ECRL or Discovery

Hearing lots of kids leaving ECRL teams for teams playing Discovery in 2021-2022. Which league is forecasted to be more competitive?
 
It all depends. Both are good choices; but if your kid wants to eventually go higher, ECRL is the way (given that the team has a good coach, there's a clear path to the ECNL team, your kid has at least 50% playing time, etc.)
 
Really depends on the club. DD played ECRL and played one out of state tourney. No league games out of state. Limited training.

DS flight 1 team played so many underground scrimmages.....really team bonding I think COVID helped. Beach training, etc. Bunch of 15 year olds just having fun and because the games were underground the coach couldn't scream his head off as he normally did. team improved dramatically
 
The answer is close to zero.
I remember a while back when discovery wasn’t even around. For the boys it was academy, flight 1 champions (premier), flight 1 Europa (gold), and then all other tiers.

That’s the way it should be. They started adding tiers to make parents feel better about their kids and make money for the clubs. ECRL has zero logic in the tier structure. You are better off allowing ECNL bench players to play down in Flight 1 discovery.
 
The answer is close to zero.

Not necessarily true. my son and 2 of his teammates left their 05 ECRL team (club folded season) and went to a different clubs ECNL squad. 6 or 7 other teammates left as well and went to another clubs ECNL team. So there is quality to be had on ECRL teams... depends on how the club uses it. And our former club did not use it well...very bad management.
 
No matter what, every league has 2-3 top teams, 2-3 "what are we doing here" teams, and the rest fighting it out in the middle. You just need to find the right fit for your kid(s), sit back and enjoy it. In the past 2 seasons, my DD played in all 3 leagues (ECNL, ECRL, and Discovery). Nice thing about Discovery is it's local (Silverlakes) and it doesn't break your checkbook.
 
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