Chris Chong: Ice Hockey in the Bay Area

It's actually kind of surprising how popular ice hockey is in the Bay Area. I recently joined the league down in San Jose and someone told me it's the largest adult hockey league in the US! I think it has like 20 different divisions. I grew up playing in a house league in Michigan for about seven years, but ended up giving it up in high school since the games were mostly about fighting.

When I first moved to the Bay Area, I lived up in the city and played over at Yerba Buena in SFAHL. My team, Storm, eventually won the C-division [1] and several of us moved into the B-div onto different teams (I joined Point Blank). After a few seasons, I ended up taking some time off then re-joined with a friend on his B team, Short Fuse, in San Mateo (PHA) after I moved down to the peninsula. Unfortunately, the San Mateo Bridgepoint rink is closing in 2013 and they shutdown our division. This led a few of us to form a new team, Mavericks (think Top Gun, with the Winnipeg Jets jerseys), to play in CCC [2] down in San Jose. I've posted some old pics from various teams at the bottom.

Overall, most of the leagues are pretty well run. I would have to say San Jose is run the best and is probably the best bang for your buck. In terms of divisions, A-level is really good, mostly high level college players or above. B-level varies from league to league, but it is usually comprised of good high-school level and above [3]. C-level is mostly high-school level/below. You get "older" high-level players as well as college women's players in these leagues as well. D and below are some high school but mostly recreational level, or folks that learned to play as adults. In general, there are a lot of rink-rats who play up and down leagues so you often see players that are too good for their leagues and they just sandbag. I would say our new CCC league in San Jose is closest to B+ in San Mateo and somewhere between B/C in SF.

If you live out here and are interested in playing, ping me! I had just happened to be walking by a coworker's desk and he had a puck on it - we got to talking and I ended up joining his SF team after a 15 year layoff!

[1] http://www.sportability.com/spx/Leagues/Playoffs.asp?LgID=4811 (wow, the link still exists!)
[2] http://stats.liahl.org/display-stats.php?league=1
[3] San Mateo PHA was an outlier - their B+ was between B/C level while their B was more like C/D in other leagues.