Announcement
Guest Post - Mark Madden
Besides Dejan Kovacevic, no one has been a bigger booster of area high school hockey than myself. So I feel I'm qualified when I say, much as I did on my radio program earlier this week, that this was a farcical, shameful episode that illustrated why VERY FEW PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY IN THE MEDIA, TAKE HIGH SCHOOL HOCKEY SERIOUSLY. Nor should they.
Tonight's result compounds that. Certainly gloating over it is childish and shows that few are able to look at the big picture. The WPIAL made a basketball team play twice in one day to complete its schedule and preserve the integrity of its standings and playoff seedings. That's why WPIAL sports are viewed the way they are compared to hockey, which has always been run in haphazard fashion w/plenty of deal-making behind the scenes. The excuse that ice wasn't available is absurd. I was at two rinks last week, and all I saw was empty ice.
Plum got cheated. There's no other way to describe it. Shame on USC and State College for being directly complicit; shame on the PIHL for facilitating. Had the skate been on the other foot and USC, a favored son, been victimized, you can be damn sure that a Plum-State College game would have been played.
I'm told Ben Hanus was academically ineligible but might have been eligible next week. Even more reason to say Plum got cheated. Things like that are part and parcel of the advantage achieved by earning a bye.
Apologists for what happened will say that Plum, at home, lost to a #12 seed. Nonsense. You can't lose a game you don't play. Plum should not have had to play that game.
I will not be talking about the PIHL playoffs for their duration. I usually give them ample plugs, especially when the games go to Mellon Arena. If I attend games, I will pay to get in. I will not benefit from the largesse of a crooked organization. This incident has irreversibly tainted this year's playoffs. It is shameful and deceitful; anything unfair to kids always is.
The PIHL got lucky in one respect; the fiasco got underplayed in the media BECAUSE NO ONE CARES. If the WPIAL had pulled a stunt like this in, say, basketball, it would have been on the front page of the daily sports, not buried in the suburban editions.
After all these years...and attempted guidance from those who do, legitimately, know better...high school hockey simply doesn't get it. Such long-term stupidity is literally unbelievable. Think about it...the Penguins have unleashed a hockey boom in Pittsburgh: Ice hockey, street hockey and roller hockey programs are sold out. The sport's popularity actually rivals football in one of the nation's football capitals. And yet high school hockey is still small-time. Can't figure out a way to take advantage.
Wanna know why? Consider leadership that would allow this to happen.
This will be my only post, ever, on this board.
