If we had a single-class, 16-team tourney...

[karl(east)]

There have been various plans circulating around here for the past few weeks on how the tournament should be organized, ranging from banning privates to going back to one class to forcing various schools to opt up. I decided to see how a 1-class, 16-team tourney would work out. I'm not saying this is necessarily any better or worse than what we have now, this is just a model. Feel free to post whatever you think of it.

This required, of course, 16 new sections, which I had to create. I tried to group them more or less geographically, with some respect for traditional rivalries and conferences while trying not to overload some sections. Naturally, some are weaker than others, and there's one section that's more or less a "spare parts" section. But try not to get hung up on these; that's not the point of this thread.

Section 1: La Crescent, Winona, Rochester Mayo, Century, Lourdes, and JM, Dodge Co., Owatonna, Albert Lea, and Austin. This would have been a very weak section this year, but the Rochester schools would probably have control over it most of the time.
Section 2: Fairmont, Windom, Worthington, Luverne, Mankato East, Mankato West, LeSueur co-op, New Ulm, Sleepy Eye, Redwood Valley. Yuck, this one's awful. The scrap heap of SW Minnesota. But geographically we're pretty much stuck with this.
Section 3: Marshall, Hutchinson, Litchfield co-op, Willmar, Morris/Benson, Prairie Center, Little Falls, St. Cloud Apollo, Tech, and Cathedral. Not particularly strong either, with the St. Cloud schools and LF being at the top.
Section 4: Red Wing, Hastings, Northfield, Faribault, Waseca, Farmington, New Prague, Lakeville South and North, Prior Lake. This section has the lowest-rated top team (by PS2), but is reasonably deep with mediocrity.
Section 5: Park (CG), Simley, Burnsville, Rosemount, Eastview, Apple Valley, Woodbury, So. St. Paul, River Lakes, Henry Sibley. Here we go from a string of weak sections to one that's probably too strong. Burnsville's the class of the section, but Woodbury, EV, and Rosemount are good and AV and SSP have nice histories.
Section 6: St. Thomas Academy, Eagan, Breck, Shakopee, Chaska, Holy Family, Eden Prairie, Bloomington Jefferson and Kennedy. Three top-flight programs with a bit of a dropoff after that. A good section.
Section 7: Edina, Richfield, Holy Angels, CDH, St. Paul Academy, Minnehaha Academy, Mpls East, Blake, St. Louis Park. Essentially Edina and a pile of privates fighting for this one. The winner of this one won't be very popular throughout the state, but it is a nicely balanced section. This should also end the argument over whether section 7 is a northern section or not.
Section 8: Minnetonka, Mound-Westonka, Orono, Hopkins, Delano, Benilde, St. Michael-Albertville, Cooper, Armstrong, Providence Academy. A strong western suburban conference with several good teams at the top, and a couple of random towns west of the Cities thrown in.
Section 9: Wayzata, Buffalo, Rogers, St. Francis, Monticello, Becker-Big Lake, Elk River, Princeton, Sauk Rapids/Rice, Sartell/St. Stephen. This is the ugly one, with a hodgepodge of NW suburbs and towns, many of which don't really belong together. It's also very, very weak. I had to throw ER in here to give Wayzata some competition.
Section 10: Chisago Lakes, St. Paul Como, St. Paul Saints, Tartan, Hill-Murray, White Bear Lake, North St. Paul, Stillwater, Mahtomedi. Northeast suburban section with pretty good balance throughout. The WBL-HM postseason rivalry is very likely to continue in this section.
Section 11: Pine City, Roseville, Mounds View, Mpls West, Totino-Grace, Spring Lake Park, Centennial, North Metro, Osseo. Another section with pretty good balance.
Section 12: Maple Grove, Champlin Park, Blaine, Andover, Anoka, Mora, Forest Lake, Cambridge, North Branch. NW suburban section, though it's too bad I couldn't fit Centennial in. Some good rivalries exist/would be built here.
Section 13: Bemidji, Park Rapids, Detroit Lakes, Moorhead, Fergus Falls, Wadena/Deer Cr., Northern Lakes, Brainerd, Alexandria. Unfortunately Moorhead lacks much strong competition in its area, unless you go way north. Brainerd has the best chance of knocking off the Spuds every now and then, but this is probably the most predictable section I've created.
Section 14: Duluth East, Denfeld, Central, and Marshall, Hermantown, Proctor, Two Harbors, Cloquet, Moose Lake, Pine City. The strongest non-metro section which keeps the LSC and East-Cloquet rivalries intact. We finally get to answer the Marshall-East argument.
Section 15: Silver Bay, Ely, Virginia, Eveleth, Hibbing, I Falls, Greenway, Grand Rapids, Walker co-op. Eseentially the IRC with a few weak add-ons. Some great traditional powers; we'll see if some of them can revive past glory.
Section 16: LOW, Roseau, Warroad, Kittson Central, TRF, EGF, Red Lake Falls, Crookston, Bagley/Fosston. The Warroad-Roseau rivalry has renewed relevance. Some great small-town hockey here.

The biggest problems I see are logistical. Not would an extra round at the X be necessary, making for a very long week, but we'd also need locations for 16 section tournaments. Some are obvious, like the DECC for Section 14, but where would you hold Section 2 or 9? Would people care as much about sections anymore? This would also make for a lot more horribly uneven games, with former A weaklings meeting AA powerhouses in the first round, and probably a less competitive 1st round at State too. If we were to take the top team from each section according to PS2 and have a State Tourney, we'd get:
16 Lakeville South vs. 1 Hill-Murray (ugh...all that work for the same 1st-round matchup!)
15 Rochester Lourdes vs. 2 Edina
14 Wayzata vs. 3 STA
13 Little Falls vs. 4 Minnetonka
12 Mankato West vs. 5 Roseau
11 GR vs. 6 Centennial
10 Moorhead vs. 7 Blaine
9 Duluth East vs. 8 Burnsville

The last few would be good, but most would be blowouts.

Your thoughts on this mess?

[mulefarm]

I would like to see 8 sections. Crown a champion and runner-up in each section and then put them in opposite 8 team state brackets. Each bracket would have 4 champions and they would play a section runner-up. I think you would get some prssent class A teams in the tournament. Also, if the 2 best teams were in the same section, it would be possible to play for the state championship.

[komada77]

Here's one of my posts from a different thread that also applies to this one:

Here are some of the most common arguments for what the MSHSL should do with the state tournament:

1: Have separate public school and private school state tournaments. I personally would enjoy this because I think private schools are unnecessary, but I also realize that if this were to happen we would never have a true state champion, which would be terrible.

2: Go back to a single class system with 16 teams. This has the upside of (maybe, depending on how sections are done) getting the best 16 teams together in one tournament, but also eliminates many of the small northern schools from state tournament competition because there's just no way a team like Little Falls, who was in the A tournament, could compete with a team like Minnetonka or Burnsville, neither of whom was in the AA tournament.

3: Force all private schools to play AA. This also seems like a fair solution at first glance because we think that all private schools have a much larger pool of talent to choose from than public schools, but in reality this is true for probably 4 or 5 private schools in the state. This would also eliminate some of the good, but not great, private schools from state competition. An example from this year would be Blake, who made the A tourney but probably could not have come out of any AA section in the state (with the possible, but not necessarily likely, exception of 1AA).

In a perfect world, we could keep the 2 class system and base which teams play A/AA not on enrollment, but on ability. There really is no realistic way of doing this, so I think we should stick with what we have now and hope that STA grows some balls in the near future and decides to compete with teams who play at their level.

[Hockeyguy_27]

Impressive work Karl. I never gave much thought to how it would all work out logistically but think you've done a pretty good job (someone forward this to MSHL). The only thing (of course) I don't like is YOU STUCK THE HORNETS WITH AHA???? Trebil frightens me and Holy Angels needs to go in another section.

[PASTRAPIDSFAN]

Impressive work Karl. I never gave much thought to how it would all work out logistically but think you've done a pretty good job (someone forward this to MSHL). The only thing (of course) I don't like is YOU STUCK THE HORNETS WITH AHA???? Trebil frightens me and Holy Angels needs to go in another section.

Looksa good forward it to mshsl,maybe have all cities privates in one section then the winner will represent that section at state

[wbmd]

Section 5: Park (CG), Simley, Burnsville, Rosemount, Eastview, Apple Valley, Woodbury, So. St. Paul, River Lakes, Henry Sibley. Here we go from a string of weak sections to one that's probably too strong. Burnsville's the class of the section, but Woodbury, EV, and Rosemount are good and AV and SSP have nice histories.

Quite the travel for River Lakes.

[karl(east)]

[quote="wbmd"][quote="karl(east)"][b]Section 5: Park (CG), Simley, Burnsville, Rosemount, Eastview, Apple Valley, Woodbury, So. St. Paul, River Lakes, Henry Sibley. Here we go from a string of weak sections to one that's probably too strong. Burnsville's the class of the section, but Woodbury, EV, and Rosemount are good and AV and SSP have nice histories.[/b][/quote]

Quite the travel for River Lakes.[/quote]

Yeah, I lost them in the mix part way through then realized they needed a section. The sad reality is that this section needed another bottom-feeder, while the area they were in anyway was bad enough as it is.

[pondyplayer93]

or just do a 64 team tournament that would be a ton easier and would create more exciting hockey

[Cabela10]

Clue me in, where is River Lakes?

[wbmd]

Clue me in, where is River Lakes?

Good question - and all I can tell you is that they were in 8AA this year.

[DKS1962]

Karl, Lots of time put in Thanks.

I think you still have to have a 2 class Tourny..(Big School-Little School)

Small out-state hockey communities can't compete year after year with
the big schools.(except your hockey towns Rosseau)

On occasion a small community will have a banner year or two of hockey
talent. A few studs, couple of grinders but not a lot of depth. Examples
Mankato West, Little Falls, Park Rapids this year.Hutchinson, Fergus Falls,
Princeton, Silver Bay, Mora, and others from other State Tourny years.

These kids from small communities have played hockey together since
the Mite level. All they want is a chance to compete with teams their size
for a State Championship. Very slim chance that they could knock off Edina. Even if its as some have posted the JV tourny( A Hockey)

[karl(east)]

River Lakes is a co-op consisting of:
Albany HS
Belgrade-Brooten-Belrosa HS
Eden Valley-Watkins HS
New London-Spicer HS
Paynesville Area HS
Rocori HS
St. John's Prep

It's a bunch of tiny schools that banded together to form a hockey team. Unfortunately for them, the combined enrollment of all of them forces them into AA, despite barely fielding a team.

If you want to see it on a map, I recommend the MSHSL's site, which has a very entertaining interactive map:
http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/googlemap.asp

[ozzie679]

River Lakes is a co-op consisting of:
Albany HS
Belgrade-Brooten-Belrosa HS
Eden Valley-Watkins HS
New London-Spicer HS
Paynesville Area HS
Rocori HS
St. John's Prep

It's a bunch of tiny schools that banded together to form a hockey team. Unfortunately for them, the combined enrollment of all of them forces them into AA, despite barely fielding a team.

If you want to see it on a map, I recommend the MSHSL's site, which has a very entertaining interactive map:
http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/googlemap.asp

What's really sad, is that half of those communities don't even know their schools have a hockey program. However, there is very strong support for SCSU hockey in West Central MN.

[MNHockeyFan]

I just don't understand all of the crying about the current system and the private schools on this site. Remember that the Tournaments just set a new attendance record and there is no other hockey tournment like it in the country. Drastic fiddling with it could easily change all that.

As for the supposed domination by the private schools, if you look back at the history of the tournament, this is simply not the case. These are the 2A teams, by year, that have taken home hardware since the tournament went to two classes beginning in 1992:

.........Champion - Runner-Up - Third Place - Consolation
2008: Hill Murray - Edina - BSM - Woodbury
2007: Roseau - Grand Rapids - Rochester Century - Edina
2006: CDH - Grand Rapids - Blaine - Minnetonka
2005: AHA - Moorhead - Duluth East - WBL
2004: Centennial - Moorhead -Duluth East - AHA
2003: Anoka - Roseville - AHA - WBL
2002: AHA - Hill Murray - Roseville - Elk River
2001: Elk River - Moorhead -Greenway - Eastview
2000: Blaine - Duluth East - Hastings - Roseau
1999: Roseau - Hastings - Elk River - Blaine
1998: Duluth East - Anoka - Bloomington Jefferson - Hastings
1997: Edina - Duluth East - Moorhead - Anoka
1996: Apple Valley - Edina - Duluth East - Alexandria
1995: Duluth East - Moorhead - Edina - Bloomington Jefferson
1994: Bloomington Jefferson - Moorhead -Duluth East - WBL
1993: Bloomington Jefferson - Hill Murray - Moorhead - Anoka
1992: Bloomington Jefferson - Moorhead - Blaine - Apple Valley

Champion
Bloomington Jefferson: 3
AHA: 2
Roseau: 2
Duluth East: 2
Hill Murray: 1
CDH: 1
Centennial: 1
Anoka: 1
Elk River: 1
Blaine: 1
Edina: 1
Apple Valley: 1
Totals: Public Schools 13, Private Schools 4

Runner-Up
Public Schools 15, Private Schools 2

Third Place
Public Schools 15, Private Schools 2

Consolation
Public Schools 16, Private Schools 1

Totals of 2A Teams Winning Trophies
Public Schools 59, Private Schools 9

Hardly domination by any one team over the 17 years since we went to a two class tournament - pretty good balance I would say. Some teams have gotten hot for certain stretches, but many different teams are represented. No matter how you look at it, there's no need for a big overhaul!

As for Class A, I believe this is mainly about allowing smaller enrollment schools to participate, and overhauling the whole system for 1A considerations would be like wagging the tail by the dog.

[DKS1962]

Ro-Co-Ri
Rockford-Cold Spring-Richmond huge Basketball community
doing their best to play hockey.

[pondyplayer93]

I just don't understand all of the crying about the current system and the private schools on this site. Remember that the Tournaments just set a new attendance record and there is no other hockey tournment like it in the country. Drastic fiddling with it could easily change all that.

As for the supposed domination by the private schools, if you look back at the history of the tournament, this is simply not the case. These are the 2A teams, by year, that have taken home hardware since the tournament went to two classes beginning in 1992:

.........Champion - Runner-Up - Third Place - Consolation
2008: Hill Murray - Edina - BSM - Woodbury
2007: Roseau - Grand Rapids - Rochester Century - Edina
2006: CDH - Grand Rapids - Blaine - Minnetonka
2005: AHA - Moorhead - Duluth East - WBL
2004: Centennial - Moorhead -Duluth East - AHA
2003: Anoka - Roseville - AHA - WBL
2002: AHA - Hill Murray - Roseville - Elk River
2001: Elk River - Moorhead -Greenway - Eastview
2000: Blaine - Duluth East - Hastings - Roseau
1999: Roseau - Hastings - Elk River - Blaine
1998: Duluth East - Anoka - Bloomington Jefferson - Hastings
1997: Edina - Duluth East - Moorhead - Anoka
1996: Apple Valley - Edina - Duluth East - Alexandria
1995: Duluth East - Moorhead - Edina - Bloomington Jefferson
1994: Bloomington Jefferson - Moorhead -Duluth East - WBL
1993: Bloomington Jefferson - Hill Murray - Moorhead - Anoka
1992: Bloomington Jefferson - Moorhead - Blaine - Apple Valley

Champion
Bloomington Jefferson: 3
AHA: 2
Roseau: 2
Duluth East: 2
Hill Murray: 1
CDH: 1
Centennial: 1
Anoka: 1
Elk River: 1
Blaine: 1
Edina: 1
Apple Valley: 1
Totals: Public Schools 13, Private Schools 4

Runner-Up
Public Schools 15, Private Schools 2

Third Place
Public Schools 15, Private Schools 2

Consolation
Public Schools 16, Private Schools 1

Totals of 2A Teams Winning Trophies
Public Schools 59, Private Schools 9

Hardly domination by any one team over the 17 years since we went to a two class tournament - pretty good balance I would say. Some teams have gotten hot for certain stretches, but many different teams are represented. No matter how you look at it, there's no need for a big overhaul!

As for Class A, I believe this is mainly about allowing smaller enrollment schools to participate, and overhauling the whole system for 1A considerations would be like wagging the tail by the dog.

i think people are upset because 3 of the last 4 were private schools but 92-95 3 of them were jefferson and people didnt try to split them up..

[MNHockeyFan]

i think people are upset because 3 of the last 4 were private schools but 92-95 3 of them were jefferson and people didnt try to split them up..

Yes, but like I said these things go in cycles and you have to look at more than what happened in just the last 3-4 years to understand the big picture. From 1992-2001 public schools won it 10 consecutive years, and I don't remember hearing the private schools moan and complain about how unfair the system was to them.

[karl(east)]

[quote="MNHockeyFan"][quote="pondyplayer93"]i think people are upset because 3 of the last 4 were private schools but 92-95 3 of them were jefferson and people didnt try to split them up..[/quote]

Yes, but like I said these things go in cycles and you have to look at more than what happened in just the last 3-4 years to understand the big picture. From 1992-2001 public schools won it 10 consecutive years, and I don't remember hearing the private schools moan and complain about how unfair the system was to them.[/quote]

Well, we didn't have a bored to moan and complain on back then, did we?

After looking this over a bit, and the other scenario too, I think I have my personal conclusion...the system we have right now is the best. For now, anyway. I don't see this year kicking off some stream of private school dominance at the AA level. Benilde and Hill are both going to lose a number of significant players. AHA and CDH had down years and I don't expect to quite be there next year. But we'll see.

Single A is a different story. If, say, 3-5 years from now we're still seeing consistent domination by STA and Marshall, and neither shows any desire to move up, then something should probably be done about it. But we'll deal with that problem if and when we come to it.

[mainefan]

i think people are upset because 3 of the last 4 were private schools but 92-95 3 of them were jefferson and people didnt try to split them up..

Yes, but like I said these things go in cycles and you have to look at more than what happened in just the last 3-4 years to understand the big picture. From 1992-2001 public schools won it 10 consecutive years, and I don't remember hearing the private schools moan and complain about how unfair the system was to them.

Well, we didn't have a bored to moan and complain on back then, did we?

After looking this over a bit, and the other scenario too, I think I have my personal conclusion...the system we have right now is the best. For now, anyway. I don't see this year kicking off some stream of private school dominance at the AA level. Benilde and Hill are both going to lose a number of significant players. AHA and CDH had down years and I don't expect to quite be there next year. But we'll see.

Single A is a different story. If, say, 3-5 years from now we're still seeing consistent domination by STA and Marshall, and neither shows any desire to move up, then something should probably be done about it. But we'll deal with that problem if and when we come to it.

Karl very good conclusion. For all my gruffing about public/private, I think you have summed it up quite nicely and I think I will just shut up now.