Minor Hockey Talks - Hockey Forum

Just curious to see the mix of kids at tryouts with open borders.

I will be the first to admit that I was dead wrong - I assumed there wouldn't be much movement but to my surprise there's lots of people willing to travel.

I know of 1 team where they are pulling from 5 different associations now, which should make their team stronger.

What has everyone seen and heard?

Guest wrote: ↑Mon May 05, 2025 1:22 pm Just curious to see the mix of kids at tryouts with open borders.

I will be the first to admit that I was dead wrong - I assumed there wouldn't be much movement but to my surprise there's lots of people willing to travel.

I know of 1 team where they are pulling from 5 different associations now, which should make their team stronger.

What has everyone seen and heard?

Here's what I'm seeing in Lakeshore OMHA:

AAA - Business as usual. Slightly easier for someone to move as they don't need an official release.

AA - Many families willing to travel. Teams looking quite different. Similar to AAA, could see players from multiple centres (seen as high as 7)

A - Most AA hopefuls return to their home centre. Fewer families willing to travel for A. Some just chasing a red hat on a solid team.

It's going to be interesting this year. I think there will be a lot of unbalanced teams. I saw kids by-passing AA and even A tryouts and going to lower level teams to tryout. I'm not sure what will happen next season, but I'm guessing we'll see blowout scores and I don't mean by just 5 or 6 goals.

There were a lot of good things that happened, like kids who wanted to play at higher levels having the opportunity. Unfortunately, some local kids got pushed out of their local organization by outside kids coming in. There will need to be some modifications and will take a few years to sort that out. I still think it was a needed change.

I'm hearing crazy numbers at tryouts

40+ players
10+ goalies

Appears like kids are trying out for multiple teams, trying to make something.

Wonder if they will change the rules to limit you to a specific number of teams you can try out for.

My experience as a U10 hockey parent who attended 2 AAA centre tryouts (OMHA) and 2 AA tryouts (GTHL), all within 45 mins from where we live:

Both AAA centre tryouts had 50+ kids and we were informed that the teams only had 2-4 available spots that were being filled from the tryouts.

Both AA tryouts had under 18 kids and the coaches were basically begging for us to sign.

Since this was our first year with the AAA/AA tryouts at U10, i'm unsure if this is the norm.

Guest wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 1:40 pm My experience as a U10 hockey parent who attended 2 AAA centre tryouts (OMHA) and 2 AA tryouts (GTHL), all within 45 mins from where we live:

Both AAA centre tryouts had 50+ kids and we were informed that the teams only had 2-4 available spots that were being filled from the tryouts.

Both AA tryouts had under 18 kids and the coaches were basically begging for us to sign.

Since this was our first year with the AAA/AA tryouts at U10, i'm unsure if this is the norm.

From what I'm hearing and what I saw AAA went pretty normal, other than kids could try out at a few centers, and choose if they were good enough. The craziness was in anything below. AA players went directly to A or B centers to try out. A lot of players who played for their small towns got pushed out because teams were recruiting at the A and B levels to make top teams. I was surprised that kids didn't want to play AA. I think things will need to be fixed in the next few years. To me the whole point of open borders is to allow kids to play at the highest level possible or find a situation that is better for them. Stacking B teams seems like a stupid idea.

It’s generating a lot of money too!

Guest wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 2:09 pm It’s generating a lot of money too!

Along with the prep skate and birthday skates!!!!

Where is this money going? Rep fees certainly ain't going down.............

Guest wrote: ↑Wed May 21, 2025 8:59 am

Guest wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 2:09 pm It’s generating a lot of money too!

Along with the prep skate and birthday skates!!!!

Where is this money going? Rep fees certainly ain't going down.............

The whole tryout process will need to be streamlined somehow. It puts a lot of financial pressure on families to go to 3-4 or more tryouts for different centers, costing up to 200$ for tryouts. I bet some families paid 2-3000$ for tryouts if they had multiple kids. The whole rep model will need to be adjusted to account for this.

One way to fix it would be to have the AAA centers control all the rep from AAA to B, kids would enter the system for any AAA center they wanted and move down the line and end up at the appropriate level. AAA centers would then look at the amount of kids at an age group and figure out how many teams to make, and split them up geographically. For example, Peterborough would take the 5-6 smaller centers around them and make 1 AAA team, 1-2 AA teams, 2-3 A teams and 3-4 B teams. It would then be up to the organization to spilt up kids and place them appropriately, they would then need to balance teams by skill but also place kids with the kids that live closest to them, and use the facilities in that area. Organizations would then handle the parents and could deal with situations on an individual bases(ie. this kids doesn't get along with a coach, the org could move the kid to a different team). For something like this to work, OHF or OMHA would need to hire hockey directors for organizations that would be a paid position and give them a budget.

We are getting to the point now where we can't continue to run things strictly by volunteers, and money will need to be invested to make things work better both at the local level and provincially.

Having complete open border tryouts has caused further professionalization of rep minor hockey. Just like Junior hockey, minor hockey players are now moving all over the place just to play lower level (A/BB) rep hockey. Player movement has become a bit of a carousel. 50-60 players, 10+ goalies from multiple centres just to play A or BB hockey in the Lakeshore OMHA area. Continuity is lost. Loyalty is lost. Hometown pride is lost. Local teams can be made up entirely of players who don’t even live in the communities they’re playing for. Clubs can work at developing players, but the reality is players could end up being one-&-done. Players & coaches will both become cutthroat & ruthless. In my opinion they’ve let the pendulum swing too far the other way by letting the floodgates open. Allowing some free movement but having a set cap on ‘imports’ would have been a better option.