ND High School Hockey 2019-20

[Walsh Hall]

On 3/2/2020 at 8:31 PM, OgieOgilthorpe said:

Okay now go do this exercise with GF youth hockey rosters and come back. 
 

It’s unbelievably scary how loaded that towns pipeline is. GF will continue to dominate with a sprinkle of Fargo and Bismarck snagging champions every once in awhile. 
 

Judging by GF youth hockey strength, it’s unfortunately looking like they’re going to get even more dominant before they’re going to get caught up with or passed by anyone. 
 

Fargo has the numbers to put together some teams that’ll beat them every now and then, but through and through GF just breeds hockey players. It’s all that town has (tennis doesn’t count). 

When is the last time GF didn't have the best Bantam team in the state?  The Aviators are down this year from their usual standard.

[OgieOgilthorpe]

1 hour ago, Walsh Hall said:

When is the last time GF didn't have the best Bantam team in the state?  The Aviators are down this year from their usual standard.

Probably once every 10 years. 

[UND1983]

10 hours ago, OgieOgilthorpe said:

With this logic then the same goes for MN state hockey too right? All blow outs today, so something must be wrong and it’s not competitive so that’s why kids leave. Right, right?! 

Are the best Minnesota kids leaving?

[gfhockey]

Top aviator kid played for rrhs 

[OgieOgilthorpe]

16 minutes ago, gfhockey said:

Top aviator kid played for rrhs 

I think you have that backwards 

[OgieOgilthorpe]

43 minutes ago, UND1983 said:

Are the best Minnesota kids leaving?

A lot of them are, yes. 

[UND1983]

3 minutes ago, OgieOgilthorpe said:

A lot of them are, yes. 

Where to?

[Yote 53]

1 minute ago, UND1983 said:

Where to?

NTDP, Juniors, AAA.

One of the best U16 goalies in the country is from Minnesota and has never played a HS game there in his career.  Been at Sioux Falls AAA the entire time and got some time with USHL Dubuque this year as well.  You come across quite a few Minnesota addresses if you start digging into Tier 1 and Junior rosters. 

[UND1983]

9 minutes ago, Yote 53 said:

NTDP, Juniors, AAA.

One of the best U16 goalies in the country is from Minnesota and has never played a HS game there in his career.  Been at Sioux Falls AAA the entire time and got some time with USHL Dubuque this year as well.  You come across quite a few Minnesota addresses if you start digging into Tier 1 and Junior rosters. 

That's interesting, thanks!  I see the Sioux Falls team starts their season in September and plays until April.  That's a long season.

[fightingsioux4life]

On 2/28/2020 at 6:16 PM, yzerman19 said:

South beat a loaded GF Central in 1994 for the chip.  Ended our run at RR the night before.

 

On 2/28/2020 at 8:03 PM, Wilbur said:

The goaltender for South that year was just sensational.  Minot in the first round, then the GF gauntlet.  Will never forget the look on Jay Panzer's face after that one.  

Don't remind me. 

[TheFlop]

On 3/2/2020 at 6:54 PM, Speez said:

Upcoming younger players may change that in the near future.

Big win for the Fargo Squirt Black team being the first Fargo team to win their Squirt International tournament in it's 36 year history.

Familiar name to long time Sioux fans involved in helping this to happen.

 

https://www.inforum.com/sports/hockey/4978654-Fargo-team-makes-history-for-local-youth-hockey-with-Squirt-tourney-title

 

It will be interesting to see if the Fargo method works come high school.  At youth levels, they always stack a team.  If there are 2 squirt A's.....they stack one of those A teams and so on.  Grand Forks has two squirt A's, 2 Pee Wee A's, etc and they are split as evenly as possible (for the most part).  Grand Forks doesn't start stacking a team til the Bantam AA level but other towns also do that.  Will be interesting.  

[scpa0305]

9 hours ago, Yote 53 said:

NTDP, Juniors, AAA.

One of the best U16 goalies in the country is from Minnesota and has never played a HS game there in his career.  Been at Sioux Falls AAA the entire time and got some time with USHL Dubuque this year as well.  You come across quite a few Minnesota addresses if you start digging into Tier 1 and Junior rosters. 

He’s committed to UND 

[scpa0305]

1 hour ago, TheFlop said:

It will be interesting to see if the Fargo method works come high school.  At youth levels, they always stack a team.  If there are 2 squirt A's.....they stack one of those A teams and so on.  Grand Forks has two squirt A's, 2 Pee Wee A's, etc and they are split as evenly as possible (for the most part).  Grand Forks doesn't start stacking a team til the Bantam AA level but other towns also do that.  Will be interesting.  

Which has worked in GF for a long time. Fargo always looses a couple high end kids to Moorhead every so often 

[scpa0305]

9 hours ago, UND1983 said:

That's interesting, thanks!  I see the Sioux Falls team starts their season in September and plays until April.  That's a long season.

Tier 1...more games  

[brianvf]

19 minutes ago, scpa0305 said:

He’s committed to UND 

And has a great college hockey name (even if spelled incorrectly).   

[Speez]

1 hour ago, TheFlop said:

It will be interesting to see if the Fargo method works come high school.  At youth levels, they always stack a team.  If there are 2 squirt A's.....they stack one of those A teams and so on.  Grand Forks has two squirt A's, 2 Pee Wee A's, etc and they are split as evenly as possible (for the most part).  Grand Forks doesn't start stacking a team til the Bantam AA level but other towns also do that.  Will be interesting.  

That's the reason ND should have Tier 1, AAA teams. If you don't give the better players better competition they will go other places to find it. Doesn't GF lose players to EGF for better competition?  From what I understand, this is the first year Fargo had a "stacked" squirt team.

High school hockey is just high school hockey. I saw the ND high school hockey tourney and the GF and Fargo teams weren't that far apart in talent. Either team could have won it.

If you want to be the best you have to play the best.

[Blackheart]

1 hour ago, brianvf said:

And has a great college hockey name (even if spelled incorrectly).   

He have a name?

[Tbone]

Hobie Hedquist 

[TheFlop]

1 hour ago, Speez said:

That's the reason ND should have Tier 1, AAA teams. If you don't give the better players better competition they will go other places to find it. Doesn't GF lose players to EGF for better competition?  From what I understand, this is the first year Fargo had a "stacked" squirt team.

High school hockey is just high school hockey. I saw the ND high school hockey tourney and the GF and Fargo teams weren't that far apart in talent. Either team could have won it.

If you want to be the best you have to play the best.

You went off on a tangent.  Yes ND needs something besides high school hockey to keep talent in state....but that's not a point I brought up.  What I said was that prior to Bantams, Grand Forks takes the approach that they will have equally balanced teams at each level (PeeWee A, Squirt A, B1, etc...every level).  Fargo meanwhile has taken the approach of loading teams even within those classifications (for example, huge discrepancy between their two Squirt As this year).  Maybe that will work out for the better, who knows, but it is different than how Grand Forks does it.

[yzerman19]

Are they loading a team or holding birth years together aka a top 2009 team and a top 2010 team at 10UA? The top 2009 team would logically seem stacked as they are bigger, older, and more experienced.  

[TheFlop]

Just now, yzerman19 said:

Are they loading a team or holding birth years together aka a top 2009 team and a top 2010 team at 10UA? The top 2009 team would logically seem stacked as they are bigger, older, and more experienced.  

That is a possibility.  

[Frozen4sioux]

No Fargo Youth hockey explicitly stated that they would stack teams for this season. 

This was the first year it was explicitly stated openly prior to team selection.

fer example the PW AA, A , then a stacked B1 and then balanced B1 teams after that. Same for Bantams, same for Squirts.

It will beninteresting to see how this philosophy plays out focusing on developing 1 team and feeding 3 High school teams.... 

Same situationnin West Fargo...

Conventional logic and common sense (and history) say its a fools errand.

Inevitably a few top kids will go AAA, Juniors, or MHD...  which leaves what... 12  kids per year from the AA team to be dispersed to the three HS programs.

The only reason to stack PW and squirt teams in ND is the parental vanity of winning winning winning now now now.

Sure little Brayclaiden  might win a few now... but come High school, they will just be more fodder for GF to dominate.

[OgieOgilthorpe]

8 hours ago, Speez said:

That's the reason ND should have Tier 1, AAA teams. If you don't give the better players better competition they will go other places to find it. Doesn't GF lose players to EGF for better competition?  From what I understand, this is the first year Fargo had a "stacked" squirt team.

High school hockey is just high school hockey. I saw the ND high school hockey tourney and the GF and Fargo teams weren't that far apart in talent. Either team could have won it.

If you want to be the best you have to play the best.

GF kids leaving for EGF is pretty rare. This Season is the first time I can recall it happening in quite a while

[yzerman19]

Oh man- this is a huge debate topic across the hockey world right now.  As a former coach and now just the dad of an elite 10U player (Brick player) I’ve been neck deep in it for awhile.  
 

My coaching philosophy was always to avoid the labeling of players in 8U and 10U.  Obviously there are kids who are naturally (or trained) better hockey players, at young ages, but there are more kids who aren’t but could leapfrog down the road...puberty is the ultimate arbiter and development trajectories are neither linear nor consistently sloped.  So, you have to balance things to try and 1.  Keep kids in love with the game and having fun and 2.  Helping each kid develop to the best of their ability at any given time.  

At 8U you have some kids working on single skate reverse edge pivots and some learning to stop.  In games at 8U we used to make gentleman’s agreements with the other coaches to set lines as A and B and stack line A.  We’d then only run A vs A and B vs B.  We focused on fun and skill.  Lots of small area games, so lots of puck touches for everyone.  This approach helped both the advanced players and the less advanced players.

10U things get more complicated, because an advanced 10 year old has likely been skating for 6 (or more) years and been playing hockey for 4 or 5.  The difference between the advanced and not is huge.  Especially if the game is played on a full 200 foot sheet.  Many coaches in this zone start to be corrupted by the allure of taking the best skaters and “stacking”.   they start to emphasize winning and can’t resist coaching Full positions and a basic system.  They de-emphasize individual skill development and emphasize the team concept.   As hockey is the ultimate team game, they cut any weaker skaters to avoid a weak link.  The result is big wins and fuels the misguided thinking. On the flip, those who stay the course feel the opposite, as the unstacked, puck touch, skill-focused teams lose repeatedly.  Now at 12U and absolutely at 14U the focus should start to move towards the team concept and top kids.  10U is just too young based on the science of physical and cognitive development.  I am not an apologist dad upset about losing.  I have a kid that playing in this approach has helped to become one of the top 2010s on the continent.  As a team, we lose a lot to top Teams in AAA programs in the US and Canada, it sucks, but it is teaching a lot to my kid- about hockey AND life. When we move to a stacked roster and team concept at 12U/14U he will be better prepared with individual skills and creativity and be of the right cognitive age to put it into a team concept and structure.

Bottom line is stacking and coaching to win at 10U might fuel some egos, but it won’t help a kid play D1 and it might prevent another kid from playing D1 down the road.  All that said, there is nothing wrong with exposure to a little mix.  The best players can and probably should play with other top players and get exposed to some team concept stuff- but do that in the spring/summer with a couple tournament teams or camps- not for the regular season.  

 

[Yote 53]

12 hours ago, scpa0305 said:

He’s committed to UND 

Must have flipped his commitment this year.  He was a CC commit.