Troy Loney retired from the National Hockey League in 1995. And while the NHL has stayed dark in 2004-05, the former Pittsburgh Penguin is still quite active in the sport.

Loney is in his second year of coaching the North Pittsburgh Youth Hockey Association's PeeWee Wildcats, who play their games at Warrendale BladeRunners.

The Wildcats' peewee team for ages 12 and 13, along with the program's bantam squad for ages 14 to 15, have qualified for the USA Hockey regional this weekend in Evansville, Ind., by winning their respective state tournaments recently at Ice Castle in Castle Shannon.

"I began coaching kids in this organization since 1996, but this is only my second year with this group," Loney said. "Man, it was some adjustment at first.

"I went from playing with guys at the highest level to looking at a bunch of 5- and 6-year-olds on the ice. I had to break everything down and start over, but it's been fun."

The bantam Wildcats won the PAHL regular season and playoff championships this year, sporting a 16-0-4 record. Their coach is Bill Waldeschmidt, who has four sons in the program and has been involved in the Wildcats' organization since its inception about 10 years ago.

"Defense has been the key for us," Waldeschmidt said. "We only gave up 15 goals in 20 regular season games and four goals in four state playoff games."

Included on the 16-player roster are Kody Helbig of Freedom, Nick Jones, Luke Martin and Joe Sasala of Cranberry Township, Thomas Miller of Stoneboro.

The peewee Wildcats have lost just four of 35 games this year.

The Wildcats will play in a five-team field with host Evansville and teams from Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

"It's a round-robin format and we pretty much have to win every game to get to nationals," Loney said.

The national tournament will be played in Philadelphia.

Local players on the peewee squad include Ryan Shutte and Brandon Platt of Cranberry Township, Fawn Miller of Stoneboro, Tyler Mesisca and Michael Mazzotta of Mars, and Trey Carbeau of Zelienople.

Shutte is one of two goaltenders on the squad. The other is Lindsay Holdcroft of Ingomar, who joins Miller as the two girls on the team.

"Lindsay and Fawn are excellent players," Loney said. "They're a major reason for our success."

Platt and Carbeau are goal scorers, but Loney has no idea what their statistics are. He doesn't post stats and doesn't pay attention to them.

"At this age, that'd be counterproductive," he said. "The kids know what they've done and I don't want our web-site to provide information to other teams we're playing.

"I know I'm searching web-sites for information on other teams in our regional. I found that one team has one kid scoring three-fourths of their goals. We're far more balanced," he added.

This is the first year the Wildcats have advanced two teams to the regional level.