Ranking Tournaments
Moderators: Mitch Hawker, east hockey, karl(east)
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savagegopher
- Posts: 75
- Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2012 10:20 am
Ranking Tournaments
I know the tournaments differ year to year, but has anyone ranked or rated the local summer tournaments? Rankings could be based on, Size of field, number of games, location, etc
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Shinbone_News
- Posts: 458
- Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:50 am
I'll bite. My two criteria would be quality of competition and tourney administration.
IMO, the Caribou is probably considered the best local tournament owing to the quality of competition -- often the only local that draws both the Blades and the Machine at older age levels. Not saying Blades or Machine are the best necessarily, but if they're not at a tournament, people are forced to speculate. Just a fact. Caribou is also one of the finest and most thorough tourney websites, a credit to host MN Icemen.
The Golden Walleye was quality for a few years, but I think it got sold or discontinued after last summer?
All of the United AAA tourneys have really improved in the way they're run, though it seems like they have trouble with parity in their huge open brackets. Not sure if they're still running the Summer Finale, but I was impressed with that one last year.
I thought Stars and Stripes was much improved this year, but not quite up to Caribou standards, especially the website.
In my experience Minnesota pretty much blows away any other state for summer AAA hockey tournaments, and many Canadian ones too, just as far as how they're run -- officiating, EMTs, clocks, venues, admin, rosters, etc.
IMO, the Caribou is probably considered the best local tournament owing to the quality of competition -- often the only local that draws both the Blades and the Machine at older age levels. Not saying Blades or Machine are the best necessarily, but if they're not at a tournament, people are forced to speculate. Just a fact. Caribou is also one of the finest and most thorough tourney websites, a credit to host MN Icemen.
The Golden Walleye was quality for a few years, but I think it got sold or discontinued after last summer?
All of the United AAA tourneys have really improved in the way they're run, though it seems like they have trouble with parity in their huge open brackets. Not sure if they're still running the Summer Finale, but I was impressed with that one last year.
I thought Stars and Stripes was much improved this year, but not quite up to Caribou standards, especially the website.
In my experience Minnesota pretty much blows away any other state for summer AAA hockey tournaments, and many Canadian ones too, just as far as how they're run -- officiating, EMTs, clocks, venues, admin, rosters, etc.
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Shinbone_News
- Posts: 458
- Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:50 am
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SCBlueLiner
- Posts: 665
- Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:11 pm
Was just at the Independent Cup this past weekend and thought it was a very well run tournament. The Open bracket the team was in had a lot of teams and was highly competitive, lots of close games. In the semifinal and final rounds there were upsets galore and quite a few OT and shootout games. I think these tournaments feel like they mean more when there are 12 teams in the division as opposed to a 5 team division.
Over the last couple years doing this I've been impressed with the tournaments the United AAA group runs and am looking forward to the next one of theirs we head to in August.
Over the last couple years doing this I've been impressed with the tournaments the United AAA group runs and am looking forward to the next one of theirs we head to in August.