Minding the Kids

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but during Thursday night's Toledo/Ball State football game, they did a quick three minute segment on the Toledo War, which I covered yesterday. They interviewed four Toledo residents about the war, and got three "I don't knows" and one "I know that we lost, because we got Toledo".

A couple quick junior hockey notes...

Santa Fe has been ripped by a couple different sources for the press release they sent out on Wednesday which tried to blame all of their problems on the evil monster of internet rumor-mongering(It's always been a goal of mine to be part of the problem). Nevermind that part of the reason this story spread so quickly is that Santa Fe's players started calling around for new places to play, which led to the roster freeze. It was me and the internet. I'll take the hit on that one.

Anyway, Junior Hockey Blog has excellent coverage of the story. Santa Fe has tried to go into spin control and make it seem like owner Mary Magdalene Lorang just got a little frustrated and this will all blow over, but I think everyone can read between the lines of those quotes, and see that regardless of how much money MML has, she's getting tired of flushing it away on a hockey team that nobody seems to care about.

This whole thing has been a public relations disaster, and doesn't do much to improve the reputation of the league. Since Eric Krupka has taken over as commissioner, what stories have been big enough to draw my attention? The PR disaster of his first interview and the subsequent backtracking, and then this PR disaster in Santa Fe. A national Tier II Jr. A league is a tough enough sell as it is, and the league doesn't seem to be doing themselves any favors.

Ok, and now I'm done with the topic. I think you'll see me leading troops into Russia in late-October before you see me jump into the middle of another NAHL financial crisis.

The other big story is the proposed rule changes to the high school transfer rules in Minnesota. Gopher Puck Blog has a Cliffnotes version of the Star-Trib story about the proposed changes.

My Cliffnotes version of the Cliffnotes is that the MSHSL wants to make high school sports like college athletics, where if a student wants to transfer schools, he/she must sit out a year of competition.

I've always thought all the whining from people in Minnesota about private schools and the big public schools was nothing more than sour grapes. I understand that it's frustrating that Hill-Murray loses two players to the NTDP, and magically, three kids that played in the national Selects Festival end up on their roster the next season. But isn't the purpose of a high school sports team to be a team made up of kids that attend a certain school, and not live in a certain area? As long as a kid is enrolled at that school, I've got no problem with them wanting to play hockey there, regardless of where they come from.

The entire basis for this argument seems to be that certain people don't get to win enough because of the private schools. Maybe the MSHSL should follow the advice of that one Minnesota high school football coach who said that the MSHSL should just mail everyone a trophy and those that don't feel they deserve it can mail it back.