I've always thought that top tier competition breeds top tier talent. I've argued for awhile that Western Canada lags behind in absolute elite young talent because we have a bunch of minor leagues scattered across such a large area that these kids don't see the truly elite competition until they hit the WHL. We haven't produced truly elite of elite talent in the 13/14/15 age group for a long time and have legged behind Ontario for decades. I think it's because Ontario has such tight nit leagues packed into densely populated areas. The CSSHL allows Western Canada to have elite kids plays against elite kids across our entire geography rather than play inferior talent in regional leagues with the odd best on best tournaments. CSSHL is like a best on best all the time.
My biggest gripe with it is the costs are insane. I think we might not have had a Savoie and Bedard had they only played in their regional bantam and midget leagues. They'd be good, but with the training and competition offered by CSSHL teams I don't think they'd be as good as they are and can be.
Oh 100%, no disagreement here.
Except for Banff Academy and PoE White, those teams are atrocious and make it hard to judge stats accurately, because one is just an awful program and the other is designed to be bad because they move all the B class players onto one team and all the A class players onto the other.
Not to say midget teams can't have players cause they do. But with the hard recruiting push to academies a lot of elite players I know go for their draft year just to get picked and then play it year by year solely because it gets way more exposure than community bantam and midget leagues due to the overhead.
EDIT: It's OHA that does the Red team is best team White team is B players, not PoE. Such a shame, they used to be pretty even but the new directors have clearly decided to go with a caste system.
