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WBMD, Barry boy. Keep slinging it you make yourself look bad.

All I sling is the truth and if you don't want to hear the truth....I'm sorry. And yes, Sager has made it to the dance 2 times but no that is not 2 more times than me. If we speak of respective levels in which we coach than I've got him by quite a few. You see, these kids are succeeding at the youth until they hit a certain road block. Which gets back to the thread....why is WB so inconsistant at the varsity level??? I say coaching, you say I'm a jerk!

Sorry about missing the 12-1-2 Centennial team. They are the one quality team WB beat in the NIT tourney. Congrats to my boys!

I said I won't get into X's and O's but do we need to start talking gunners, backers and quarterbacks?? For those close to WB you'll understand. For all you outsiders you'll have to ask Sager!!!

And Nitti, sorry, Mustangman there seems to be a lot of anomosity towards your coach over at MV.....that makes me the bad guy, right??

Just dropped in from browsing over on the youth site. Thought I'd start getting a feel for the issues going on at the high-school level.

I guess some of the immaturity just doesn't go away with time.

Oh well, back to the same issues with the mite and squirt parents -- where the kids really don't care what the "grown-ups" think either...

Have a great day everyone.

Did Sager take over in 01-02 or 02-03?

karl(east) wrote:Did Sager take over in 01-02 or 02-03?

He started in the 02-03 season.

it really just baffes me. ive been at wevery wb game this year and i never know what team wil show up. but you know within the first 5 minutes which team it is...i just down understand how you beat a team like centennial and lose to a team like roseville. it really is just beyond anything i can comprehend

blanco oso wrote:it really just baffes me. ive been at wevery wb game this year and i never know what team wil show up. but you know within the first 5 minutes which team it is...i just down understand how you beat a team like centennial and lose to a team like roseville. it really is just beyond anything i can comprehend

Hockey is pretty much like any other sport out there. If you score more than your opponent, you win! When you score "0" goals (like against Roseville) you will not win 100% of the time. When you score "6" goals (like against Centennial) you will win a very high percentage of the time.

On any given day, anybody can beat anybody. A hot goalie can carry a team to victory. Talent level, heart, and effort play a big factor in how a team performs. Let's just hope all of these are at their peak during sections.

I have been a WBL fan for as long as I can remember, and have not missed more than 20 games since Brian Bonin was a sophmore. It's time to quit bashing coaches, and other staff, and just be thankfull we have the quality of hockey we have. Anybody that can claim a top 15 or 20(and usually top 10) team year after year like WBL can should just be happy period. There are many die-hard fans from others schools, that would love to be in our shoes. Sure, there are times when I question coaching decisions,(Like any fan) but to tell the truth, the coaches know far more about hockey than I do.

As a big Hill-Murray follower, nobody has taken more potshots at WBL than I have over the past many years. However I do not think Tim Sager is the problem at WBL. I'm also not an X's & O's guy nor have I been in the Bear locker room. I have seen all of the WBL-HM games plus a few other WBL games since Sager took over. His teams appear to be well coached and play hard. His 2005 team was probably the best in the state. They just didn't get it done in the quarterfinal game with Duluth East. He has had his share of disciplinary problems that have screwed up entire seasons (just like this year at Hill-Murray). But, like HM, they usually are playing their best hockey at the end of the season. His team this year is young and talented. If they can find a replacement for Collette next year I expect that they will be very good and the favorite in the SEC and Section 4AA. The section tournament in a few weeks is wide open with 5 teams that can win it, including WB.

I decided to look beyond the sniping at Sager's record at WBL and compare it to the time period immediately preceding him.

Over 6 full seasons, Sager's teams have:
An average 21.07 PS2 rating
122 wins (avg. 20.33/year)
44 losses (avg. 7.33/year)
Final PS2 ranks of, in ascending order, 5,5,6,6,9,13
Been ranked 1st in their secton 2 times, 2nd 4 times, by PS2;
and 1st 2 times, 2nd once, 3rd twice, and 4th once in the seedings.
2 State Tourney appearances.

Now, compare that to the 5 years beforehand. (I'd have liked to do 6 for a good comparison, but WBL was awful in 97, went 7-13-1, ended up seeded 4th, and predictably lost to Hill in the semis. They were ranked 37th by PS2. It'd probably skew the data too much.)

These teams have:
An average 20.24 PS2 rating
93 wins (avg. 18.6/year)
38 losses (avg. 7.6/year)
Final PS2 ranks of, in ascending order, 4,8,9,15,17
Been ranked 1st in the section twice, 2nd twice, and 3rd once by PS2;
and 1st 3 times, 2nd once, and 3rd once in the seedings.
2 State Tourney Appearances

There are no PS2 rankings/Section tourney info for WBL prior to 1997 in the Minnhock archives. They did, however, go to state 3 times in a row before this stretch (94-96). Of course they lost in the 1st round each time. I am not very impressed by this run; 2 of their losses were to other not-so-good teams, both of which lost their next 2 games at State. The other loss was a slaughter at the hands of a good Moorhead team. Seeing as Hill wasn't doing much at this point in time either (even when they went to State), I'm inclined to say 3AA was rather weak in the mid-90s, and that WBL's section titles in that era are not comparable to what Sager has to fight now, over even what Hurt and Butters went through in the 97-02 period.

Conclusion: WBL's lack of success has nothing to do with Sager. They've actually been slightly better with him on board than they were in the period immediately preceding his arrival. I'd base his perceived "failure" on two things:

1. The WBL-Hill issue. Sager is 1-4 in playoff games vs. Hill, whereas his predecessors from 98-02 were only 1-2. He's the victim of having to play them all but one year in Sections, and like it or not, any WBL coach will be compared to his contemporary at Hill. Here, Sager has a near-impossible task in getting matched up with Lechner.

I'd also note that of the 4 losses, they were the lower seed in 3 of those, and of those 3, 2 were 1-goal games, while the other was a 2-goal game. Both times they've been seeded first, they've won the section. When they haven't, they've lost to Hill.

Of his predecessors' losses to Hill, 2 involved WBL as the #1 seed going down. The other involved them as a #2 seed upsetting Hill. That was in 98.

Sager also had good Centennial teams as obstacles for a few years; his predecessors didn't. He beat them the only time they met in sections.

Sure Sager hasn't done well against Hill, but he's not really doing much worse than anyone else was when it really matters.

2. The whole WBL issue with close games, in a broader sense. The 0-for-17 in State 1st-round games is at the point where it isn't a coincidence. There's obviously some sort of mental block built up by now; some sort of inferiority/"here we go again" complex. The last 6 first-round losses have been by one goal...you can't tell me that's all been luck or talent edge.

When this complex sets in, it usually filters down into less important games too. That's probably how you can explain some of the inability to win big, close games, even in the regular season. This isn't Sager's fault. He obviously hasn't been the solution so far, but he clearly isn't near the root of the problem either.

I don't think this is something a coach can change. Some day, they'll get some lucky bounce somewhere, and the success will snowball from there. But for now, WBL just has to keep weathering the storm and continue to create opportunities to win. They're not alone in facing this scenario, they just have the worst case of it in High School Hockey today.

Wow, that was long. But insightful, hopefully.

karl(east) wrote:I decided to look beyond the sniping at Sager's record at WBL and compare it to the time period immediately preceding him.

Over 6 full seasons, Sager's teams have:
An average 21.07 PS2 rating
122 wins (avg. 20.33/year)
44 losses (avg. 7.33/year)
Final PS2 ranks of, in ascending order, 5,5,6,6,9,13
Been ranked 1st in their secton 2 times, 2nd 4 times, by PS2;
and 1st 2 times, 2nd once, 3rd twice, and 4th once in the seedings.
2 State Tourney appearances.

Now, compare that to the 5 years beforehand. (I'd have liked to do 6 for a good comparison, but WBL was awful in 97, went 7-13-1, ended up seeded 4th, and predictably lost to Hill in the semis. They were ranked 37th by PS2. It'd probably skew the data too much.)

These teams have:
An average 20.24 PS2 rating
93 wins (avg. 18.6/year)
38 losses (avg. 7.6/year)
Final PS2 ranks of, in ascending order, 4,8,9,15,17
Been ranked 1st in the section twice, 2nd twice, and 3rd once by PS2;
and 1st 3 times, 2nd once, and 3rd once in the seedings.
2 State Tourney Appearances

There are no PS2 rankings/Section tourney info for WBL prior to 1997 in the Minnhock archives. They did, however, go to state 3 times in a row before this stretch (94-96). Of course they lost in the 1st round each time. I am not very impressed by this run; 2 of their losses were to other not-so-good teams, both of which lost their next 2 games at State. The other loss was a slaughter at the hands of a good Moorhead team. Seeing as Hill wasn't doing much at this point in time either (even when they went to State), I'm inclined to say 3AA was rather weak in the mid-90s, and that WBL's section titles in that era are not comparable to what Sager has to fight now, over even what Hurt and Butters went through in the 97-02 period.

Conclusion: WBL's lack of success has nothing to do with Sager. They've actually been slightly better with him on board than they were in the period immediately preceding his arrival. I'd base his perceived "failure" on two things:

1. The WBL-Hill issue. Sager is 1-4 in playoff games vs. Hill, whereas his predecessors from 98-02 were only 1-2. He's the victim of having to play them all but one year in Sections, and like it or not, any WBL coach will be compared to his contemporary at Hill. Here, Sager has a near-impossible task in getting matched up with Lechner.

I'd also note that of the 4 losses, they were the lower seed in 3 of those, and of those 3, 2 were 1-goal games, while the other was a 2-goal game. Both times they've been seeded first, they've won the section. When they haven't, they've lost to Hill.

Of his predecessors' losses to Hill, 2 involved WBL as the #1 seed going down. The other involved them as a #2 seed upsetting Hill. That was in 98.

Sager also had good Centennial teams as obstacles for a few years; his predecessors didn't. He beat them the only time they met in sections.

Sure Sager hasn't done well against Hill, but he's not really doing much worse than anyone else was when it really matters.

2. The whole WBL issue with close games, in a broader sense. The 0-for-17 in State 1st-round games is at the point where it isn't a coincidence. There's obviously some sort of mental block built up by now; some sort of inferiority/"here we go again" complex. The last 6 first-round losses have been by one goal...you can't tell me that's all been luck or talent edge.

When this complex sets in, it usually filters down into less important games too. That's probably how you can explain some of the inability to win big, close games, even in the regular season. This isn't Sager's fault. He obviously hasn't been the solution so far, but he clearly isn't near the root of the problem either.

I don't think this is something a coach can change. Some day, they'll get some lucky bounce somewhere, and the success will snowball from there. But for now, WBL just has to keep weathering the storm and continue to create opportunities to win. They're not alone in facing this scenario, they just have the worst case of it in High School Hockey today.

Wow, that was long. But insightful, hopefully.

I believe it was yesterday that you said: "As for the the the topic at hand, regarding Sager...I'm staying as far away as I can." I guess Washington DC (or 24 hours) isn't far enough.

PS.. anybody willing to go back in time to get this level of detail is allright by me.

BodyShots wrote:I believe it was yesterday that you said: "As for the the the topic at hand, regarding Sager...I'm staying as far away as I can." I guess Washington DC (or 24 hours) isn't far enough.

PS.. anybody willing to go back in time to get this level of detail is allright by me.

The tempation was a bit too strong, apparently...

If they can find a replacement for Collette next year I expect that they will be very good and the favorite in the SEC and Section 4AA. The section

I don't get asked by my people to shot chart JV goalies, but my recollection of the rosters and via my contacts is that both are sophomore goalies or is one a junior?? Both have trained with Goalcrease and one is a 6'?? Other than that, anybody know anything?

When I read all the other major team forums, I am so enthralled by the rhetoric and passion on this WBL team, it cracks me up how brutal and tough you people are.

KARL, you offer so much intellect on virtually every post I see you get involved in and kudos for you passion for high school hockey. I assume you have no affiliation to WBL, am I correct?

Great post by karl. Enough said.

midwesthockeyscout wrote:When I read all the other major team forums, I am so enthralled by the rhetoric and passion on this WBL team, it cracks me up how brutal and tough you people are.

KARL, you offer so much intellect on virtually every post I see you get involved in and kudos for you passion for high school hockey. I assume you have no affiliation to WBL, am I correct?

Thank you.

No, I have no affiliation to WBL. To be honest, I'm not much of a fan of them or Hill. I'm a Duluth East grad, but have no real ties to anywhere else in Minnesota.

karl i couldnt agree more. so i guess the problem that arises now is...how the "he double hockey sticks" do you beat HILL! im a senior at WB and havent seen us beat hill in 4 years now...and if i dont see it, im gonna be ticked!

Pioneerprideguy wrote:Lechner is a bright man/coach.

No one who wears a gawdawful green and white horizontal-striped sweater in public can possibly be called "bright."

blanco oso wrote:karl i couldnt agree more. so i guess the problem that arises now is...how the "he double hockey sticks" do you beat HILL! im a senior at WB and havent seen us beat hill in 4 years now...and if i dont see it, im gonna be ticked!

I know the feeling, somewhat.

Though if Hill ever handed WBL a chance to upend the trend on a platter, this is the year. We'll see how each reacts to that in a month or so.

As I've spent a good 20 minutes reading through this entire thread. I've noticed plenty of comments regarding the talent being down, or the coaching not being up to par, and how this team has succeeded at a high level through youth stages. All of these things are being brought up entirely because of two main reasons. 1. There current record doesn't resemble what we're used to seeing from White Bear. 2. The inability to succeed at state or get by Hill Murray over the last few years resulting in failed seasons.

As a graduate of WBL, and a fan for years. I feel all of us are used to being spoiled with having a perennial top tier team each year, because we're White Bear Lake and it's whats expected from them each year. I'm as frustrated as many of you are having such high expectations each year, to witness the same ending result with a section final loss or another first round exit at state.

To get to my point. Since Sager has come here, the bar has seemed to rise even higher. And he has not delivered on what I, and I'm sure others have hoped for. But in all fairness, he can't be blamed for alot of things that have happened either. In 03' "senior goalie of the year" Jon Anderson gives up three third period goals blowing a 3-1 lead against Roseville to be knocked out of the first round. In 05', arguably the top team in the state loses to Duluth East blowing yet again another 3rd period lead. In 06' double OT thriller loss to Hill coming from a 3-0 deficit after he took a great timeout to regroup his team in the 2nd period. And same old tune the last couple years in the last two section championships to a Hill team that one state last year.

I know I could ramble on forever about this, but it really is all about frustration when it comes to White Bear. And now it seems like when this team has been so close over the last number of years, the program may be taking a step back. Which I for one don't think is happening now, or anytime soon. I just hope one day I won't be frustrated no more.

The Gumper wrote:

Pioneerprideguy wrote:Lechner is a bright man/coach.

No one who wears a gawdawful green and white horizontal-striped sweater in public can possibly be called "bright."

It was a gift from the Hamburgler & he only wears it on special nights like a section final or wedding anniversary.

WBLHockeyfan04 wrote:As I've spent a good 20 minutes reading through this entire thread. I've noticed plenty of comments regarding the talent being down, or the coaching not being up to par, and how this team has succeeded at a high level through youth stages. All of these things are being brought up entirely because of two main reasons. 1. There current record doesn't resemble what we're used to seeing from White Bear. 2. The inability to succeed at state or get by Hill Murray over the last few years resulting in failed seasons.

As a graduate of WBL, and a fan for years. I feel all of us are used to being spoiled with having a perennial top tier team each year, because we're White Bear Lake and it's whats expected from them each year. I'm as frustrated as many of you are having such high expectations each year, to witness the same ending result with a section final loss or another first round exit at state.

To get to my point. Since Sager has come here, the bar has seemed to rise even higher. And he has not delivered on what I, and I'm sure others have hoped for. But in all fairness, he can't be blamed for alot of things that have happened either. In 03' "senior goalie of the year" Jon Anderson gives up three third period goals blowing a 3-1 lead against Roseville to be knocked out of the first round. In 05', arguably the top team in the state loses to Duluth East blowing yet again another 3rd period lead. In 06' double OT thriller loss to Hill coming from a 3-0 deficit after he took a great timeout to regroup his team in the 2nd period. And same old tune the last couple years in the last two section championships to a Hill team that one state last year.

I know I could ramble on forever about this, but it really is all about frustration when it comes to White Bear. And now it seems like when this team has been so close over the last number of years, the program may be taking a step back. Which I for one don't think is happening now, or anytime soon. I just hope one day I won't be frustrated no more.

I agree, like I said, it's time to stop bashing coaches, and be thankful for the level of hockey we have enjoyed for years at White Bear.

Pioneerprideguy wrote:It was a gift from the Hamburgler & he only wears it on special nights like a section final or wedding anniversary.

The Hamburglar called. He needs it back for a celebrity appearance.

Please, coach, return it before the section final...

blanco oso wrote:karl i couldnt agree more. so i guess the problem that arises now is...how the "he double hockey sticks" do you beat HILL! im a senior at WB and havent seen us beat hill in 4 years now...and if i dont see it, im gonna be ticked!

Chances are pretty good that you're going to be ticked then.

wbmd wrote:

blanco oso wrote:karl i couldnt agree more. so i guess the problem that arises now is...how the "he double hockey sticks" do you beat HILL! im a senior at WB and havent seen us beat hill in 4 years now...and if i dont see it, im gonna be ticked!

Chances are pretty good that you're going to be ticked then.

haha god wbmd your whole life revolves around bashing wb. those are the only posts i ever see you do. anyways, i guess were just going to have to see if WB chokes in sections again or can finalyy get it done, because i think this will be their best chance they are going to get in a while