To help you all start planning around your potential playoff games, please see attached for the JAHA Winter 2016 playoff schedule!

Championship games will be held on Sunday, April 3rd and we are looking at Friday, April 22nd for the end-of-season banquet.

Happy New Year JAHA!

The Winter 2016 season is nearly here. Thanks to all who have registered, we’ve got 28 more players this year than we did last year at the same time, a 10% year-over-year increase, and as a result were able to form three new teams. Many of these players are new to JAHA, which we would like to attribute to everyone’s efforts to spread the word about adult hockey in the Capital City. Nice work!

Teams are still be tweaked here and there, so be sure to double-check your team and schedule before the first games on Sunday. You should have already received an e-mail invitation to your team (sorry 40+’ers, your teams are still in the works). Accepting this invitation will allow you to send and receive messages in your team, indicate your attendance at games, and ties into the TeamPages smartphone app that will sync your game schedule to your calendar. If you can’t find the e-mail invitation – the subject will be “Check out our new team website” – check your spam or junk folder first, then let us know at info@juneauhockey.org.

With games starting on Sunday, there are a few important notes to touch on for both JAHA veterans and those new to the association:

• JERSEYS! Your JAHA Vice President, Treasurer, and Tier and Team Reps have spent a tremendous amount of time and personal effort working out a process to efficiently distribute team jerseys at the beginning of the season and collect them at the end so they can be inventoried and laundered for the next season’s players. We are still losing jerseys each season and WE NEED YOUR HELP. Please make sure that when you take a JAHA jersey, you sign it out on the sheet provided in your team’s bin. Jerseys that you sign out become your responsibility and failure to turn it in could mean not being allowed to play future JAHA games. If you know that you will miss your team’s last game, please make sure that your jersey is returned to a JAHA Board Member. Jerseys turned in to rink staff are not guaranteed to make it back to JAHA.

• TEAM SPONSORS! Know a company that would be interested in a great form of marketing? Sponsorship of a team means not only on-ice advertising when the team is playing, but the logo will appear on the juneauhockey.org site, and if the team wins their tier championship, the logo and team name will appear on the JAHA dasher board at the rink the following year. Additional sponsorship opportunities on the website are available as well. Please contact us at info@juneauhockey.org for more information.

• There is a Frequently Asked Questions page that provides answers and resources to help understand how JAHA works and why we do what we do. You can check it out by clicking the Frequently Asked Questions link on the left.

• It’s very important to be familiar with both USA Hockey’s rules and JAHA’s supplemental rules. You can find USA Hockey’s rules by clicking here and you can find JAHA’s rules here.

• The most important rules? Don’t fight, don’t argue with the referees (there is zero tolerance for physical or verbal abuse of officials), and make sure your helmet has at least a half-shield attached to it.

• JAHA’s bylaws govern how your association is run and how you can participate, you can find those here.

That’s it! Start stretching, hydrating, and practicing your stick handling. Hit up YouTube for hockey tips and to watch highlights of your favorite players to inspire. Get your pre-game song playlist in order.

It’s on.

— Commissioner Soza

Congratulations to the Fall 2015 Tier Champion teams!

Tier A – Killer Whales
Tier B – Bleau Chunks
Tier C – Hawk Inlet
Women’s – Treadwell
Tier 40+ – Good Hardware

Holiday Jamboree is right around the corner and the announcement for registering for the Winter 2016 season is coming up soon, so stay tuned.

See you on the ice again soon!

See attached for this year’s Holiday Jamboree teams and schedule!

Teams and schedule will be uploaded into the website as soon as possible so you can use the TeamPages app.

The playoff schedule has been set! Time to start getting your playoff run rituals going and trick plays drawn up.

As ranks are finalized, games will be schedule for your team. If you haven’t already started using the TeamPages app, now is a great time to do so to be notified as games are added. You can get it from both the iOS App Store and the Google Play store. (Hint: You can indicate whether you plan to attend or not attend a game via the app or the website by clicking on the scheduled game and looking for the “Attendance” link.)

Also, one very important housekeeping note:

• PLEASE be complete score sheets prior to the start of the game. The refs and the score keepers need this to be done before the game can start and any delays in starting the game due to this will impact how much time is left to play the game, which can mean runtime instead of stop time.

Thanks and good luck to all teams!

- Commissioner Soza