As we wind down the last weeks of the Winter League and start to prep for Summer, we have some major news to announce.  

Jimmy Gallagher has stepped down and turned over league operation, effective immediately.  We thank Jimmy for his stewardship all these years and wish him good luck and many more years of skating in his new league, closer to his home in CT.  

It will be “business as usual” wrapping up the last couple weeks of the Winter League, but Summer will launch with some fairly substantial changes to address the myriad issues and concerns that have been raised over the last few seasons. 

The first major change is a new management structure - an Executive Board with 3 members will oversee the business of running the league, while more control of the on-ice details will be vested in the team Captains.  

The initial Board will include Shawn Smith, Mike Dussault and Eric Robichaud.  In order to sidestep any potential conflicts of interest, Shawn and Eric will be stepping down as Captains. (Side note: If you are interested in being a Captain to fill one of these spots, let someone on the board know of your interest. Obviously we can’t promise anything and may get more folks interested than there are Captain spots available, but certainly let us know about your interest as we will be making a decision pretty quickly to keep things moving smoothly.) 

One of the areas of greatest conflict has revolved around subs (“subbing up”) and reasonable replacements when players inevitably go out on IR.  The goal of the Board is to create a system where the league largely runs itself, and with greater transparency and fewer “grey areas.” To this end we will be releasing new league rules and processes that address these issues in a simple, clear and objective fashion.  

Much of this is not necessarily rocket science - a huge percentage of our players skate in other leagues around Rhode Island and Massachusetts and have been exposed to many different systems and processes.  We are borrowing some of the “best practices” ideas from various other leagues around the area that have tried different things and worked out some of these issues in various ways, and will be blending them together for an approach that works for us, while still preserving some of the unique things that make our Friday league special.

We don’t want to lose our culture or the things that make this league unique, but we can incorporate some alternate approaches  that work better and address weaknesses, problems and frustrations with our own execution.  For example, we will be implementing the 1 through 11 player rating system and related subbing rules (get an equal-rated sub, and move downwards from there) to address the perennial issues of “subbing up” etc. And as a side note, our blended lines approach stays intact - we will never implement the “A/B” line system used by other leagues because this is an area where we stand apart, culturally, and we will continue to maintain that. So again, the goal is to maintain our culture, and just tweak some of the rules and processes to fix some of the frustrations on the day-to-day execution side.   

Transparency is also a huge goal of this effort. We intend to have regular financial updates posted publicly at the Scorer’s box so that everyone knows the current financial status of the league. 

We are also moving into the 21st Century with more technology solutions to modernize operations! (That means the yellow notebook is gone. LoL.)  We will have up-to-date access to player balances and we will be able to take credit and debit cards as well as Venmo payments, all in new accounts set up for the league that tie directly to the league checkbook in a “clean”, professional and transparent fashion. 

So what’s next?  Well, we need to wrap up the Winter League and get the final payment into the rink, so we are asking for your assistance to help get all the final balances paid off.  

And, we need to get a head count for “who’s in” for the Summer so we can figure out whether we will have 6 teams or 7, and get the schedule finalized with the Rink. Please let either Shawn, Mike, or Eric know if you plan to skate this summer. They’ll be coming around the locker room Friday, making notes of who wants to play. 

That’s a lot to digest, but we promise you it’ll all be for the better!!  Let’s get back skating and having fun!