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Hockey Long Island offers various substantial
discounts for each season throughout the year. These discounts
are available to all teams for prompt payment of league fees.
HLI accepts all major credit cards - VISA, MasterCard, and
American Express.
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Why HLI
Hockey Long Island is Long Island's premier adult men's league. Being the longest running adult men's league, HLI is about playing in a league with history and distinction. A Hockey Long Island title team joins the select few teams who have previously earned championship glory.
Year after year our teams return to play in Hockey Long Island. We value their business and respect their desire to have a well-organized, well-managed league that gives every player a legitimate and fair opportunity to play for a title. We are committed to providing for each team and player the most enjoyable and rewarding playing experience possible.
Hockey Long Island is attuned and responsive to its player membership. We realize that playing ice hockey cost more than other recreational pursuits. It is important to work with our teams and players to maximize the overall experience for all involved.
There are several factors that distinguish Hockey Long Island from other adult ice hockey leagues. These considerations are:
Balanced Divisions
HLI league provides competitive and fair divisions where the regular season is meaningful and offers most teams the opportunity to play for a championship. We provide a balanced schedule within our divisions with each team playing other division teams approximately the same number of times. We do our best to ensure that the divisions remain competitive and balanced throughout the season. In the rare cases where a team emerges either well above or below the playing level of the division, we adjust the divisions and schedules to ensure the playing experience remains fair and unpredictable.
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League Stability
Most HLI teams return to our league year after year. Presently, 18 teams have played 10 or more seasons in HLI. Team and player stability promotes a true club atmosphere where players know each other and play with camaraderie. This team continuity also enables on-going divisional rivalries that fuel the true competitive nature of HLI.
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Quality not Quantity
Hockey Long Island is a player's league, where promoting a positive club atmosphere for our members is foremost. We believe having too many teams detracts from the league's integrity and quality our players deserve. Minimizing teams ensures that teams within a division are of equal ability, play a balanced schedule, and participate in exciting and competitive hockey where the outcome is not known prior to playing the games.
It is also important to us that we know our
teams and players to ensure rosters are stable and fair. It
is our intention to minimize the disruptive and degrading
elements that can detract from the joy of playing the game.
We want responsible adults who play under control, respect
each other and accept game outcomes without unsportsmanlike
behavior.
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Playoff Structure
Hockey Long Island is a playoff driven league. Our regular season, therefore, takes on greater importance. HLI's approach ensures that our regular season games have purpose late in the schedule as teams are either jockeying for valuable playoff seeds or scrambling to join the playoff title.
Hockey Long Island's playoffs are a double elimination format (fall/winter and spring seasons). Under this format we play single elimination games until we qualify the semifinal teams in each division. The surviving teams then must lose twice before they are eliminated. We continue to play postseason games until only one team is left with either one or zero playoff losses.
HLI's playoff structure offers many more playoff games than other leagues. We qualify over 75% of our teams for the playoffs. In cases where divisions have more than six teams we will expand our playoff format to include byes for the higher teams and single elimination wildcard games for the lower teams. For example:
- a 7 team division will qualify five teams with the first, second and third place teams earning a first round bye and the fourth and five place team playing a wildcard game
- an 8 team division will qualify six teams with the first and second place teams earning a first round bye and the third through sixth place team playing single elimination game
Because we qualify over 75% of our teams for the playoffs, each team plays, on average, 2.5 playoff games. Since few teams do not make the playoffs (and therefore play 0 playoff games) most teams play extra games. It is not uncommon for a team to play 5 or 6 playoff games during a championship run.
Hockey Long Island's playoff structure ensures a league championship with the most deserving teams earning their playoff glory. Double-elimination affords teams the chance to recover from a fluke upset. It also offers the middling team the opportunity to get hot and earn a legitimate championship.
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Customized Awards
Hockey Long Island knows that a league championship is an important and special accomplishment for a team and its players. As adults, there are precious few opportunities to achieve athletic glory. HLI recognizes that it is important to celebrate and record the event accordingly.
Hockey Long Island celebrates each championship team by:
- providing a large team championship trophy for the team to display to family and friends
- publishing a team championship photo that we post on our website for history and posterity
- producing and distributing a customized award with team's logo for each player on the championship team (award can be a shirts, jackets, hats)
Hockey Long Island can and has worked with teams to upgrade/customize the team/player awards to reflect whatever a team may want to celebrate their championship.
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Full function Website
Hockey Long Island commitment to an overall playing experience extends to league administration. We realize that part of the running well-organized, well-managed ice hockey league requires prompt and accurate distribution of league/team schedule and standing information. For these reasons, HLI maintains a fully functioning website that provides the timely, pertinent league information you need.
Our website, however, provides so much more. It is important to our players that we offer access to more league and team information that builds and reinforces a sense of team and league history and pride. Our website puts at our player's fingertips past season game results, standings and playoff outcomes.
We provide a consolidated team page for each
our current teams. This team page summarizes the team's HLI
history showing their current schedule and past season results.
From the team page players can review past seasons' game results,
standings, playoff draws, and team pictures.
We also offer numerous hockey links to many
hockey-related websites. For example, players can refer to
professional teams/leagues, equipment suppliers, and instructional
resources. We, additionally, provide links to distinctive
hockey sites that players might not normally visit.
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