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Commissioner's Corner - September 2025
CBHL Families,
Hard to believe that the summer is over and schools are back in session. I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable offseason and that your seasons are off to a great start.
I’d like to highlight some key points of the upcoming CBHL season.
Scheduling for the 2025-2026 season is complete, and schedules have been uploaded to the CBHL Game Center. We are hosting just over 2,700 games this season. Our first game of the season is a Girls 12U Bronze match-up on September 6 between Hagerstown and Tri-City. This year, we started to accelerate our timelines for team declarations…which drives our scheduling window. We’ll work on accelerating this timeline even more next year to allow our club schedulers and our officials ample time to prepare for the approaching season. We are now in the process of uploading rosters to GameSheet. (Yes, we are still using GameSheet to score our games this season.)
Speaking of the CBHL Game Center, the CBHL has partnered with Crossbar to provide a fresh new look to our website. Check it out if you haven’t visited our site lately. The CBHL Game Center has not changed and can still be found at cbhl.org/gamecenter.
Looking ahead to the upcoming season, here are some datapoints and observations:
The league has gained two additional teams over last season. We have a slight increase (four teams) in the amount of 10U teams this season…which is pleasantly surprising as part of this crop of kids were in the learn to play window during the COVID lockdown period. The fact that we are trending up on number of players that were onboarded to youth hockey during such a challenging environment is a testament to the dedication of our club directors and rink managers.
Our Girls hockey programs continue to thrive and this year, and we are excited to finally host a 10U Girls division this season. We are also seeing a growth of 8U Girls teams as well. We look forward to seeing continued growth throughout the league thanks to the efforts of our clubs, rinks, PVAHA and the Washington Capitals.
This season, the Ashburn Edge (formerly the Ashburn Selects) will join the league as probationary members and will have teams competing in our 10U and 12U divisions. We welcome the program and their families to the league, and we wish them luck in the upcoming season.
Looking broader across the USA Hockey environment, there have been some significant rule changes announced for the 2025-2026 season. You can check out the rule changes here: https://www.usahockey.com/2025-29-usah-rule-changes. The most notable changes are the return of tag-up offsides and no icing while on the penalty kill for all 16U and older age groups (youth and girls.) Additionally, USAH has changed the penalty lengths for just about all our divisions. For teams that play in divisions with 15-minute periods, minor penalties will be 1:30 minutes, major penalties will be 4 minutes and misconducts will be 8 minutes. For teams that play in divisions with 17-minute periods, minor penalties will be 2 minutes, major penalties will be 5 minutes and misconducts will be 10 minutes. Guidance has been sent to all the member clubs. Coaches will be addressing this with their teams before the season starts.
Just as we are getting ready to kick off our new season, we are already scheduling our playoff weekends. This year will be a little unique due to USAH holding their National Tournaments earlier than usual. Also, to alleviate the competition for ice and officials during our traditional playoff weekends, we broke down our youth division across three weekends instead of two. Our playoff breakdown and schedule can be found here: https://www.cbhl.org/sports/key-dates/96385. These weekends are subject to change in the event other curveballs are thrown at us throughout the season. We'll be sure to announce any changes should they occur.
We are in the process of scheduling our 8U pre-season and post-season jamborees. Our pre-season 8U Jamboree will be on September 20 at the ION International Training Center. We are finalizing the schedule, and we will send it out to all participating clubs (and post to the website) shortly. We’ll announce the post-season jamboree as soon as it is locked in.
Finally, I want to recognize the club directors, hockey directors, rink managers and families representing the ION International Training Center (Loudoun Knights), Skate Frederick (Frederick Freeze) and Mt. Vernon Recreation Center (Nova Ice Dogs). These clubs overcame various challenges with their facilities over the past year. At the end of last season, the ION was on the verge of shutting down all together leaving the Knights without a home. A deal was struck at the last moment to keep the rink in operation. Unfortunately, that rink-saving effort came after 10U/12U tryouts occurred. Despite those challenges, the Knights managed to roster nine teams for the upcoming season. The Frederick Freeze had their season upended last year due to significant mechanical problems at their rink. While the rink’s management led a herculean effort to get the rinks back online, the Freeze’s hockey staff had to get creative in finding ice at neighboring facilitates to support practices (if any) and game ice. The Freeze made it through the 2024-2025 season and will be back in Skate Frederick for the 2025-2026 season. The Nova Ice Dogs lost their rink in December of 2022 due to a major overall of their facility. The Ice Dogs managed to keep a core group of younger teams together during that time, thanks to the support of neighboring facilities. The spectacularly updated Mt. Vernon Recreation Center opened this Summer, and we are looking forward to having more Ice Dog teams return to the league.
That’s a lot of info…but there is a lot going on ahead of the upcoming season. If you have any questions, concerns, feedback or suggestions, please send them my way HERE.
I look forward to seeing everyone back in the rinks!
Tom Crosson
Commissioner
Chesapeake Bay Hockey League