McKnight Hockey Association Ice Scheduling

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Victoria Patterson
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We ll also try and answer the most common questions in our FAQ session. What is the Ice scheduling philosophy?

1 Everything You Wanted to Know about Ice Scheduling Who schedules the ice? We are the ice schedulers for McKnight: Robin Hagel and Shancy Lebo. We produced this document with the intend of explaining how the process of scheduling ice works and how we interact with the teams and Hockey Calgary. We ll also try and answer the most common questions in our FAQ session. What is the Ice scheduling philosophy? The philosophy for scheduling ice is to be fair and equitable to each team under the McKnight umbrella. How does ice get allocated for all the divisions of McKnight Association? For the 2011/2012 season we will have 35 teams to allocate ice for, all with different rules. We try as much as possible to get close to the ratio recommended by HC of 2 practices + 1 game a week for all divisions. When there are no games we try to get teams on the ice 3 times a week. For League play Hockey Calgary has the following game schedule guidelines. When we book our home games we try not to have teams off the ice too late even though they are acceptable according to HC. P a g e 1

2 How do the ice scheduler ensure that all teams are being fairly allocated to? Who reviews the schedule (s)? After we produce a schedule we spent several hours making sure that teams get the same number of hours on the ice (as close as we can possible get, usually within a range of 1 hour), teams get the same number of full and shared ice, divisions are comparable, younger divisions on earlier times and older ones on later. Once the hours are balanced we still have several more checks to do: 15 hours minimun between ice times, we try where possible not to have practices/games late in the evening and next morning Back to back days, we try not to have more than 3 days in a row Early and late ice count, ensure that all teams eligible get simmilar numbers Blackout dates, check that nothing is booked during blackouts requested by teams or arenas All the checks above are done every time we produce a schedule and all the counts and checks are from the start of the practice ice allocation, so it might appear that during a particular schedule release one team might get an extra ice time, you can rest assure that by the end of the season all teams will have very close numbers, plus/minus a couple of hours at the most. NOTE: However, as good a job as we try to do, there are circumstances beyond our control that force us to break our own checks. HC might book several games in the same week and we try to give the teams practice ice between the games which means they have sometimes 5 back-to-back days. If we need to give more hours to a team to make sure they get their fair share might mean that the only time we can accommodate them breaks the 15 hours check. Bottom line is, we work very hard to make everything fair to all teams, and the schedule that we produce is the best we can possibly do considering things that are under our control. Once we are ready to release the schedule we send it to a representative of the board for approval. Once the board approves it we produce several lists: One for each of our home arenas (HUN, THO, WMP) One for HC (if we get city ice) Import file for the McKnight site to each team (we ll pilot it this year in order to avoid a single point of failure as last year) P a g e 2

3 Why do we only get schedules for a few weeks at a time why not the whole season? Please review the timelines chart to the different parts of a hockey season. Timelines A tentative timeline for scheduling the ice for the 2011/2012 season: Type of schedule Timeframe Expected Date (estimated) Evaluations Early September to the end of September Sept 2 Pre-Seeding End of September To End of October September 26 Seeding End of October to Mid December Oct 19 (Seeding round is: Oct 29 Dec 11) Christmas Break (Tournaments) Mid December to early January Dec 5 Regular Season Early January to end of February Dec 28 (Regular Season: Jan 6 to Feb 26) EMHW Week in January Hockey Calgary books and we import Playoffs March We will set up a schedule but we can t possible know who plays when (teams will have to use the give/take tool) Spring Tournaments March Late February, early March done after playoffs Why can t we get the schedule for the whole year like timbits? We cannot schedule ice for the whole year because of the HC league games. HC schedules the away games and we, as an association, schedule our home games. In October we had 1000 ice times and in January and February we only had 10, why is our team is not being treated fairly? October is the month we have the most ice available for practices. There are no games in October whereas January and February is the regular season. Refer to the HC game allocation; you have more games than in the seeding round. Esso Minor Hockey Week is during that time also which takes more ice away from practices. In the end we have about 90% of the ice we get in October during January AND February combined. P a g e 3

4 I counted all the ice times in the McKnight website for Team X and we have about 15 hours less than they do, Team X has more ice because they know the ice schedulers, they are the ice schedulers teams, they are on the board, they have special favors, McKnight favors top teams pick your reason As stated, we do NOT balance against the McKnight website, we balance our master schedule and we can assure you that no team or division gets any special treatment. We do everything based on numbers alone. You might see that during a certain period one team might get an extra practice here and there but by the end of the season everything gets balanced, the team in question will get less time during the next schedule period. If you think that your team is not getting its fair share of ice, send us an and we will send you the counts we have for the whole division together with the ice according to our master schedule. We will NOT be spending time counting ice sessions in the McKnight website; we will not answer any questions based on any other information but our master schedule. Our Team had a dry spell of 10 days, this is unacceptable, and why is it occurring? We try to spread out practice times we much as we can, however, if the team has had more practices in the past than other teams or we booked practices between games that were booked by HC (3 games in a week with one practice in between during the regular season) or the team has requested a blackout, we cannot avoid the dry spells. Last year there were a lot of problems at HC with the game scheduling. This year we have a new person and we are expecting things to go much better. People see a dry spell only in terms of practices, but we look at having teams on the ice for games and practices, if you have no practices for 10 days but have 2 games scheduled, we don t consider that a dry spell. Why do you balance hours and not the number of ice times? Ice is charged by the hour, our ice slots vary in length from 1:00 to 1:45 (for junior games). If we were to look at just the number of sessions, teams that got 1:15 ice slots would accumulate an extra hour every 4 practices over a team that takes more 1:00 practices. Teams get different length sessions at random. Hours are the best way to make sure everything is fair P a g e 4

5 GENERAL INFORMATION Information Regarding City Ice: McKnight Hockey will be receiving City Ice this season. For October we received and additional 38 ice times. This is great news for McKnight Hockey. For October our City Ice allocation is at the following arenas, this may change throughout the season if it does we will update all the coaches. There will be earlier ice times than we are use to 4:45pm. There are only 3 for October, so everyone can relax. These times will be distributed fairly throughout the divisions. Hockey Calgary believes that each team will probably have 2 early ice times for the entire season. Currently we are using the following city arenas (these may change from month to month): Stew Hendry Internal Blackout Process Henry Viney Village Square Murray Copot Teams can request blackouts to the ice schedulers at any time throughout the season. Blackouts can be used for Team fundraising. Example: Team wants to do a bottle drive - request a blackout for that day and your team will not be scheduled for a practice. ** This is not to be confused with the Hockey Calgary sanctioned dates for the seeding & regular season** Teams can request blackout dates from HC according to HC rules; they will not get games booked on those dates. If a team requests a blackout with us, we will not book practices or home games (where possible) during the requested period BUT we cannot guarantee that away games are not booked at that time. Last year we had teams that requested week long blackouts during the Christmas period. We accepted them and then had to make up the practice sessions they missed when we balanced our ice hours. It became very difficult to do that when we already had very little ice and we didn t think it was fair to the other teams/divisions that made the effort to take the ice during the holiday period. Therefore, we decided to have some rules when it comes to making-up lost practices due to a requested blackout: If you request 1 or 2 (weekday) blackout days no lost practices If you request 2 (weekend), 3 or 4 blackout days team forfeits 50% of practices for the blackout period If you request 5, 6 or 7 blackout days team forfeits 100% of practices for the blackout period This is not a punishment, Teams usually need blackouts for specific reasons. This is just a tool at your disposal. P a g e 5

6 Goalie Clinics Tournaments McKnight Hockey Association Ice Scheduling If you would like to request a blackout date please send an to ice@mcknighthockey.com as soon as your team needs that date. Coaches still have the ability to trade with other coaches and teams for ice. This process will allow coaches the option not to have to find trades because the team would not be scheduled on those dates. We are going to pilot a 12 week goalie workshop this year. It will be every Sunday, using two ice times at 7am at Huntington and Thorncliff. We will be rotating 4 goalie groups, 2 each week. Atom and PeeWee goalies, Bantam and Midget will always be together. We will split the teams up so Top 3 or 4 team goalies week 1 and the bottom 3-4 team goalies week 2. Atom & PeeWee will use ice at Thorncliff and Bantam & Midget at Huntington Hills. Each group will get 6 hours of goalie specific instruction. We are in the process of setting things up and we will be sending out updates later. The program runs from Oct 2 to Dec 18. December tournaments will be done between December 27 th and December 31 st. HC will not sanction any tournaments during the seeding round or the regular season. The number of tournaments setup by the association is determined by the board appointed Tournament Coordinator. Unlike in previous years, no practice ice will be used for tournaments. Teams will be allowed to buy extra ice from our Home arenas during the holiday period. We will schedule the tournaments to make sure there are no conflicts and that the ice is fairly distributed. Tournaments were problematic last year; we learned what to do and what not to do. We will do our best to improve it this year. Website maintenance Contacts We can finally import the practices into the McKnight website; this will eliminate all the data entry errors we got last year. HOWEVER, as stated previously, we hold the MASTER schedule and once we release it, any changes made to it afterwards that is NOT done by us, is the sole responsibility of the teams and have NO impact on the numbers we balance and hold. Teams are responsible for their schedule in the McKnight website. Even with our tool for giving and taking ice, teams need to update the website themselves; we do NOT generate import files for the give/take tool. Please contact us if you have any questions. We might not know the answer but we will find out for you. ice@mcknighthockey.com Thank you Robin & Shancy - Your friendly neighbourhood Ice Schedulers P a g e 6

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