Commissioner’s Corner – Jan 2022    

January 10, 2022

To the CBHL Family,

Happy New Year and welcome to 2022. Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable and safe holiday break.  As we get back in to our school and hockey routines, I wanted to give everyone an update on where we are in the ongoing season and some things we have in the works for the future. 

Response to COVID – I’m sure you’ve been following the news and are keeping up with the developments around the Omicron variant of COVID.  We are monitoring the situation as well. In response to the surge in positivity rates in our region, some rinks have implemented additional COVID mitigation practices.  I asked our member clubs to emphasize communication between host and visiting team managers so everyone fully understands the host rinks requirements prior to their game. I greatly appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding  as we continue to safely navigate this ongoing pandemic.  In the meantime, I strongly encourage everyone to do their best to stop the spread of COVID by following the CDC’s guidelines.

Scheduling and Officials --  The scheduling of officials continues to be a challenge.  Our teammates at SHOA are pulling off near-miracles every week to cover our games. I can’t thank SHOA enough for the effort they are putting in to ensure our kids are able to get out on the ice. SHOA reported to us that they've seen more new officials join their Level 1 clinics this season than they've seen in years past. So far this season, we’ve had very few games postponed due to availability of officials. It will remain touch and go each weekend, throughout the rest of the season. I appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard as well.  

Playoffs – With the new year brings the push to the playoffs!  Playoff dates and locations have been finalized and posted to our 2022 CBHL Playoff Page: https://www.cbhl.org/2022playoffs.  Keep an eye on this page before and during the playoffs for updates. As we aim to make our playoff events as exciting as possible, we are looking at ways to improve the experience for our participants and their families. For example, in 2023, we’ll work towards hosting our playoffs at a centralized location across both playoff weekends. Best of luck to everyone competing for playoff spots this season. We’ll announce brackets as soon as they are finalized. Keep in mind that we have regular season games scheduled right up to the weekends prior to playoffs.  

GameSheet – We announced before the start of the season that we are giving the GameSheet electronic game scoring system a trial run. The feedback we’ve received up to this point has been extremely positive. We are currently in discussions with GameSheet to implement this system across the league, (10U and older) for our 2022-2023 season. We have begun to form our internal “GameSheet Support Team” in order to begin a smooth league-wide transition as early as possible. This team will provide training to the clubs and serve as admins in the GameSheet system. They’ll be able to answer questions and ensure the system runs smoothly throughout the season. We’ll be sure to provide as much guidance as we can, as early as we can, to help with the transition. I’d like to once again thank all of our 12U Upper Patrick team managers for being our test group this season.

Call for board member and staff volunteers – In accordance with league by-laws, the following board member positions are completing their term and are up for election in April:  Vice Commissioner – Girls Hockey, Vice Commissioner – Discipline, and Treasurer.  If you are interested in being nominated for any of these key positions, please let your club’s CBHL representative know. We are also looking for staff volunteers to serve on our GameSheet Support Team, in key roles such as web/social media, community relations, and in other critical operations areas. If you are interested in contributing your unique skills and passions to the development of youth hockey in our region, please let me know HERE.

Player/Coach/Spectator behavior – We are continuing to receive an unsettling amount of reports from our officials and rink managers regarding inappropriate behavior displayed by our players, coaches and spectators during our games. Some of the reports have been downright appalling. The behavior and language being projected towards our officials is counter to good sportsmanship and values that we are trying to instill in our players. There is no place for this behavior in society in general, let alone a youth sporting event. What’s even more disappointing is the amount of reports I’ve received on CBHL teams behaving poorly in front of teams we host from outside of the affiliate…or when CBHL teams travel outside of the affiliate. I much rather our non-affiliate guests and hosts remember us for the quality of hockey we demonstrated, rather than how poorly our adults and players behaved. We must do better. I’m working with our affiliate and our discipline committee to implement ways we can better hold ourselves accountable for our actions, to include increasing maximum suspensions lengths and the possibility of implementing fines.   

I can’t thank enough our volunteers from across the clubs and the league, as well as with our partners at PVAHA and SHOA for getting us to this point. And no doubt, our parents are critical to not only the success of our season, but to the overall development of our kids. Thank you for your dedication. 

I mentioned that we are looking at ways to improve our league and the experiences we provide our members. I’d like to hear any feedback and ideas you may have about our league. Please send me your inputs HERE. 

Best of luck as we close out the regular season and head in to the playoffs!

Tom Crosson
Commissioner