Andover vs. Elk River

[LZ94]

Currently heading to 3rd OT. Elk River goalie with 69 saves through the 2nd OT. Must be quite the atmosphere.

Anyone there?

[MNHockeyFan]

Alexandria, Hill-Murray and Blake won their games today by a combined score of 42-0.

[MNHockeyFan]

Back to hockey, Andover and Elk River are still tied at 3-3. At last report shots were 76-41.

[nu2hockey]

Andover 4-3. 4OT

[MNHockeyFan]

Andover 4-3. 4OT

Winning goal scored by Sara Kaiser, who is just a 9th grader. What a thrill it must have been for her.

[jg2112]

Alexandria, Hill-Murray and Blake won their games today by a combined score of 42-0.

Maybe we've got the wrong approach on "fixing" the postseason for girls hockey. Perhaps the top 32 teams, regardless of class, should be entered into a double elimination tourney. Let the rest of the teams play a final game or two, a la the bowl season in college football. Allow teams up to 28 games if they want.

17 first round games finished in running time. That benefits nobody.

[zooomx]

Alexandria, Hill-Murray and Blake won their games today by a combined score of 42-0.

Maybe we've got the wrong approach on "fixing" the postseason for girls hockey. Perhaps the top 32 teams, regardless of class, should be entered into a double elimination tourney. Let the rest of the teams play a final game or two, a la the bowl season in college football. Allow teams up to 28 games if they want.

17 first round games finished in running time. That benefits nobody.

Yes, those first round section games can be silly. I would prefer the sections have some play in games for the last semi-final spot in sections like 6A. We have 7 teams and seed 1 got a bye, 2 played 7, etc. That being said, girls hockey is still transforming. 10-15 years ago if you had a couple really strong players you had a great chance to advance far. Now you have to have some strong players and solid depth to do anything in most sections. There are a lot more quality teams in the state than their used to be. In 6A, Fergus has really come on. River Lakes and Willmar are stronger as well. Unfortunately, the gap has widened and smaller schools that have not been able to advance girls hockey have struggled.

Not sure what the answer is to all the running time games. Every team gets the opportunity to play in the section tournaments and I don't think you can take that away from those teams. Unless you do more play in games like mentioned above, it is just the nature of the beast.

[ghshockeyfan]

17 first round games finished in running time. That benefits nobody.

Ending many seasons (and careers) by one or two touchdowns.

Horrible way to go out.

What is the point to scoring anything in double digits?

[zooomx]

17 first round games finished in running time. That benefits nobody.

Ending many seasons (and careers) by one or two touchdowns.

Horrible way to go out.

What is the point to scoring anything in double digits?

They are always tough situations. You are in a section tournament and if you are the hammer, do you ask your players to stop trying? The issue is with the way sections schedule the pairings. Let the weakest teams get knocked out by a someone other than the top 2 teams in the section by having a play in game.

[ghshockeyfan]

17 first round games finished in running time. That benefits nobody.

Ending many seasons (and careers) by one or two touchdowns.

Horrible way to go out.

What is the point to scoring anything in double digits?

They are always tough situations. You are in a section tournament and if you are the hammer, do you ask your players to stop trying? The issue is with the way sections schedule the pairings. Let the weakest teams get knocked out by a someone other than the top 2 teams in the section by having a play in game.

I don't disagree about other ways of structuring to avoid.

There are ways to handle these situations and not score nearly 20 goals.

I get it though. Not the time of season to call off the dogs, etc. I just think it's classless and agree to disagree.

[jg2112]

I do think the MSHSL has to approach the postseason for girls hockey differently. The sections setup isn't practical, especially when teams can self-select up or down. Either have true integrity in the sections approach (i.e., keep Blake and Hill-Murray in A, and Minneapolis and St. Paul / Sibley in AA), or scrap it for the arbitrary process it is.

How about this? There are 117 teams. 11 or 12 are private schools.

What if the private schools play a postseason tourney, and the winner plays the public school champion in the last game of the season? In the case of a 106 team public schools bracket, the top 22 teams would get first round byes. The winner of such a tourney would play 5 or 6 games, just like now.

[zooomx]

Ending many seasons (and careers) by one or two touchdowns.

Horrible way to go out.

What is the point to scoring anything in double digits?

They are always tough situations. You are in a section tournament and if you are the hammer, do you ask your players to stop trying? The issue is with the way sections schedule the pairings. Let the weakest teams get knocked out by a someone other than the top 2 teams in the section by having a play in game.

I don't disagree about other ways of structuring to avoid.

There are ways to handle these situations and not score nearly 20 goals.

I get it though. Not the time of season to call off the dogs, etc. I just think it's classless and agree to disagree.

Would love to hear you ideas on how to handle these situations, especially at the high school level. The team in question definitely did not have their foot on the gas by any means. Also, no taunting, over the top celebrations, nor rough play. The opposing team had 12 skaters and 5 of them were 7th graders. Easy to use the term "classless" when you don't know the coaches or the players, or saw the game. They were passing around the offensive zone A LOT. Outside of playing "keep away" and even further embarrassing the other team, I am unsure what else could have been done. Hats off to the opposing coach who kept his head and some of his girls were smiling and laughing it off at the end. They never gave up, they just never had a chance to be in this game.

[bodyup88]

There is no easy answer to this without shaking up the system. The combined scores of the 7 first round 1 vs. 8 games were 62-2 (section 5AA only has 7 teams so Maple Grove had a bye). That's an average score of 8.9 - 0.3. I think we can all at least agree that none of the first round games were competitive. The 2 vs. 7 games were a little more competitive with combined scores of 42-7 in favor of the high seeds. However, there was one upset as #7 Park defeated #2 Burnsville 2-1 in OT in section 3AA.

As I've mentioned before IMO it's time to blow up the sections. They truly have no significance in girls AA hockey. They can't even get current section pairings balanced. Why, with 65 teams, do we have 2 sections of nine and one section with seven? Did anyone ever suggest a common sense switch of moving Osseo/PC from 6AA to 5AA to make 2 sections of 8 teams instead of a 9 and a 7? Also, the play-in games are not solving any problems: the two play-in winners both lost 11-0 vs. the #1 seeds.

Drop anyone out of the top 56 teams to a "friendship" type post-season game where they can play a competitive last game of the season/career.
Seed the the remaining teams 1-56 and give #1-8 teams a bye. Play higher seeds at home for the first two rounds and take top 16 to neutral sites. I've previously advocated having one northern section but I've since come around to simply seeding everyone. Why penalize a Roseau or Brainerd if they both deserve to advance? Some years you might have two or more northern teams and some years you might not have any. The geographic integrity is already blown up anyway, e.g. NWC going to Roseau for a 6 pm section semi-final game tomorrow. Under my proposal, NWC would host someone like East Ridge tomorrow night.

Yes, this requires thinking differently than we always have (I won't say "outside the box"). However, we are reminded that this is the 25th anniversary of the girls state hockey tourney. It's not so steeped in tradition that it can't be altered for the good of all parties involved. If we never changed anything, a) we wouldn't have girls varsity hockey at all and b) the 4 teams in the state tourney would still be playing at Aldrich.

[alcloseshaver]

Nice job high jacking the thread.

[Bandy]

Seems obvious, but...

Hats off to the ER goalie. From the SOG, looks like she got freakin' peppered. Kept them in the game to 4OT. What a game to be at, for those lucky enough to be there.