Tuesday, March 04, 2008

State Tournament First Round Preview

Here's the preview for Wednesday's Class A games. I'm picking Duluth Marshall, Warroad, St. Thomas Academy, and Blake to win.

And here is Thursday's Class AA preview. I'm picking Edina, Benilde, Roseau, and Hill-Murray to win. I'm such a risk-taker.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

5 Private schools in this tournament ruins it for me.

I am very tired of these schools abusing the system and taking top talent from other towns and schools.

I wish the MSHSL would "get a pair" and step up and deal with this for real.

Anonymous said...

Deal with this how? Make it illegal for hockey players to go to private schools? Just be happy most of those players are still in the High School League. My guess is that they would leave for juniors/shattuck etc. if they weren't allowed to move to the private schools.

Anonymous said...

I am rooting hard for Lil' Falls.

Public school, up north, beat up my Alex team several times.

Go Falls!

Anonymous said...

"I wish the MSHSL would 'get a pair' and step up and deal with this for real".....be careful what you wish for. Outside of the State of MN, high school hockey is NOT the premier level of play. You don't have to look any further than the rosters of the USHL teams to see that players are coming from all over the country--California, Texas and everywhere in between. AAA Midget hockey and Junior hockey are the prevelant levels of play in just about all other areas of the country. If the MSHSL were to kick the privates schools out, or send them back to their own state tourney as was done years ago, I think you'd see the beginning of the end of high school hockey as we know it in Minnesota. With a strong Shattuck program already in the state, I sincerely believe that you would see (at the very least), "academy school" programs like out East. The argument of "public vs. private" has been beaten to death on hockey blogs all over the internet. I agree with the previous post, that we should be happy many of these talented players have chosen to stay at home in school, and have NOT left for juniors/Shattuck.

Anonymous said...

beware what you wish for !! you have high schools good enough that top prospects actually turn down eastern prep & ntdp to live at home and play for their high school team; so what that they're recruiting; wake up, smell the coffee; in Mich & IL, hs hockey is not top rate, the aaa programs are run by lunatic egomaniacs; unless you are top third in aaa, you are just revenue for bottom line, your hs friends don't know you exist b/c you spend half your weekends out of town.

Anonymous said...

I'm not saying that Cathedral is going to win their game vs. Blake. I wouldn't be surprised if they won or lost. What I've noticed is that these predictions are completely blind, especially after I read about how Cathedral could win. Chris has definately not seen Cathedral play this year. If he had, he'd know that as a group, Cathedral's D are a top 3 unit in Class A. TJ Poganski will be on the Great 8 team, Joe Nessler is a VERY good D, and Jon Rowe is a solid 4th D.

Sure, Schmidt might see a little more ice than the rest of the three. But they definately have good enough guys back there so he won't have to play the entire game like Crandell had to in past years.

Anonymous said...

anon 9:49...what you're saying then, is if one of these private schools came calling for your kid, and your kid played for a mediocre high school, you'd stick to your guns and wouldn't let your kid have the chance at a better system to develop in? seriously....