AAA, AA, A, B, House: what every USA Hockey level actually means

Most of American youth hockey runs on one ladder. A team is AAA, AA, A, B, or House. That letter, not the league it plays in, tells you how competitive it is and roughly what a season will cost.

The confusion comes from the exceptions. Minnesota tops out at AA in the winter. A dozen states number their A divisions. In New England and Michigan the league name on the jersey is not the level. This page covers the shared ladder first, then every state that departs from it.

The ladder

We grade every level on one 1 to 8 scale, so you can compare programs in different states and leagues directly. The letters below are the national defaults:

The league is the schedule; the letter is the level. Every local division sits on one of these rungs. That is what makes a cross-state comparison possible. A Michigan LCAHL AA team is an AA team. A Massachusetts EHF Gold team is a AAA team. The two can be read against each other, which their league names never allow.

Age groups

USA Hockey runs even-year bands: 8U (Mite), 10U (Squirt), 12U (Pee Wee), 14U (Bantam), 16U and 18U (Midget). Competitive rating services cover 9U and up, so 8U and house teams generally aren't ranked. Odd-year teams (9U, 11U, 13U, 15U) are real teams, and you can pick them when you report a season. For pricing and comparison each sits with its two-year band, so 13U is read with 14U. USA Hockey's 15-Only year sits with 16U.

Junior hockey (NAHL, NA3HL, USPHL, roughly ages 16 to 20) and high-school hockey are separate systems. Girls hockey runs on its own rating scale, so we compare girls programs against each other, not against boys teams.

Where the letters stop working

Twenty-four of the fifty-one US jurisdictions use the ladder above exactly as written. Most of the rest only number their A divisions. The real departures come in a few recognisable shapes.

New England: the league is on the jersey, the letter is the level

In Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont, competitive hockey is organised by league. Each league names its own divisions: EHF Elite, E9, VHL AAA, PHL Premier, CHC Open, NHAHA Tier 3, BSHL B. A program's website will often tell you the league without telling you the level.

Until September 2026 we listed each of those divisions as its own level, and Massachusetts alone had 47. Now every New England team is shown by its letter, so an A team here is the same row as an A team anywhere else. Here is where the club divisions sit. EHF Elite, National, Platinum and Gold, E9, VHL AAA, THF and UT1HL are AAA. EHF American, VHL AA, PHL Elite and Premier and NEGHL American are AA. VHL A, NEGHL Liberty and the town leagues' A teams (SSC, BSHL, SCHL) are A. Town B teams and GSL are B, and town C teams are C. Connecticut's CHC Open is the catch-all bracket at 10U and 12U, and most Open teams sit at A.

The state associations that number their brackets map the same way. New Hampshire's NHAHA Tier 1 through Tier 5 are AAA, AA, A, B and C. Vermont's VSAHA Tier 2 through Tier 5 are AA, A, B and C. Maine's MEAHA Tier 1 through Tier 3 are AAA, AA and A. None of these are USA Hockey's Tier I, II and III.

Two traps remain. A full team label packs three things into one string. In "VHL 14U South AAA National", VHL is the league, 14U the age group, South / National a scheduling region, and AAA the level. And the same word can mean different things in different leagues: "National" is a region split in the VHL but a top division in the EHF. Prep school sits above everything else here, at tier 8. It is tuition, not a season fee.

Minnesota has its own ladder, and almost no winter AAA

Minnesota runs the deepest youth system in the country, and does it its own way. The travel ladder is AA, A, B1, B2, C, run by Minnesota Hockey through about a dozen geographic districts. In the winter season it tops out at AA. High school hockey is where the best players go, so AAA barely exists: of roughly 1,470 Minnesota team offerings in our data, 2 are AAA. What AAA does exist is mostly a spring and summer thing.

Two details outsiders miss. B1 and B2 are different levels, not one B split in half. B1 advances to the State and Region tournament, B2 stays in district play, and the sharpest line in the ladder falls between them. And Minnesota A teams rate very highly by national standards, partly on talent depth and partly because the June 1 birthday cutoff makes its players a few months older per band. Junior Gold is a separate 16-to-20 track at tier 3.

Michigan: the league prefix is not the level

Michigan teams are usually named for their league and division together: T1EHL AAA, MAHA AAA, LCAHL AA, LCAHL A, MGHL Tier 2. We show them by letter. MAHA AAA and T1EHL are AAA. LCAHL AA, NIntHL AA, AHF AA and MAHA Independent are AA. LCAHL A, the league's 9U, 11U, 13U and 16U division, is A. LCAHL Rec, Adray and CUP are B, Adray Prep is B1 and MAHA District is House. On the girls side, MAHA Girls Tier 1 is AAA, MGHL Tier 2 is AA and MGHL Tier 3 is A.

Numbered A divisions

Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin number their competitive divisions instead of stepping AAA/AA/A/B:

Tier naming and colour splits

Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina keep the default rungs but write the top ones as AAA (Tier I) and AA (Tier II). Colorado writes its bottom rung House / Rec. Ohio splits the A rung into A / A-Gold (tier 4) above A-Silver / A-Bronze (tier 3). Florida splits it by colour: A Orange (4) above A Black and A White (3).

New Jersey and New York

The AYHL is a league, not a level, and its teams are AAA. New Jersey's NJYHL used to split A into A National and A American; both are the A row now. New York keeps an A1 division at tier 4 beside A.

What the levels cost

Levels and dollars move together, and the gap between rungs is large. A house or B season runs from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars. AA travel reaches the mid four figures once ice, league fees and travel are counted. AAA regularly passes $10,000, and the top of the AAA market, with a national tournament schedule, runs well beyond that.

Those are ranges, not quotes. The same letter costs very different amounts in different markets. That is why we collect real season totals instead of publishing one national number.

Every state has its own page with a typical season at each level, including Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado and California.

• Look up a program to see its reported and estimated season cost
• Compare two programs side by side at the same age and level
• Add your season costs so other families in your market get a real number
• Costs by level, in detail
• State-by-state cost breakdown