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After what seems to be a pretty successful season of interleague play between Cascade Hockey League and Everett Adult Hockey League teams, Barry and I have decided to merge the two organizations into a single league. While many of you already knew that this merger was in the works, we had been holding off on sending out the announcement to all of you until some details had been worked out. Now that most of the small stuff has been worked out, I would like to fill you all in on the details of what the merger means to both leagues:
GAME TIMES AND DAYS
Probably the biggest concern from most of the people I have talked to was whether or not their team would still be playing on the same nights. For most of the teams in the league your team(s) will still play at the times you are used to. Here's how it works out, by division:
Cascade C teams
Cascade teams will still play over 80% of their games on Sunday nights. Most of you that have been playing Cascade for any amount of time really enjoy having the Sunday night ice - that will not change. In an effort to develop some parity among groups of teams, there will be some adjusting to make sure that the games are evenly matched, but for the most part, your game times will not change.
Everett B/C Teams
Everett teams will still play over 80% of their games on Friday nights. Most of the people I spoke to in the Everett league enjoy playing Friday nights, and so we will continue to keep Everett teams playing on Fridays. As with the Cascade teams, there will be a few teams which this may vary for a little in order to keep the level of competition consistent, but no drastic changes will be made to a teams schedule by the merger.
Everett A League / Cascade B Division
Since these two groups have already been playing a merged schedule this winter, the merge will not bring much of a change. Starting with the summer league, the schedule will be better balanced so that teams play one another on a more balanced schedule (each team plays each other twice for example). As with the B and C divisions, we will try as much as possible to keep teams playing on their preferred nights. Starting THIS season, the Everett A and Cascade B teams will play in a combined playoff for a single winning team. Granted, mostly all you win is bragging rights, but I do try and throw in a souvenir for the winner. More information on playoffs will be sent to you in a separate e-mail.
SEASON SCHEDULE
One change which will affect the Everett league more than Cascade will be a minor change in length of the summer and winter seasons. In previous years, the Everett League ran on what was pretty close to two six-month seasons of about 24 games each. In order to keep the two groups staring and ending at the same time, the Everett league will be adjusted to run similar to the Cascade schedule which is a slightly longer winter season (about 26 games), and a slightly shorter summer season (about 15 games). A lot of this structure has to do with being able to have a couple of weeks of playoff games at the end of each season, and it usually equates to having a week or two 'off' between winter and summer.
LEAGUE FEES & PAYMENTS
While Cascade teams are already used to this, one minor change that will be coming for the Everett teams is that all league dues are determined and collected on a PER TEAM basis. What this means is that each team needs to have one person that collects money for your team and makes sure that your team is paid up for the season. This is not to say necessarily that that person will be 'on the hook' for the full team amount at the beginning of the season, just that the league will not take the task of tracking down players that do not pay to collect - that is your team's responsibility. Teams that cannot make payment on their league dues per the typical payment schedule will be barred from playing league games until payment is caught up. In the almost 10 years that I have been involved in managing the Cascade League, I can only remember one or two instances where this was ever an issue, so I don't anticipate it being a problem for the Everett teams. The League will still accept payments from individuals to be applied toward a team's dues by check or credit card (we currently use PayPal), we merely expect that each team can designate 1 person to collect the team's money and hand it in.
TEAM ROSTERS
In order to bring playoffs to the Everett League, there will be a cutoff point going forward after which time; no new players can be added to a team's roster. This only applies for the current season (you can trade out players in the weeks before a season starts), and usually runs about * way through the season to allow for people that get added after a season starts, but not to bring in a line of 'ringers' right before the playoffs. In Cascade, we have required each team to hand in a roster at the start of each game, which has worked pretty well. Everett has a system with stickers that get attached to the score sheet - not sure how well that works, but we could continue to do it that way, so long as an accurate roster of who played on each team is included on every game score sheet.
There are probably more questions you all may have, but hopefully this answers most of them. Ultimately, the hope of the merger is to bring a wider variety of teams together to play great game. From my experience with both leagues, I believe everyone wants the same things - good competition, favorable ice times, and good sportsmanship - we will strive to move forward with this in mind and keep the league a great environment to play.
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