SDHL founders Steve Day and Sarah Boston have been playing and organizing adult rec hockey in the Seattle area for over 15 years.  We built the SDHL primarily so that we ourselves can play in a league that is optimized for fun and convenience.  

Here are the key ingredients in our magical SDHL recipe:

Reliable Schedule:  Most of us have plenty of commitments to juggle:  work, family, friends.  An uncertain schedule leaves us choosing between refusing to make non-hockey commitments or risking missing our hockey games, wasting money and missing out on the fun.  

When you register for a SDHL season, you know all your games will be on Tuesdays or Thursdays in Everett.  When you are assigned to a team at the start of the season you will immediately have access to the precise date, time, and location of all regular season games.  

Team Parity: If you want to know whether a game was really fun to play, ask one question: Did both teams start the 3rd period thinking they had a real chance to win?  Team parity is critically important for ensuring fun, but nearly impossible to achieve when team captains are building their own rosters and choosing their own subs.  

SDHL players sign up for the league, not for a specific team.  Every season SDHL teams are re-selected from scratch through a process that incorporates skill balancing and randomness.  Occasional lopsided games are always a possibility, but both teams should have a reasonable chance to win most games.

Player Skill Parity: Most people would rather not play with players much better or worse than them.  It's no fun to watch a far superior player skate circles around you all game, and not much better to feel like a spectator as a ringer's teammate, on the ice but not really participating.  It can also be frustrating to play on a line with a much less skilled skater who can't keep up, feeling like you're killing penalties all game long effectively one skater down.  

Few leagues do a good job of maintaining player skill parity, in part because it's uncomfortable to tell people they can't play due to skill level.  Many players outside the appropriate skill range are great people, well liked by other players, perhaps even related to them.  It's easy to pretend a ringer will 'play down' or that playing them on defense will make them less impactful.  The reality is that this rarely works and it puts the ringer in an impossible situation.  Late in a tight game, do they do their best for their team like a good teammate, or do they hang back like they promised?  All players should be able to do their best for teams, that's part of the fun.

Steve Day has over a decade of experience making the hard and sometimes unpopular decisions to exclude individual players based on skill.  Few are willing to make and communicate such decisions that may greatly upset a few people in order to improve the overall experience for everyone else.

Adios Assholes: Over 90% of adult rec hockey players are a positive or neutral influence on the games they play, but just one asshole can dampen the fun for everone else.  Criticizing or yelling at teammates, opponents, or the refs is not appropriate behavior.  Bad days happen, within reason, but it won't take much of a pattern of this type of behavior to get someone booted from the SDHL.  

Inappropriately rough or unsafe play is not welcome in the SDHL.  We do our best to filter such players out ahead of time, but can't guarantee perfection.  If you ever look at an upcoming SDHL game and get a sinking feeling about having to share the ice with a particular player or team, we have unexpectedly failed and we are sorry, but please let us know so we can make it right. We know and hate that feeling and don't want you to ever experience it.

In our experience, taking a very strong stance on this type of behavior up front successfully filters out most problem players before they even try to register.  We expect action will rarely be required; we are not on a power trip and understand that hockey involves contact and penalties.

Organizers Play:  It's easy to promise balanced, asshole-free teams but much harder to deliver.  Our evaluations of player skill and behavior are made by league organizers and team captains who are at the rink each week playing in your games, evaluating the situation with their own eyes and ears and hearing what other players are saying.  While captains may provide input on teammates' behavior, nobody has incentive to be biased in favor of any particular player because in future seasons every player is more likely to be an opponent than a teammate. 

The SDHL is not for everyone, and that's OK.  We'd much rather be an outstanding league for some than a mediocre league for all.