Yeah im pritty sure my name wasnt M.Brodeur on tuesday night. I had troble keeping the puck out of the net let alone scoring goals. So that definatly wasnt me.

Since the DIHL is about to start back up again next week I thought it was time to shift this post back to the top and remind the handful of players who chose to pay the half season option that their second payment of $110 is now due. I will be bugging Larry for a list of players who this applies to and sending them an email sometime this week.

If there are any newbies out there who would like to play DIHL we still have room on a few teams so contact us and we can help get you sorted out. (dihl@dunedinicehockey.hellyer.kiwi)

Kara

Just a note, the Wednesday games are likely to start at 8.30 instead of 8 like before due to the high schools wanting more time. Larry is disputing this as we booked our time before the high school hockey and Neil promised us that time for the duration of our season.

Will be emailing everyone about this later in the week and will keep everyone posted on the outcome.

Kara

Actually the high schools orginally had 4- 9 booked from last year…. then neil overwrote that with the dihl cutting high schools back to 4-8…then we found the high schools had a lot of teams so we reduced a lot of them to half court hockey…. but then they all complained that they weren’t getting a fair deal, since the ice was small, we tried to explain to them that with the ability of their players half ice is ample, and that the sihl games used to be played on ice that size at the big chill, but no they wanted massize sheets of ice…we convinced a few to stay on small ice but many would not budge….. and we moved to make games 2 * 20 minute periods… everyone happy…. not quite we couldn’t fit in all games without an additional 30 minutes… so we got steve to ask larry to consider starting slightly later due to the fact that tuesday night DIHL doesn’t start till at least then…..and I thought it was was all kosher…but you are saying it is not now???

Anywho imho DIHL should have remained split season around schools/SIHL, then its simply a matter of transposing schools and DIHL on wednesdays… means that more people would play southern league due to the fact its their hockey in the season and won’t just say pass I got my DIHL, also if DIHL is put around SIHL then ice time is way more free for practises in season then out of season  DIHL could be everyday of the week almost….high school teams are not doubling up all the time, meaning both competitions suffer for numbers on those teams….Also you are more likely to intice people to sign up to a 8 week comp then 16 weeks, who plans their life that far in advance….You could pick up more thunder players in their off season as well…. Schools is also a real growth area in the sport we are turning away teams due to lack of ice time so this Ice fight is only going to get worse….

But you guys are doing a good job with what you have…. just I don’t think it is the right product…I guess if you don’t budge, one avenue we haven’t pursued ..is signing the best schools up in the DIHL only and using their games against each other is the schools A grade league…so similar to erewhon cup when only clubteams can earn points but SIHL rep teams play for experiance….and then that cuts like 4-5 teams out of high schools so we could fit them into a more truncated competition….

I am just spitballing here…

Please be aware of some scheduling changes for the next two weeks – Johnnies have requested to play their games at a later date due to most of their team being boarders and unable to stay in town during the holidays. There will be no B-grade game on Wednesday 9 and no B-grade game on Tuesday 15. The A-grade games will start earlier. Once Larry gets his revised schedule drawn up it will be emailed to all team managers and Ryan so he can put it on the website.

Also there were not enough complaints about the change in time on Wednesday although Larry did take it up with Steve and Neil. Most of the complaints came from Beasts as they are the team most affected.

I appreciate that the Schools competition has turned out bigger than most people expected – Neil thought it would be fine to compress the schools competition, probably drawing on past experience. What Larry and I can’t figure is why some of these schools/players are not also playing in the B-grade like they did last year.

Larry convinced me a full season competition was a good idea, his reasoning was that the current two half seasons resulted in less competitive players who couldn’t match with other clubs in NZ, and that the DIHL was the only league he had come across in the world that worked in this manner. My reasoning was that last year everyone who went to training in the winter and was unable to play SIHL due to there being no teams for them was left stranded with just training and it was really BORING and we started wondering why we were even bothering playing hockey when we only got to play seven games of hockey spaced at either end of the year.

Although our numbers have been less than what we hoped for the only complaints we are getting are about the lateness of games for people who have uni/work/school the next day. No complaints have been about playing too much hockey (excluding the one high school kid complaining about playing two games of hockey in one day).

With the DIHA’s emphasis on Thunder this year there is very little enthusiasm for a full season DIHL and ice time is hard to find when four different events take place on the same ice at the same time slots during the week. We have to remember that we share the ice time with the figure skaters, Thunder practices, other DIHL grades and practices. The current DIHL times were the only times available, unless you want to play even later… ” title=”Wink” />
There is a possible slot on Sundays, now that the intermediate b practice has been ended, but our research at the beginning of the year suggested that this was the second most unpopular day of the week for DIHL games (Saturday being the most unpopular).

As is mentioned we are working with what we have got, and, what really counts is people having fun playing hockey.

Oh, and if I am remembering correctly, last years games were later than this years games…

high and mighty perches eh?

The Bulls managed a 3 – 2 win over the Bullfrogs last night, taking first place in the B grade DIHL.