Some of us in a local youth hockey association thought it was worth discussing a more efficient use of game rental time and reducing the number of players on a team roster. So we called our District Director, and he was happy to drive out to tell us we’d do it his way — and there was no reason for further discussion.

Actually, we did continue the discussion for awhile, but he was right — there was no reason.

We had seen some interesting facts while analyzing video of a spring Squirt game with 15 skaters and two goalies on each team. Unlike a winter season, where the purpose is to develop hockey players, in this commercial league there was a reason for 15 skaters: the more players, of course, the more income.

Some simple arithmetic told us that the average player got only 9.6 minutes of game action out of the 60-minute rental, because the referees held the puck half the competition time. An average player gets 9.6 minutes for $30. His family drove 70 minutes round-trip, consumed three hours of their day, and paid $3 per minute for his ice time.

Forget the average kid; we followed one of the weakest players — a forward — who touched the puck (batted it) seven times all night, took no shots; and his nine shifts averaged 46 seconds each, for less than seven minutes of playing time.

He got off the ice quickly, perhaps, to avoid the embarrassment of a mistake in front of his peers. The coach didn’t appear to be outwardly negative, so we concluded the player had probably learned in earlier games that if he didn’t try to hold onto the puck, he wouldn’t make a highly visible mistake. When I say he batted the puck, I don’t mean these were creative one-touch passes. No, this was, “Get that thing moving north and get off the ice before something bad happens!”

Total time of possession for the night: 386 milliseconds for thirty bucks. We thought perhaps these facts were worth discussing with our District Director.

One defenseman on the same team saw more game time, but he literally watched from one of two stationary spots: one on the offensive blueline, the other perched in front of his net. He controlled the puck a bit more —actually touched it 11 times for 2.6 seconds each — a total of 29 seconds. A more interesting note was that he skated fast (a subjective analysis, of course) only twice all night: the longer of the two sprints lasting five seconds, from his spot on the offensive blueline all the way back to slide into his goalkeeper.

It’s obvious the better players have the puck more; so the corollary is one of those sad mathematical facts of hockey. Since the top players control the puck, the weaker ones are learning basically nothing. It’s been argued over and over that we should forget games and just practice.

But competition is important, too, and can certainly be motivating and fun. Perhaps we need to re-think the way we play Squirt games — maybe Peewees and Bantams, too — every level where ice time is limited.

The data seemed to make a good argument for fewer players on a team. That way, we’d have more teams and automatically a little more homogeneous ability-grouping per team. This gives everyone a better chance to control the puck against players of similar ability.

Secondly, competition might make more sense if it were less structured. I’m not talking about trophies for seventh place in the weekend tournament — or spectators acting like cheerleaders or worse. I’m talking about fewer whistles — that is, fewer opportunities for refs to hold the puck.

“Give the game back to the kids,” Herb Brooks used to say. Actually he still says it — we just don’t hear him, as we did not a few years ago when he argued for unstructured competition. We need more scrimmages. Forget the whistles for icing and off-side; teach kids to stay onside. Tell goalkeepers to make plays with the puck instead of flopping on it to get a stoppage of play.

We can do much better than competition which lasts only 50-60 percent of the ice time we rent. We can do better than 10 minutes of competition for each player.

Perhaps we should have a divider that comes down from the rafters at the red line —the way those tall, skinny folks divide up their basketball courts. Then we could have two games going at once — 24 kids competing at the same time, including all four goalkeepers. No goalie sits on the bench — that’s a novel idea for development — 9-10 skaters per team, so everyone plays at least half the time.

When teammates get sick or hurt — great — you just have to play smarter instead of hustling up and down the ice doing nothing. Maybe kids would learn how much fun it is to have the puck on their stick. I missed that part in my youth, thinking the stick was for hooking and slashing. But illegal stickwork is a topic for another week.

Next, we decided to put a crew to work with stop watches, following more players this time in another game. If these results aren’t worthy of discussion — well, we’ll just keep trying.

One of the better Squirt forwards got on the ice 11 times with an average shift lasting 58.4 seconds for a total of 10.7 minutes. He touched the puck 14 times — the average touch lasting 3.5 seconds. This means he controlled the puck for 49 seconds and got four shots.

By comparison, the refs normally control the puck for 25 minutes! Actually, the crew in this game got the job done in only 19. [Hats off to some officials who had the extraordinary thought that the event belonged to the kids.]

But the fact remains: in a 60-minute structured hockey game, a player controls the puck for less than a minute, referees for 20-25 minutes — and we call this good and declare with finality, there is no reason for discussion.

Using the average of two weaker forwards timed by stopwatch, we concluded they played slightly longer than the top players. Even though they got only 9 or 10 shifts, they stayed out longer (73.5 seconds per shift) for a total of 12.3 minutes of playing time. Total time of puck possession for the entire night was just 22.7 seconds (average of the two players), one of them touching it nine times, the other 13.

One of the players had a single shot for the night; the other didn’t get one. Reminder: in a good skill-oriented practice, a player might control the puck for 20-40 minutes, take 50-100 shots, and do them both while skating at high speed. Practice repetitions are certainly as important as competition — much more important, if there are so few chances in a game to control the puck and shoot.

What if — in a world that welcomes constructive discussion — we decided that competition is an important piece of the development puzzle, just like practice — but we wanted more bang for our buck?

When we pile kids in the car and drive an hour or so to a game, we’d like each kid to play at least half the rental time – 30 minutes instead of seven or 10 or 12.

If we thought the purpose was for kids to have fun and develop as hockey players, maybe we eliminate scoreboards — reducing the fear of failure, so they learn to control the puck.

Split the ice in two with those basketball dividers; pay just one ref per game; blow the whistle only for penalties and goals. Now, everyone’s happy: kids play more, control the puck more, even get more quality shots.

And we pay two refs for the two (half) games. They’re happy, too, so maybe they’ll just put the whistle in their back pocket and teach. After all, this is a bunch of 8-year-olds. They don’t mug each other; they don’t get tired; and they learn fast by trial and error, provided the fear of failure is removed.

No matter what we think about trophies and elaborate game productions, the fun of hockey is doing magical things with the puck. Just watch the childish emotion after a highlight goal by Alexander Ovechkin or a 40-year-old superstar. The intrinsic plays in hockey mean much more than scoreboards, trophies, cheerleaders, and big-time, overly-organized game productions.

Give the game back to the kids. We need organized chaos — scrimmages.