Thanks for the input stardust.
I agree with your cropping suggestion. I was thinking of doing a square crop to the hockey photo. The only post processing done to the photos so far is slight adjustments to contrast, white balance, and saturation (using Canon DPP). Still, in the second photo, there simply isn't enough green in the kids' costumes. I don't know how to fix that without making everything else in the picture greener too. The skin tone looks pretty good as it is.