User blog:Dtalbot/US Tier III Junior Hockey

I don't know how much anyone has been paying attention to the status of Tier III Junior Hockey in the United States but it is very volatile to say the least.

The United States Premier Hockey League has worked out a plan with as many as 16 teams (with at least ten of them being from the Minnesota Junior Hockey League) to form a Midwest Division for the 2015-16 season. The league is also planning on scrapping the Premier, Elite, and Empire labels and using Tier I,  II, and III.

The North American 3 Hockey League was appoved for two expansion teams by USA Hockey and awarded them to Evansville, Indiana and Sandy Point, Georgia.

At the start of the season the North American Hockey League reached an agreement with the Northern States Junior Hockey League in which they took over operations of the league, withdrew the league from the AAU's United Hockey Union, and renamed the league the North American 3 Eastern Hockey League. The hope is to have the league be sanctioned by USA Hockey for the 2015-16 season.

The Northern Pacific Hockey League lost one expansion team when the Tacoma Knights franchise that was originally awarded for 2014-15 fell through. The league took another hit when the Fort Vancouver Vipers franchise ceased operations in Mid-October due to a lack of players. The league was approved by USA Hockey to expand by one team for 2015-16 (not sure if this includes the possible start up of the Tacoma franchise or not).

The Eastern Hockey League was approved for two new teams (either one or two expansion teams and a yet to be identified (at least that I have heard) team from the Metropolitan Junior Hockey League).

The Metropolitan Junior Hockey League was approved to expand by 3 to 5 teams for the 2015-16 season by USA Hockey. They will be losing one franchise to the Eastern Hockey League as mentioned earlier.

The Minnesota Junior Hockey League is going through some major issues that have made it that the league may not return for a 2015-16 season. The USPHL has worked an agreement with 10 confirmed teams of the league's 15 active franchises (plus one inactive team and potentially one other league member) to join the USPHL (as a midwest division) for the 2015-16 season. The Rochester Ice Hawks have been rumored to be joining the NAHL for the 2016-17 season. This would leave the leave the league with 5 active teams for 2015-16 and make the long term survival in doubt. The fall out from the plan to have the teams move to the USPHL had lead to some issues that have resulted in calls for the league president to resign for comments that have been made publicly without league membership approval regarding whether the league approved of the move of the league members to the USPHL as no vote had been taken on the teams leaving the league.

On the horizon is the  all-Colorado based Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League which had pushed back its planned 2014 start up to 2015. The league also added a sixth franchise to the league's roster in the Breckenridge Bucks late in 2014.

USA Hockey held its winter meetings during the past week and from various reports that I have read the meetings had been expected to be tense to say the least as the NAHL had set up shop in the east with the NA3EHL being set up in the middle of the UPSHL's territory and the USPHL announcing plans setting up a Midwest Division out of much of the Minnesota Junior Hockey League which is in the heart of both the United States Hockey League and the NAHL. I have heard grumblings that the USPHL is looking to elevate some of its operations to the Tier-I and Tier-II levels within the next few years as some have felt the east as a whole has been either ignored or treated as second class by USA Hockey.