Team Management

[IniNew 53]

Or what I do. Facebook group/events or a text message. I usually make the game event 3 days before game time and send a text to everyone the day of.

Our team uses Facebook. Everyone is already on it pretty constantly, so it's easy to keep track of whats going on. Plus we can have team discusses about whatever--jersey's, positions, women, whatever.

[number21 3]

I agree. The new league coordinator seems to be putting more of an emphasis on Pointstreak so it appears we might be strongly encouraged to switch over - there's been some talk about formalizing sub players where needed (as opposed to the we'll let it slide this time that seems to be the norm now) & sticking to official rosters so I imagine the referees & scorekeepers may be encouraged to enforce the only players in the Pointstreak system can play in games. This would more than likely get us to switch over, we'll see...

The free team site isn't quite as good as the full pointstreak system.

They use the full pointstreak at Johnny's in Chicago and it works really well. In Milwaukee they use some hodgepodge system where the scorkeepers scribble on carbon paper then hopefully by midweek, it gets entered into the online system.

[Hermans 9]

happytc.com is free and bare bones but works as well as people's ability to reply to the "yes" or "no" options that are in an automated email.

[hunterphfr 12]

I've been doing the team manager thing for a while now. My role predates texting and smart phones. I remember when we had 1 guy on the team that had a Blackberry (worked in IT), most of us had 10 button phones and a few guys didn't even have cell phones. I used to use emails and it worked well and was a nice team builder as the chain would go back and forth with locker room type banter. It began to bog down as smartphones and texting became more popular and people relied less and less on email, responses would stretch out over days. Replies became sporadic or sometimes non-existant.

I run a Sunday team, a Tuesday team and a Fire Department tournament team. I've gone to the mass text system. 3ish days before a game I send out a text:

Tues. 08/28 @ 845pm vs. Leafs. I'm in. In or out?

It goes out and is received in real time, it doesn't languish in an email inbox unread for days and responses are usually pretty prompt. It only takes a few seconds for them to type In or Out and hit send. If I have to I can track down one or two stragglers. It allows me to substitute accordingly. Depending on the team we strive for 9 or 10 skaters if we need subs. It has worked very well and rarely do we get caught with too many or too few skaters, It keeps the whining and bitching to a minimum, from both the "we have too many guys" and the "we don't have enough guys" factions.

[OpenIceHit42 2]

We have the league's website that has the schedule and stats, our captain sends an email the day before a game with a reminder and I run our teams Facebook page and will post a reminder the day of the game.

[Harv 86]

My manager uses the mass-text method the night before. Sends out the gametime and only asks to text back if your NOT going to be able to make it.

Facebook and websites would fail pretty bad since some guys on our team rarely even use a computer.

[Thinkingjack 51]

i agree more with Harv, the electronic method is easily "forgotten" too much.

my old team captain would just call .

Text the night before threatening us with violence if we dont show or respond

call us the game day

and after he started doing that, our roster began to dress in full after three games.

Its amazing what violent threats from a midget can do for a hockey team.

[pittu 15]

Ive come to the conclusion that about 1/2 the guys will ever respond to an email. I figure the best I can do is make sure everyone has the schedule and after each game make sure to let them know when the next one is. As long as we field 10 guys and a tender, we're good.....I'm not about to make 20 phone calls every week....

[JR97 2]

We do pretty well with the email method across 2-3 different teams. The only response required is if someone is not going to show up. Otherwise we figure you're playing. It's worked pretty well. Because we're cross pollinated across the 3 different teams a lot of times people just let us know in person if they're going to miss. The captain typically emails again day before or early day of to let us know who's missing, a reminder of the time, and to make sure beer duty is covered.

[tareatingrat 4]

and to make sure beer duty is covered.

Most. Important. Thing. Ever.