Congratulations to all our THF Playoffs Weekend 2 Champions!!

10U Major Super 6: CT Jr Rangers
10U Major Frozen 4: Mercer Chiefs
10U Minor Super 6: Jersey Hitmen
10U Minor Frozen 4: CP Dynamo
12U Major Super 6: Rockets
12U Major Frozen 4: Jersey Hitmen
12U Minor Super 6: Mercer Chiefs
12U Minor Frozen 4: NJ Jets

Congratulations to Rockets Hockey Club on having their 14U, 15U, 16U, and 18U teams qualify for the Atlantic Amateur Hockey Association (AAHA) Tier 1 National Bound Qualifier and their 12U team qualify for the AAHA Tier 1 District Championship. The AAHA rely on strength-of-schedule and MyHockeyRankings to advance teams to Districts.

The 14U to 18U Qualifiers takes place this weekend, March 3-5 in West Chester, PA. The top teams from these divisions will advance to National Bound Championships at Ice House on March 10. The 12U District Championship takes place the following weekend, March 10-12 in Hackensack, NJ.

The Rockets organization is committed to providing leadership, focus, and the drive to push each player beyond their perceived limitations in order to maximize their abilities and potential as complete hockey players. The organization also places a strong emphasis on skill development, sportsmanship, teamwork, and a thorough understanding of, and appreciation for the sport of hockey.

Congratulations to our 2023 THF Playoffs Weekend 1 All Tournament Teams! These teams showcase top performers from the past weekend.

14U Major Super 6

F – Ryan Tserlin #36 Rockets Hockey Club
F – Nicholas Desiderio #2 Rockets Hockey Club
F – Luca Coschignano #77 PAL Jr Islanders
D – Thomas Bowman #91 Flyers Elite
D – Sean Felker #34 PAL Jr Islanders
G – Max Brodeur #52 Rockets Hockey Club

14U Major Frozen 4

F – Rhone Armijo #44 New Jersey Jets
F – Michael Delaney #8 Jersey Hitmen
F – Timothy Riche #10 Jersey Hitmen
D – Robert Radtke #25 Team Maryland
D – Brandon Eigner #18 New Jersey Jets
G – Luke Lheureux #31 Jersey Hitmen

14U Minor Super 6

F – Alexander Abolenskiy #27 Rockets Hockey Club
F – Mason Law #17 Rockets Hockey Club
F – Gilbert Sudaley #77 PAL Jr Islanders
D – Nicholas Branda #88 PAL Jr Islanders
D – Cooper Holland #5 CT Jr Rangers
G – James Capozzi #33 Rockets Hockey Club

14U Minor Frozen 4

Holden Chang #66 Revolution Elite
Daniel Flanagan #10 Revolution Elite
Joseph Dunphy #10 NY Aviators
Joseph Mezzasalma #29 NY Aviators
Braden Meeks #34 Utica Jr Comets
G – Drew Picker #31 Revolution Elite

15U Super 6

F – Logan Kenney #27 Rockets Hockey Club
F – Wyatt Ewanchyna #17 Flyers Elite
F – Jake Weiner #77 Revolution Elite
D – Maxim Wright #88 Rockets Hockey Club
D – Jackson Accardi #5 Flyers Elite
G – Christian Esposito #33 Rockets Hockey Club

15U Frozen 4

F – Brady Logue #9 Mercer Chiefs
F – Nicholas Drogan #88 PAL Jr Islanders
F – Jake McCloud #26 New Jersey Jets
D – Lucas Siomos #20 Mercer Chiefs
D – Samuel Silver #5 PAL Jr Islanders
G – Calvin Fenton #70 Mercer Chiefs

16U Super 6

F – Georgii Tokarkii #81 PAL Jr Islanders
F – Kevin Koles #22 Revolution Elite
F – Dean Toskos #16 Jersey Hitmen
D – Jack Semetsis #24 PAL Jr Islanders
D – Sam Sobler #8 Jersey Hitmen
G – James Tarabocchia #31 Jersey Hitmen

16U Frozen 4

F – Ryan Cronin #3 CP Dynamo
F – Alexander Hood #44 Mercer Chiefs Premier
F – Hudson Slenker #34 Skipjacks Hockey Academy
D – Connor Wiggins #97 CP Dynamo
D – Evan Reaser #14 Mercer Chiefs Premier
G – John Nanos #1 CP Dynamo

18U Super 6

F – Colin Ruffner #53 Esmark Stars
F – Tanner Terranova #87 PAL Jr Islanders
F – Christian Cuccia #2 Mercer Chiefs Premier
D – Michael Calabrese #5 PAL Jr Islanders
D – Ian Norkevicus #67 Esmark Stars
G – Peter Baldwin #1 Esmark Stars

18U Frozen 4

F – Brady Marszalek #53 NY Aviators
F – John Wuertz #87 Flyers Elite
F – Daniel Cardozo #2 Westchester Express
D – Brent Rivard #5 Flyers Elite
D – Ryan Cleary #67 NY Aviators
G – Nicholas Radcliffe #1 Flyers Elite

Congratulations to all our THF Playoffs Weekend 1 Champions!

14U Major Super 6: Rockets
14U Major Frozen 4: NJ Hitmen
14U Minor Super 6: Rockets
14U Minor Frozen 4: Philadelphia Revolution
15U Super 6: Rockets
15U Frozen 4: Mercer Chiefs
16U Super 6: NJ Hitmen
16U Frozen 4: CP Dynamo
18U Super 6: Esmark Stars
18U Frozen 4: Philadelphia Flyers Elite

Final KRACH Rankings and Playoff Qualifiers have been finalized for all divisions. 10U and 12U Minor division qualifiers have now been posted. All Super 6 and top 4 Frozen 4 teams qualify for Playoffs.

Will your team be the first to raise the THF Banner and call yourselves CHAMPIONS?

Click here to view Playoff Qualifiers for the second weekend of Playoffs (3/4-3/5). The final schedule for this upcoming weekend will be made available on the website later today.

THF Playoff Brackets are available on the Playoffs page as well as on all our social media. Follow along as we update the brackets and see who will bring home the Championship title!

Final KRACH Rankings and Playoff Qualifiers have been finalized for 12U Major and 14U through 18U divisions. 10U and 12U Minor division qualifiers will be announced next week due to final games the weekend of 2/24-2/26. All Super 6 and top 4 Frozen 4 teams qualify for Playoffs.

Will your team be the first to raise the THF Banner and call yourselves CHAMPIONS?

Click here to view Playoff Qualifiers for the first weekend of Playoffs (2/24-2/26). The final schedule for this upcoming weekend will be made available on the website by tomorrow.

Tier 1 Hockey Federation is excited to announce Biggby Coffee AAA Hockey Club as a member for the 2023-2024 season. Biggby Coffee plays out of Ann Arbor, Michigan with teams joining from 10U to 18U. Biggby is part of the West Michigan Elite Hockey Association and was formerly known as Meijer AAA Hockey.  Biggby has seen recent on-ice success with the 18U team winning the Michigan state championships in 2021 and the NAPHL in 2020.  The 16U team won the NAPHL in 2019 and 2023.  

 Biggby Coffee Hockey Club is led by some of the top coaches in Michigan including Brian Sherry, Kyle Krug, Bob Mainhardt, Kip Miller, and Tom Newton.

Brian Sherry is the Assistant Director of Player Personnel for USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. He has been the 18U Head Coach for the club team since 2015.  Kyle Krug is the Head Coach for the 16U Midget Minor team. Bob Mainhardt is the Head Coach for the 15U Midget Minor team.  Mainhardt is currently the Deputy Commissioner of the NCDC of the USPHL.

Kip Miller is the Head Coach for the Squirt Major 10U team. Kip attended Michigan State University before playing in the NHL and was awarded the Hobey Baker Memorial Award in 1990, making him the first Spartan to receive the honor. The Quebec Nordiques drafted him as their 4th-round pick in the 1987 NHL Entry Draft, 72nd overall. During his twelve-year NHL career, Miller played for the Nordiques, Minnesota North Stars, San Jose Sharks, New York Islanders, Chicago Blackhawks, Pittsburgh Penguins, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, and Washington Capitals.

Tom Newton is the Head Coach for the 14U Bantam Major team. From Michigan State player to coach, Tom was the assistant coach for the Michigan State hockey team. He had 27 years with the hockey program and was the longest-tenured assistant at one school in all of college hockey. Newton has participated in more than 570 victories during his time on the Spartan staff, and more than 700 in his collegiate coaching career that spanned 36 years.

The Biggby Coffee Hockey Club have had a lot of standout alumni within their program. 

Be sure to follow Biggby Coffee Hockey Club on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Tier 1 Hockey Federation (“THF”) is a USA Hockey Sanctioned Elite Tier-1 Youth Hockey League. The THF provides elite-level competition through an unbalanced schedule among Tier 1 and elite clubs across the U.S. The THF is managed by full-time professional staff and has over 200 elite or AAA teams from 9U-18U. The THF brings together clubs from multiple leagues and states and is the only organization whose members operate franchises in the top junior hockey leagues in the US for NCAA Division I commitments: USHL, NAHL, NCDC, and the top junior hockey leagues for NCAA Division III commitments, the USPHL Premier Division and the Eastern Hockey League.

What is it? – KRACH is short for “Ken’s Rating for American College Hockey.” Ken is Ken Butler, a statistician, and the mathematical model he used is known as the Bradley-Terry Rating System.

  1. The KRACH rating system is an attempt to combine the performance of each team with the strength of the opposition against which that performance was achieved, and to summarize the result as one number, a “rating”, for each team. The higher the rating, the better the team.
  2. KRACH accounts for strength-of-schedule (SOS) as it ranks the teams.
  3. KRACH is calculated purely from the results(win/loss/tie) and does not use goals scored or goal differential like myhockeyrankings.
  4. Overtime wins count as wins.

Why we use it rather than points? – KRACH ratings are used instead of traditional points for the following reason:

  1. Teams play an unbalanced schedule, teams will not play all the teams in teams’ age division
    • Teams that play a more difficult schedule would be unfairly punished in the traditional points-based standings
    • KRACH does not put greater emphasis on blowing out teams like myhockeyrankings
  2. The THF offers 2 season structures, full-season and partial season.  Using KRACH rather than points earned will allow for fair rankings such that teams playing fewer games are fairly measured within their division

What is the process for the Federations – The KRACH algorithm is written in python and consists of a data organization routine and an iterative strength of schedule solver.

  1. The algorithm takes the Team win loss data from an excel file output by the GameSheet online scoring platform used to store game data. 
  2. This data is then organized by division using tags provided by GameSheet. 
  3. This divisional data is then organized into pairwise comparisons based on wins and losses to feed into the solver. 
  4. The pairwise team input can be visualized as a matrix with each time represented as a row and wins against other teams in the columns.  
 Team ATeam BTeam CTeam D
Team A–201
Team B3–50
Team C03–1
Team D403–

The solver utilizes a Bradley-Terry model to solve for rankings (P) using the paired comparisons. Pairwise means that given a pair of teams i and j drawn from a population P the algorithm estimates the probability that team i will win over team j:

To get to this probability an iterative algorithm with “regularization scheme” and pairwise team win records are used.  Per the CHN a logistic regression is used as the solver of the iterative algorithm. The regularization scheme used is an ‘alpha value,’ a regularization scheme so that the solver does not go to infinity when teams have zero wins. The alpha value is 0.85 for every team input as a win against a ‘Dummy Team’. This is because you cannot have zero as the numerator.

The solver then initiates a ranking of 1 for every team, then solves the following equation for each team. The ellipses (…) at the end of the equation represents the sub formula for Team A (Tm A) against Teams C and D.

P Tm A = Total Wins Tm A / ( Sum (  (Losses Tm A vs. Tm B) / (P Tm A + P Tm B), …)

The new P values for each team are calculated using the existing P values as shown above for Team A. These values replace the 1s used to initiate the algorithm. The same calculations are conducted on the new P values for the next iteration of the algorithm. This is repeated 200 times or until the difference of P values between iterations is less than 0.00001. The output (P) is then scaled by 10,000 to make the results all over 1.  The iterative nature of the algorithm allows for the strength of schedule to be taken into account automatically without any initial rankings. Thus, no initial rankings are made by hand and no favoritism is possible. Strength of schedule is included in the calculated P value by including the P values of all teams played while calculating each team.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley%E2%80%93Terry_model

https://www.collegehockeynews.com/info/?d=krach

https://github.com/bjlkeng/Bradley-Terry-Model/blob/master/update_model.py

The THF announces the Players of the Week for the week ending February 12th, 2023. The Players of the Week is a weekly feature during the 2022-23 season that honors players in all divisions. Only players that are nominated by their respective teams are considered.

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Age Level / Division: 9U

Team: Aviator

Player: Michael Merseburg (D) – Games: 3, Goals: 1, Assists: 2

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Age Level / Division: 11U

Team: Esmark Stars

Player: Micah Schenk (F) – Games: 3, Goals: 1, Assists: 2

“Micah Schenk is a workhorse. A leader on the team with his effort game in and game out. Micah played both sides of the ice and in every situation. A player with a bright future.” said Coach CJ Stellabotte. 

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Age Level / Division: 12U

Team: Rockets Hockey Club

Player: Caleb Williams (D) – Games: 2, Goals: 2, Assists: 0

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Age Level / Division: 14U

Team: Mercer Chiefs

Player: Daniel Burke (F) – Games: 3, Goals: 3, Assists: 1

“Danny had a point on each goal we scored in a must-win game and played his usually tough, steady game the rest of the weekend.” said Coach Ross Carmichael. 

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Age Level / Division: 15U

Team: Rockets Hockey Club Elite

Player: Liam Slattery (G) – Games: 2, Goals Against: 0.5

“Liam played outstanding this weekend allowing one goal on 43 shots!” said Coach Daniel Kennedy. 

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Age Level / Division: 16U

Team: Potomac Patriots

Player: Griffin Hart (F) – Games: 5, Goals: 2, Assists: 6

“Eight point weekend for Griffin!” said Coach Justin Brown. 

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Age Level / Division: 18U

Team: Philadelphia Flyers Elite Premier

Player: Luke Ravitz (F) – Games: 1, Goals: 1, Assists: 3

“Game of the week was a must win game.” said Coach Jamie Hill. 

–

HONORABLE MENTIONS

11U
Jack Hughes (G) – Wolfpack Hockey Club
Martin Mrvos (G) – Team Maryland

16U
Travis Plylar (F) – Potomac Patriots
Gunnar Hart (F) – Potomac Patriots
Michael Sadowski (F) – NJ Jets