CBHL News

Welcome to the 2008-2009 hockey season. As in years past, there have been a number of exciting developments and notable changes associated with the CBHL, the PVAHA and USA Hockey.

The CBHL continued its preseason Jamboree placement tournament Jamboree. In this tournament teams played a series of games that represented a cross-section of other CBHL teams to ensure that they are placed with teams that have similar caliber of play. The intention here is to encourage teams to play at their highest competitive level, to ensure teams are not “over-matched” or totally dominate other teams in their divisions, and to foster more fun and more competitive games during the season. Is the system be perfect? Absolutely not. But we do believe it is a step in the right direction in order to ensure our players enjoy the sport as much as possible by giving them a chance to be challenged, but not dominate or be dominated during games.

The CBHL continues to applaud the USA Hockey “ new Standards of Play” initiative. The enforcement of rules related to holding, interference, use of the stick, obstruction and other infractions that impede the speed and skill development in the game will be enforced throughout the season – similar to the rule enforcement established by the NHL. In addition, the league will be encouraging our officials to call instigator fighting calls, penalize checks from behind, and we do no tolerate verbal abuse of officials. Our Disciplinary Chairman, Mr. John Mitchell will continue to be fair and tough on unsportsmanlike conduct.

We continue to work with our officials to eliminate fighting. We are encouraging officials to NOT call a fighting penalty on players who do not retaliate. We are also encouraging instigator calls to be made whenever the official can identify the instigator in a fight.

We have continued our Zero Tolerance policy for on ice behavior, and are pleased with the players’ progress to making area hockey a good clean sport. However, we are still deeply concerned about spectator behavior and have asked the officials to help us kick out the bad apples so the rest of us can enjoy a good hockey event.

We are highlighting the need to have the best officials for each game. That includes off-ice officials, the penalty box attendant, scorekeeper and timekeeper. These people are usually paid positions for Juniors and Pros, but for us they are volunteers who work for the on-ice officials and the league and are essential for a smoothly functioning game.

We continue our outstanding relationship with the Washington Capitals and have reinstituted the Pucks for Bucks, Shootout competition, Player of the Month honors, and game/ice plans at MCI Arena. In addition, the Caps and area organizations are holding College Hockey Festivals to provide a forum for players interested in playing collegiate hockey.

We want to thank the area ice rinks and rink owners for their support to the CBHL and would like to encourage all CBHL members to get out to the rink, go to a public skating event, or sign up for one of the outstanding clinics offered by area ice rinks and organizations. It is a great time to go for a skate, share some time with the family and just stretch the legs – please take advantage of the public skating and other offerings at your local rink.

We will be holding our playoffs at many of our standard great venues, and we go back there every year because of the great job they and their volunteer base do – The Gardens Ice House at Laurel, Frederick, Bowie, and Prince William. This year we will also be adding Peninsula in Yorktown, Fredericksburg to the list of venues.

We encourage all players, coaches, parents and families to be models of good sportsmanship and to be good examples and ambassadors of our fine sport. If you have comments, suggestions, or would like to volunteer, please contact me at mikebancroft@msn.com

Good luck to all CBHL teams for a competitive, successful and safe hockey season.