Hockey (current)

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Goons

Put a wink by my subject line if you’d like.

I was making some queries in HockeyDB and am kind of amused by this statistic. Of the WCHA members, prior to Bemidji and Omaha joining:

1 Player made it over 500 penalty-minutes in a career: 540 – Jim Archibald North Dakota

>10 Players had over 400 penalty-minutes in a career.
499- Darcy Martini Michigan Tech
487- Marty Schriner North Dakota
473- Matt DeMatrchi Minnesota
453- Chris McAlpine Minnesota
419- Dave Feamster Colorado College
413- Ryan Reynard Colorado College
405- Jason Prokopetz Michigan Tech
403- Pat Micheletti Minnesota
402- Jim Johnson UMD
400- Ben Hankinson Minnesota

So the breakdown by school:
CC- 2
Michigan Tech: 2
UMD: 1
Minnesota: 4
North Dakota: 2

What’s interesting is that many of them were decent scorers as well, with Micheletti leading them all with 269 points.

Probably a sign of how clean the game is now (despite the screaming from the OMG the official made a mistake! people), only 1 of them (DeMarchi) was from the year 2000 or after.

Even more amusing, is that there were 3 players who averaged more than 4 penalty-minutes per game (at least 10 games played):
5.000 pm/game – Tim Harris Michigan Tech (17 GP)
4.364 – Landon Wilson North Dakota (66 GP)
4.024 – Darcy Martini Michigan Tech (124 GP)

[End]

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Junior Nationals here in Minnesota

Starting today, Rochester (MN) is the host for the USA Hockey Tier III national Tournament. Pretty darn cool. It’s from March 29th to April 3rd. Here’s the schedule (PDF).

If you so desire, you can keep track of the tourney here on Pointstreak.

I’m pretty darn interested in it, but won’t be going.

I’m interested, since the Helena Bighorns are involved; Helena was in the NAHL before, so I’ve seen them before, they’re now in the NorPac. The Billings Bulls are also an ex-NAHL team who’s now in the NorPac, who I’ve seen before.

Minnesota teams involved (from the MN Junior Hockey league) are: Northern Lights and Rochester Ice Hawks.

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BBall Brackets and Final Five

Both Huskies lost in the WCHA Final Five yesterday. Rats on both accounts. Of course I’ll cheer for UMD now. As much as I dislike to cheer for UMTC, I’d rather they win over the Fighting Sioux since I’d like UMD to get a rematch against UMTC (before NCAAs if they meet there) and UMD seems to do better aginst UMTC than the Sioux.

I don’t have the time to watch the March Madness tourney, but I still take interest in it. I do two brackets. The first is a bracket where I choose who I want to win, so that the championship game would be my most favorite teams from one side of the bracket playing against my favorite team from the other side of the bracket. So my NCAA title game pits Colorado against Montana. We’ll see if that happens.

The second is sort-of similar, since it’s a “who do I want to win” bracket. For this one I choose who I want to win the first round games, then note whether they actually won. Then for the second round I choose who I want to win between the schools who made it through the first round. So if I happen to pick all of the 32 first round games wrong, I still could end up getting 16 of the 16 second round games correct.

So picking who I want to win, it could be I really like a school, I disklike the school I’m choosing against. Or it could be I’m just choosing who I like when it’s two schools I like close to equally (Wisconsin vs. Montana) or choosing the school I dislike more when I dislike the two close to equally (no first round examples, this doesn’t happen much).

Wanted to win and they did:
Kentucky
Iowa State
Indiana
Colorado
Louisville
Marquette
Kansas State
Gonzaga

Wanted to win, but lost:
Wichita State
South Dakota State
Long Beach State
Colorado State
UNC-Ashville
Harvard
Montana
Loyola

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State Wrapup

St. Thomas Academy and Benilde won the state hockey titles. I’m okay with that. I’m not a anti-private schools person- there’s some I cheer for and some I cheer against

The few are really dominating the rest. If we look at St. Thomas, Hermantown, Duluth Marshall, Breck, and also include Benilde before they moved up they are:
* 43 wins and 6 losses overall against teams who aren’t among those 5 teams.
* That includes being 20-1 in Quarterfinal games (in 2011 Thief River Falls won over Breck)

Warroad also has been dominating the others as well. Warroad has 16 wins against teams that aren’t part of those 5 teams and only 1 loss (2004 to Orono).

I really like the Western College Hockey Blog’s thoughts on the Class A tourney:

“The Class A tournament should be a showcase for towns in Minnesota with one stoplight, not the schools like Breck that are literally one stoplight from the city limits of one of the 50 largest cities in the country.”

I’m curious on how you make the definition on this. Does that mean that all private schools from the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester, and St. Cloud are Class AA teams? How do you define what those areas are? So that would mean St. Thomas Academy would be force to play up, but so would Minnehaha academy who were 3-22 in 2010-11.

That would also seem to say that Hermantown, who were undefeated heading into the tourney twice in this decade, wouldn’t be forced into AA, since they’re a public school. The Hawks have only lost once to someone who isn’t part of those 5 teams, a 4-2 loss to Lourdes who based on the metro area criteria would also have to play Class AA since they’re from Rochester.

Seems to me any criteria you do won’t work.

On Beyond the Pond on Saturday one of the hosts on the radio said that “we’re closer to having 3 classes than we’re closer to having 1 class”. That to me sounds better, but again how do you do it?

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State: Day 1

Some quick thoughts about state today

  • Too many blowouts, although I’m not sure if there’s really any way of avoiding this, short of having only 1 class.
  • St. Thomas Academy looked good, but not great like they have previous years, but then again when you’re up so big it’s hard to judge.
  • Fantastic chant by the STA students:  “This one’s over”…….. immediately after the game started
  • Breck, same story as STA.
  • Hermantown, same story.
  • As always, I loved watching the “Hawk Dance”.
  • When I get some time, I really should look up the state tourney records of STA,  Breck, Hermantown, Duluth Marshall, and possibly Warroad and see what their records are against teams that aren’t one of them.  It’s got to be close to 100%.
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Thinking about twelve years of two classes

Generally speaking, I like the two class hockey system. However, unlike the big school (Class AA) tourney it ends up being dominated by a small group of schools. In the 12 years, there’s only been 6 schools that have won it. For the Class AA in that timeframe, there’s been 10 schools have won it, with only Eden Prairie and Holy Angels winning it more than once. Now some other schools have gotten closer to winning the Class A title- Lourdes, Orono, Red Wing, Totino-Grace, and Simley all made the championship game- but still only 6 teams have won it.

The small schools are also nice for people who want to go watch the state tourney, without having to spend a long time in line; for the Class AA games the tickets go on sale 1 hour before the gametime and you’d probably better be in line 1 hour before that, if not sooner to get tickets and even then you might be in the upper-deck.

When looking at the Class AA title game. In the 12 years, the Twin Cities has won 11 of the 12 titles, with only Roseau stopping the shutout in 2007. Still, in those 12 title games, 8 of the teams who lost were from the north. Although all 4 of those title games where the losing team was from the Twin Cities, the winning team was also from the Twin Cities.

Nice for me to see how that there’s many different schools who were in the title game: Anoka, Blaine, Centennial, Cretin-Derham Hall, Duluth East (2 times), Edina, Eden Prairie (2), Edina (2), Elk River, Grand Rapids (2), Hill-Murray (2), Holy Angels (2), Minnetonka, Moorhead (3), Roseau, Roseville. Now that’s variety! Moorhead has been there the most, but that’s only 3 title game appearances out of 12.

Probably the people who have the most to be depressed are southern Minnesota hockey fans. According to my count in both classes, they have 6 wins against 13 losses in the quaterfinals in the 12 years. If you count Lakeville as “southern Minnesota”, which I myself don’t (I call them Twin-Cities), it gets even worse; southern minnesota is then 6-20 (Lakeville lost right away in all 7 of the state tourneys).

Looking at the scores, only 1 of those wins could be considered to be a blowout, Lourdes won 7-2 over Orono. Although Rochester Century’s upset over Hill-Murray was huge in 2007. Then you have some really bad losses; Albert Lea losing 1-10 to Breck (2004) & 1-6 to Warroad (2005), New Ulm 1-11 to Breck (2010) & 2-13 to St. Thomas (2011), Lourdes 0-9 to Warroad (2010), there’s others as well. In fact, out of those 20 losses, only 6 of them was there 2 goals or less difference.

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My Picks

Class A
STA over Little Falls
Breck over Marshall
Hermantown over Lourder
TRF over New Ulm
STA over Breck
Hermantown over TRF
Hermantown over STA

Class AA
Hill-Murray over Maple Grove
Moorhead over Eagan
Duluth East over Lakeville South
Edina over Benilde-St. Margarets
Hill-Murray over Moorhead
Duluth East over Edina
Duluth East over Hill-Murray

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Feelings leaving “the tourney”

Should be an interesting tourney. I hope “the tourney” ends on an upbeat. The result of the Class AA title game can leave me excited, disappointed, or leave me feeling blah.

For championship bracket games I’ve been there for almost all of them since 2000. I missed 2 Friday afternoon session games in 2007 due to having to work; I’m still bitter about, especially considering the teams and results involved. I’ve also missed a bunch of the 3rd place Class A games; we usually skip them since they’re earlier on Saturday, plus they’re kind of depressing to watch because you can tell often times neither team wants to be there and there’s very few fans in the building.

Looking at the results year by year in Class AA, it’s kind of a mixed-bag on how I’ve felt leaving the tourney after the finale:

2011: Eden Prairie over Duluth East
Feeling: Disappointed
Thoughts: Much like Eden Prairie’s win in 2009 I was disappointed that a northern team lost in the title game, even worse since it was a Duluth area team.

2010: Edina over Minnetonka
Feeling: Okay
Thoughts: No strong feeling either way; was okay whoever won.

2009: Eden Prairie over Moorhead
Feeling: Disappointed
Thoughts: I was pretty disappointed since I was cheering heavily for the Spuds to finally win their first hockey title.

2008: Hill-Murray over Edina
Feeling: Content
Thoughts: This was one of the very few win-win title games for me. I have liked both schools for a very long time. In this case I wanted Hill-Murray over Edina, but if the two were to meet for the title again I may cheer for Edina over H-M.

2007: Roseau over Grand Rapids
Feeling: On Cloud Nine
Thoughts: I’m not sure words can give justice to how happy I was. I could write for a long time on this. Totally win-win situation, what with Class A being an all-northern final and Class AA being an all-northern final.

2006: Cretin-Derham Hall over Grand Rapids
Feeling: Disappointed
Thoughts: Just like 09, nothing against the winning team, but disappointed that a northern team lost in the title game.

2005: Holy Angels over Moorhead
Feeling: Content
Thoughts: Not quite a win-win situation, since I wanted Moorhead to win, but I was okay with Holy Angels winning. I seems to recall it was a wonderful game.

2004: Centennial over Moorhead
Feeling: Crushed
Thoughts: Back then I had nothing against Centennial, I do now because of this. Obviously disappointed Spuds lost in the title game (that’s a trend). Still what annoyed me was Centennials style of play; all of their games were dull to watch, so I was crushed they won the title. Maybe their style of play has changed (hopefully so, I haven’t seen them play since 2004) and I’ll have to take them off my list of teams I cheer against.

2003: Anoka over Roseville
Feeling: Happy
Thoughts: This was a no-lose situation.

2002: Holy Angels over Hill-Murray
Feeling: Good
Thoughts: Unlike many people, this was a win-win situation. I like both schools and didn’t care either way who won.

2001: Elk River over Moorhead
Feeling: Slightly disappointed
Thoughts: To copy& paste from above, “Not quite a win-win situation, since I wanted Moorhead to win”. I was okay with Elk River winning, but the game left me kind of disappointed, since it was a blowout.

2000: Blaine over Duluth East
Feeling: Okay
Thoughts: Wanted East to win, but was okay with Blaine winning.

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Boys Sections 3/2/12

A bunch of teams booked their skating time at the X last night. Considering they were section finals, I find it amazing just how many blowouts there were. Starting with….

Section 1AA (Bracket): Lakeville South routed Lakeville North 7-1. Kind of hard for North to win when they were outshot 42-13 and were outshot 28-3 in the the first period.

Section 3AA (Bracket): Eagan wins easily 10-1 over Hastings. I mentioned before that I didn’t like Eagan’s grey uniforms from a few years ago. Well, they’re only marginally better. The colors are much better, but they’re using a pro logo (the Florida Panther with the hockey stick logo).

Section 7AA (Bracket): Duluth East thankfully won 4-1 over Andover.

Section 8AA (Bracket): Moorhead wins 3-1 over Brainerd.

Section 2A (Bracket): Very offensive game, Breck wins 7-5 over Blake.

Section 6A (Bracket): Little Falls wins easily 6-1 over Fergus Falls.

Section 8A (Bracket): Thief River Falls wins 4-1 over East Grand Forks.