s going to be a jump that we’ll make next year, but it’s a question that we need to start asking seriously.
Thanks again John, and congrats to your boys for a big DIHL victory.
"hanffy":1gbhxdxk wrote:John McGlashan College- Spring DIHL Champions 2006[/quote:1gbhxdxk]Ahem. That should be “John McGlashan College- Spring DIHL B Grade Champions 2006”. No need to get ahead of yourselves.
And Ryan’s right. You all played a game of hockey on Wednesday. Well done etc, congratulations to Johnnies, hard luck to Beasts. It’s Thursday now, time for everyone to move on.
OK, and that went well and truly downhill.
Always the way of a good revolution. Cuba, China, Soviet Union. Falls over after about half an hour.
"Phil":wsynadgo wrote:I don’t get it – you are still harping on about the refs enforcement of face masks and in the next breath you are making a case for contact hockey and making legal challenges so women can participate – yeah right! safety is obviously a high priority in your books – You’ve just finished a couple of leagues where a hell of lot of players had trouble controlling themselves when somebody tripped them or lifted their stick, and now you want them to run into each other as well….. Go figure…. If you really crave contact, pick a tree and run into it – it’s probably a lot safer for you than contact hockey in Dunedin.Phil[/quote:wsynadgo]
Well like Ryan, I’m not planning to run a contact league next year – or indeed any future year. Whether or not I’d play in it – that would depend on whether I felt confident that my skills were up to it. At the moment I recognise that they’re not. I prefer non-checking hockey as I think it’s much more skills focused, and I’m not a physically aggressive person.
I do however think Phil, that just because there’s problems with running a contact game, or competition in Dunedin, doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be contact hockey here. While I wouldn’t agree with what Chris has put about throwing the aggressive types into contact leagues to make the non-contact leagues really non-contact, I think eventually as hockey continues to grow, there’s going to be contact hockey played. Whether it comes into non-checking leagues, or whether it happens during the Sunday night game (it did for a while early this year, and a couple of people got hurt), or whether someone just picks a night and says “I’m organising a contact game, turn up with $10 and you can play, we won’t worry about refs”, people are going to want to play contact, and I think it’s going to happen. At least if someone organises it and the person that does it has some good controls, works with the referees, and there are some sensible limits on who can play, then it would be a reasonable league or set of games.
And secondly, hockey in NZ at most levels is played as a contact sport, the same with internationally. If Dunedin wants to have a good premiere team, and a good junior team, etc…, then they need to have a place where they can play good contact hockey. The juniors and prems practised all year and between the two teams played how many actual games? Four? Six? One of the reasons we split the leagues was so that the top players were playing against people who were at least in the same ballpark in terms of ability so that they were keeping up their skills levels while playing in the DIHL. At some stage someone has to ask the same questions about contact hockey – if we want the Prems to be competitive at the ‘Queenstown level’, and we want to look ahead five years and maybe have our own National League team, and form our own region, there has to be a way for contact hockey to happen internally.
There’s a bunch of problems with that, just as this DIHL has thrown up a bunch of problems for the next DIHL. I just think they’re problems that’ll need to be faced, both for the good of people who will do it anyway, and for the good development of Dunedin Ice Hockey.
And, people who want to play contact hockey just for the purposes of taking out aggression or ‘smashing XXXX’, which a lot of people talk about, that’s exactly who should be excluded from the league until they sort themselves out. There’s a bunch of them around, and you’d just have to set up systems whereby trouble on the rink results in punishments which actually hurt the player – bans for several matches etc.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
KyleThere’s a heap of people who have signed up to the forum from this DIHL, which is great. Some are even posting.
It’s like an internet revolution!
"Ryan":mny6asmr wrote:Quite dissapointing too, as I think that’s quite inappropriate. Although it would be interesting to see what the reaction would be if (for example) there was no mens netball league in Dunedin and I decided I wanted to play. Same situation, genders reversed.[/quote:mny6asmr]I’m not sure those situations are comparable. Womens rugby however operates on the same rules as men’s rugby as far as know, as does rugby league. It’s not like women are limited to playing ‘touch’ or some other non-contact versions of those sports. I think people are much more likely to be injured playing contact in either of those sports because of the lack of protective gear.
"Ryan":mny6asmr wrote:And yes, forming a full-contact league seperate from the IIHF is quite reasonable, but seperate from the NZIHF and hence DIHA (who are directly affiliated to the NZIHF) could be more problematic as the DIHA supply us with cheap ice time, uniforms and a bunch of other stuff. Of course the DIHA could supply such equipment to a ‘different’ organisation to run a contact league, that’s probably more of an option. Although I suspect a few of the committee members may have issues with that. Seems like it could be a reasonable option if someone could convince the club of it. Any women out there feel like organising a full-contact hockey league seperate from the DIHA?[/quote:mny6asmr]I don’t know if the DIHA is in any way obligated to follow NZIHF rules. The B grade for example doesn’t strictly follow NZIHF rules. Indeed, from memory, there’s no non-checking rules at all in the IIHF rulebook, even though the NZIHF runs non-checking leagues at nationals and around the country. I would say ‘we’ (and when I say we I mean the association, not Ryan and I) could run a checking league and put women into it, but you’d want to carefully consider the risks in terms of stepping outside of the NZIHF rules in that regard, and inform players of those risks.
Sam will talk about how they used to play mixed checking games. Apparently players that were playing contact used to wear red bands or something, and used to check each other, and everyone else played non-checking. I can’t imagine how that worked out on the ice, but he said it used to work quite well, so that might be another option worth exploring.
"Ryan":mny6asmr wrote:I asked Paul Roth about the referees not enforcing equipment rules issue on Tuesday night and he seemed to think there was no liability issue with the refs not bothering to enforce rules which could only potentially injure the players in question. The only time there would be any liability issues would be if we didn’t bother informing the players of the rules or if their equipment caused injury to another player, for example if a broken stick was used and it speared someone else through the guts.[/quote:mny6asmr]That’s all good for the club in a legal sense, but if we had a player seriously injured then you’d better believe that the heat would be on the club in every other way, and that would affect players coming into the sport, funding, and what happens on the ice from now on. It would also be pretty horrible if you were the person who had injured them accidentally when they weren’t wearing the correct gear. It might also affect an injured player in terms of eligibility for ACC. And the player would still be injured!
Ah good that you told her that. I was thinking we should probably let his parents know how well he’s done, but sounds like they’re aware.
"Ryan":11yqnzem wrote:Jake Woodhouse for manager of the year then, I guess I didn’t think much about him during the season as his team just turned up and I never actually had to deal with him.[/quote:11yqnzem]See, now it sounds like we should have 14 year olds running all our teams!
I would have nominated Jake for manager of the season. Not only was he 14, apparently very responsible and organised with large amounts of money, but he got all his money and forms in on time, unlike Mark! And he never used an A grade goalie in the B grade competition
I don’t know him personally at all, but he’s clearly a pretty motivated and capable young man.I can’t comment on the B grade really at all, but I would presume that Robert McLean or Mark Kleigl of JMs would have most number of goals. Who knows what the stats will show if they turn up!
For A grade, most influential player in the competition I would have thought Hodge. I wasn’t aware just how good he was until playing with him in this competition, and he’s leading goal scorer and point scorer in it by a fair bit, and he only played 5 games. He basically won that final for us. For goalie, I’d almost be tempted to put Mark in as most committed goalie, given the absenses that the competition suffered. Other influential players – Stefan had a good competition, Peter Lamb was real trouble for Phantoms at least, and his 8 grading is definitely wrong – mark him up as a 9 next DIHL. James I thought played well, and I appreciated his efforts, even if they didn’t work too well, to calm his team down in the final. I don’t really have a Duck to nominate – they were a well organised team, but didn’t seem to work out in the end. Duncan got a bunch of goals, but I’d put Richard ahead of him as better for the team.
Worst influence on the competition. Ryan Wick takes it out ahead of Shaun Hinson and Adrian VL. And I thought Blake was the pick of the referees that I played in games with.
I can’t comment on the game as life prevents me from being at the rink on Wednesdays, but I understand that the referees didn’t hear this comment/s, but did make efforts to do what they could.
Player behaviour has become an increasing concern in both grades this DIHL – we’ve had more fights, penalties, abuse hurled at other players and referees this competition than in either of the last two DIHLs. This is a real concern and something we may have to look at in terms of expanding the short code of conduct that we get players to sign when they join up, and working with referees to enforce player behaviour across the board.
As Phil says, it’s not game 7 of the Stanley Cup, and while I’m 100% behind people taking the hockey very seriously, that’s no excuse for some of the stuff that’s been going on.
