AA Rankings for 1/13/18

[alcloseshaver]

QRF is fine, worked last year. Don't play class A schools and hope the teams you beat win a bunch of games. Rapids at Elk River in the 4/5 game, Elks have the tiebreaker on Flake.

[karl(east)]

My only real question in 7AA is whether Flake can do well enough down the stretch to pull out of the tiebreaker margin with GR and force Rapids into the 6-seed. GR may end up with just six wins, but even so, unless Flake surprises me when I see them in Duluth next week, I think they are at least the 5th-best team in the section, and possibly the 4th. While we'll get a better sense of where they stand relative to Cloquet this week, having to go play the Jacks on the road in the quarters would be an unfortunate fate.

Cloquet is listed because all nine of their losses are to ranked teams, basically all of them have been close, and they have a couple of quality wins against Eagan and Stillwater, and also two convincing wins over passable not-ranked teams in Elk River and Eastview. Looking at the rest of their schedule, they'll be favored against everyone except Duluth East and Hermantown; even if they lose those two and suffer an upset along the way, they'll finish above .500. Their schedule has been rough, and PS2 has them at #21...just two spots behind White Bear Lake, incidentally.

[WBLPuck99]

Move St. Thomas to 11. Hill is rated a little high too.
Goalie was the reason they beat Stillwater. Let’s see how they hang with Edina. White Bear had 54 shots against Woodbury. Just some observations from games I’ve attended

Joining a little late to this part of the convo. I saw the WBL/Woodbury game.

White Bear, for whatever reason, seems to play terrible following a big game (recalling last years rochester game as recent evidence). This started as no exception, but after about 1/2 way through the first period, White Bear was pretty dominant.

The bears started the backup goalie and I felt bad for the kid. The first three goals by woodbury were all pretty odd (off the glass behind the goal into the goalies back and in, tipped to the corner by a defenders stick, and tip three times on a slapshot to the point). He didn't really have a chance on any of those weird bounces.

I give the bears credit for overcoming some of that puck luck. I also give that Woodbury goalie a ton of credit for a game well played.

Was the score a lot closer than it should have been? absolutely. Was the score the story of the game? Not in my opinion.

I just hope the bears don't have a letdown game down the stretch like recent history has shown. I was happy to see they had scheduled a pretty tough end of the season, with 4 of their last 6 against top 20 opponents and 3/6 against top 10 opponents. I assume the Rochester Century 12-2 record is a reflection of their competition?

[MWS coach]

My only real question in 7AA is whether Flake can do well enough down the stretch to pull out of the tiebreaker margin with GR and force Rapids into the 6-seed. GR may end up with just six wins, but even so, unless Flake surprises me when I see them in Duluth next week, I think they are at least the 5th-best team in the section, and possibly the 4th. While we'll get a better sense of where they stand relative to Cloquet this week, having to go play the Jacks on the road in the quarters would be an unfortunate fate.

Cloquet is listed because all nine of their losses are to ranked teams, basically all of them have been close, and they have a couple of quality wins against Eagan and Stillwater, and also two convincing wins over passable not-ranked teams in Elk River and Eastview. Looking at the rest of their schedule, they'll be favored against everyone except Duluth East and Hermantown; even if they lose those two and suffer an upset along the way, they'll finish above .500. Their schedule has been rough, and PS2 has them at #21...just two spots behind White Bear Lake, incidentally.

Flake as 4th best team? Didn't Elk beat Flake convincingly 6-2? I get no love for the Elks as down this year and under .500 but how is Flake possibly the 4th best team in section? Despite what Knivsy would like to see, Lumberjacks are #3 and Elk #4.... of course depending on what happens the remainder of the season.

[karl(east)]

My only real question in 7AA is whether Flake can do well enough down the stretch to pull out of the tiebreaker margin with GR and force Rapids into the 6-seed. GR may end up with just six wins, but even so, unless Flake surprises me when I see them in Duluth next week, I think they are at least the 5th-best team in the section, and possibly the 4th. While we'll get a better sense of where they stand relative to Cloquet this week, having to go play the Jacks on the road in the quarters would be an unfortunate fate.

Cloquet is listed because all nine of their losses are to ranked teams, basically all of them have been close, and they have a couple of quality wins against Eagan and Stillwater, and also two convincing wins over passable not-ranked teams in Elk River and Eastview. Looking at the rest of their schedule, they'll be favored against everyone except Duluth East and Hermantown; even if they lose those two and suffer an upset along the way, they'll finish above .500. Their schedule has been rough, and PS2 has them at #21...just two spots behind White Bear Lake, incidentally.

Flake as 4th best team? Didn't Elk beat Flake convincingly 6-2? I get no love for the Elks as down this year and under .500 but how is Flake possibly the 4th best team in section? Despite what Knivsy would like to see, Lumberjacks are #3 and Elk #4.... of course depending on what happens the remainder of the season.

I was referring to Grand Rapids in that sentence, who appeared pretty even with the Elks based on their head-to-head game. I don't think Flake is 4th, but it's at least possible they end up 4th if they can win enough games to get out of the QRF head-to-head tiebreaker.