IMO, a youth travel hockey team should plan at least one (preferably 2-3) invitational tournament during the season. If it were an advanced team, it would be three that included Columbus Day Weekend, Thanksgiving Weekend and one of the weekends during Christmas Break.

Columbus Day Weekend is a great time for a first tournament because it's early enough in the season to allow the team to bond and it's typically prior to regular season beginning. Preseason practice has brought a number of concepts and skills together and now it's time to bring them all to a fine point in game play.

Thanksgiving Weekend is typically about a month (or a little more) into the regular season and gives a team a chance once again to bond, hone skills and head into the heart of the season.

Christmas Break without a tournament can turn into a VERY long time without games of any sort that can diminish momentum created in the first part of the season.

Reasons To Play Tournaments

The value to travel tournaments include:

• The pool, restaurant breakfasts, time in the rooms or the halls all help players learn about one another and have fun outside of an ultra-competitive environment. The parents learn about each other's families, their kids and, once again, see the kids outside of a competitive environment
• The nature of a tournament championship creates a level excitement (and a small amount of pressure) that helps the players learn to play with a heightened level of adrenaline
• Playing teams from outside the region, exposes the players to other styles and measure their progress against other, perhaps better, regions of hockey

Choosing a Tournament

Choosing an appropriate tournament is a uniquely challenging affair. Because programs throughout USA Hockey categorize themselves in widely overlapping ways (e.g. New Hampshire Tier 1 might equate to Pennsylvania Tier 2 but they call it AA instead of Tier x), it may prove difficult to find an appropriate tournament. There is nothing worse than spending a weekend worth of hotels + $900 / team to be blown out by 12 goals.

Following would be my key priorities in identifying a tournament worth attending:

1. First and foremost, do not go to ANY tournament that is not USA Hockey sanctioned (unless you're not particular about keeping your house). Non-sanctioned tournaments mean non-insured you.
2. The games should be competitive. Ask the tournament director for the background on other teams and scores from last year's tournament. Ensure that the games are competitive. Find out the levels of the teams in terms of USA Hockey tiers (not just league tiers). For example, NH Tier 1 is equivalent to USA Hockey Tier 2.
3. None of the teams attending the tournament should be from my league. We don't need to spend $1000 / family so that we can drive down the road and play teams we could have played otherwise. This should be a learning opportunity to see teams from other areas.
4. Three game minimum. Make sure that there is at least a three game minimum and that all of the games are regulation length. Preferably look for tournaments with four game minimums and a couple of divisions. One note about tournament scoring is that I personally prefer tournaments that score by period vs. game. It keeps more teams in it longer in terms of eligibility to move on.

There is often pressure to have multiple teams travel together to tournaments to ease the burden on families with children on multiple teams. I am in favor of that so long as the previous priorities come first. It is inevitable with a growing hockey club that families with multiple children will be split on hockey weekends. The primary goal of the weekend is to build the team chemistry, keeping families in the same spot on that weekend of lesser importance. It is a counter productive to have families spend a great deal of money to stay in-state, playing against the same teams they would otherwise face and/or play non-competitive games in the name of all teams traveling together.

Just one coach's two cents.