Breaking News: NWHL and SSHL Merge

In a move that is long overdue, the Northwest Hockey League (NWHL) and South Suburban Hockey League (SSHL) have merged. The SSHL is, err, was a league of house teams (aka Travel B or Tier III) at south suburban rinks. The teams are the Arctic Jr. Fury in Orland Park, H-F Vikings in Homewood-Flossmoor, Kanakakee Coyotes, Pirates Girl's Hockey, and the St. Jude Knights in Oak Lawn. The SSHL has been shedding teams over the years (Hawks, Jaguars), and really truly was no longer sustainable with Arctic and St. Jude supplying almost all of the teams.

The merged league will comply with NWHL's quirks of balanced yet tiered teams ????? and will follow AHAI's mandates concerning mite hockey. Here is an excerpt of the notice published by St. Jude:

The South Suburban Hockey League has merged with the Northwest Hockey League (NWHL) to create one large league for Chicagoland. The NWHL now has 25 member clubs which means more teams and better competition. We believe this is an exciting opportunity for our St. Jude house teams. It will allow our teams to compete in a league that offers tiering and parity rules to ensure balanced competition. Please visit http://www.nwhleague.com/ to learn more about our new league.

 Tiering within the League

The NWHL tiers each division in order to maintain stronger play for the skaters. In tiering, the goal is to match teams up as evenly as possible to prevent high goal differentials. Each division will play a tiering round prior to the regular season. The tiering round results will separate teams into 2-4 tiers within an age-based playing division.  After regular season play, the teams are tiered again in order to be placed appropriately in the league play-offs. The NWHL operates under the belief than on any given day, any team can win. They re-tier twice to ensure that fair play is consistent throughout the season.

 Creating teams based on parity

While the league tiers, it still requires that all member clubs roster teams based on parity after player evaluations. This means that St. Jude house teams will be formed after player evaluations with the goal of ensuring that teams are evenly skilled. The NWHL has VERY strict procedures on how to do this properly and St. Jude will follow these procedures. Evaluations/Placements for St. Jude house teams are not the same as try-outs, which apply only to St. Jude travel teams. The evaluation is NOT a try-out. Players cannot attend evaluations without being approved for the league by the hockey director.

 2014-15 Mite Play for House level players

The NWHL follows the AHAI model for Mite house league play. Mite teams will play 9, full-ice games after December 1, 2014, plus end-of-season playoffs. This leaves room for 2 tournaments for each team if they desire. These 9 games include tiering round games. Prior to Dec. 1, mite teams can ONLY play half ice or cross ice games. The NWHL allows teams to schedule, at their discretion, as many half ice games as they desire. There are many opportunities for cross-ice jamborees throughout the season that St. Jude teams will participate in. Play-off games do not count towards the 15 game maximum allowed by AHAI. 

When you visit the NWHL website, there is no mention of the merger whatsoever ... of course. The end result is that life will get much better for all of those teams at Arctic and Oak Lawn. They now get more teams to play, some of which are much closer than Kankakee!



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