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Even in the first two weeks there were a lot of a important games played and there are more this week. If you see outstate teams play, please comment on them. Enjoy!

1. [1] East Grand Forks (3-0)
Wins over two Top 10 teams two days in a row is a great way to start the season. The Green Wave have two Grand Forks games followed by hosting Breck on Friday. East Grand Forks hasn't lost to a MN team since losing to Breck last seaon.
This week: Tues @ Grand Forks Central, Thurs vs Grand Forks Red River, Fri vs Breck

2. [2] Hermantown (1-1)
The Hawks lost to a Top 3 AA team by 1 on the road and followed that up with an OT win to an unranked team. As always, they control their own destiny and have the opportunity to play East Grand Forks in the next month. If the team who lost by 1 to Wayzata shows up this week, they should have no problem notching 3 more wins.
This week: Tues vs Cloquet, Fri vs Orono, Sat vs Hopkins

3. [6] Duluth Marshall (2-0)
The Hilltoppers beat Roseville by the same score in OT as Hermantown and followed that up with a shut out win over Breck. Starting their season with 5 home games, their next challenge should be on Saturday to a good team who will be have played Hermantown the night before.
This week: Tues vs Proctor, Fri vs Blake, Sat vs Orono

4. [4] Warroad (2-0)
The Warriors start their season with two wins over lesser opponents and should add two more this week before they travel to Grand Rapids on Saturday. This Saturday's game is 1 of 2 challenging games in their first 14 games that should be challenging, as their schedule strength comes in the new year.
This week: Tues @ Crookston, Fri @ Virgina, Sat @ Grand Rapids

5. [3] Breck (1-1)
Getting shut out in Duluth isn't a great way to start the season, but with a no goalie the beginning of the year won't tell us everything there is to know about this team. With their next 3 on the road, we will learn a lot this week.
This week: Tues @ Holy Family, Fri @ East Grand Forks, Sat @ Thief River Falls

6. [5] Mahtomedi (1-0)
The Zephyrs fall a spot this week through no fault of their own. Their games this week are home games, but they are against ranked teams. Can they still be undefeated at the end of the week?
This week: Tues vs Cathedral, Thurs vs St Paul Academy

7. [7] New Prague (2-0)
The Trojans can pick up two section wins this week. Returning their goalie and 3 of their skaters with double digits points last season should help them in Wright County this year.
This week: Tues @ Red Wing, Thurs vs Mankato West

8. [8] St. Cloud Cathedral (0-2)
The Crusaders lost to New Prague and East Grand Forks by the same score. They are likely not a Top 5 team, but have the opportunity to make things interesting in Mahtomedi this week.
This week: Tues @ Mahtomedi, Sat @ Lourdes

9. [10] Orono (0-1)
Playing two games north this week, the expectation is that the Spartans will be 0-3 at the end of the week, so anything better than that will be a bonus. They return their goalie and leading scorer from last year; can they help the team pick up a win over a top
This week: Fri @ Hermantown, Sat @ Duluth Marshall

10. [11] Thief River Falls (2-1)
The Prowlers are the 3rd 8A team in the Top 10. Their next 5 are all at home and 3 of them are against Top 5 teams. Thief River Falls plays more of the top Class A teams in the state than anyone else; how will they handle that?
This week: Fri vs Tartan, Sat vs Breck

11. [17] Luverne (2-0)
This is a big jump after not doing anything to deserve it, but the Cardinals showed they can skate with the top teams at the end of last season, lost in double OT to Totino and returned much more of their team than the Eagles this year. Can they make it to 5-0 this week?
This week: Tues vs Marshall, Thurs vs Redwood Valley, Sat @ St Paul Academy

12. [9] Totino-Grace (0-2)
With their conference games taking up a huge part of the schedule, the Eagles have only 7 Class A games and the first 2 were losses. It will definitely be difficult to rank them this year and it doesn't help that their next Class A game is not only 7 games away but against a Luverne team who is also difficult to rank.
This week: Thurs vs Blaine, Sat @ Coon Rapids

13. [12] Delano (1-1)
The Tigers don't play a very challenging schedule outside of conference play so taking care of business when they can will stop them from falling. After this week they will have played 4 section games.
This week: Tues vs St Louis Park, Thurs vs Chanhassen, Sat vs Kennedy

14. [16] St. Paul Academy (4-0)
The Spartans haven't beaten anyone noteworthy yet, but they are winning. If they are undefeated this time next week, they will jump at least a handful of spots. It is a bummer their Mahtomedi game is this early in the season and they don't play Totino, so Thursday's game will be very important for section seeding.
This week: Thurs @ Mahtomedi, Sat vs Luverne

15. [13] Blake (1-2)
With losses to teams ranked above them, the Bears don't fall much. Without many teams similarly ranked, they will likely be at the mercy of how the teams in spots 11-20 do for their ranking for the next month.
This week: Fri @ Duluth Marshall

16. [14] Mankato West (1-0)
The Scarlets lost to New Prague by 1 goal twice last season; can they reverse that this week despite the players they lost?
This week: Tues vs Mankato East, Thurs @ New Prague, Sat vs Red Wing

17. [16] Duluth Denfeld (1-1)
A road loss last week is difficult to gauge, but this week the Hunters can add two more wins before a couple good section games next week.
This week: Tues @ Greenway, Sat vs Eagan

18. [18] Alexandria (1-0)
The Cardinals have been contenders for section 6A for many years and this year will be no different. Apollo is one of a couple teams to challenge them for the 2nd spot and they could get a win this week.
This week: Tues @ River Lakes, Thurs vs Apollo

19. [19] Bloomington Kennedy (2-0)
The Eagles should challenge for a better seed in 2A this year and have the opportunity to pick up their first section win this week.
This week: Tues vs Northfield, Sat @ Delano

20. [-] St Cloud Apollo (1-0-1)
It was awesome to see the young Apollo team playing at the X two years ago. They have a junior goalie who has state tournament experience and return most of their top scorers. With Cathedral in their section, they aren't likely to go back to state, but they will try.
This week: Thurs @ Alexandria

EGF is 3-0

Great Rankings. I enjoy reading them every week.

With that said, I think you have Mankato West and Cathedral Overrated. When Cathedral goes 0-3 to start the season, I think people might start to recognize Alex as the Favorite in that Section. Mankato lost the majority of their core, and I dont think this season will materialize like last years did.

I would also argue that Alexandria and St. Paul Academy are Underrated. At a minimum Totino and St. Paul Academy should be flipped.

I also foresee the inclusion of Sartell St. Stephen and Duluth Marshall not being very many weeks away.

Its early in the year and everyone has alot to prove.

notTONIGHT wrote:Great Rankings. I enjoy reading them every week.

Thanks, much appreciated.

notTONIGHT wrote:With that said, I think you have Mankato West and Cathedral Overrated. When Cathedral goes 0-3 to start the season, I think people might start to recognize Alex as the Favorite in that Section. Mankato lost the majority of their core, and I dont think this season will materialize like last years did.

I would also argue that Alexandria and St. Paul Academy are Underrated. At a minimum Totino and St. Paul Academy should be flipped.

I also foresee the inclusion of Sartell St. Stephen and Duluth Marshall not being very many weeks away.

Its early in the year and everyone has alot to prove.

It's important to remember that I start every year with LPH's preseason rankings and go from there. I won't claim to know enough about the teams before the season starts to put something together. So, at this point, there have only been a few changes from that and not by much.

Last year was West's year. They were loaded. As I noted last week, they lost 9 of their double digit scorers to graduation and their goalie. My guess is that a couple weeks from now, they won't be as high as they are now.
It's also important to remember that, in my opinion, a team losing to a team ranked higher than them isn't cause for them to fall, or vice versa. If Cathedral ends up 0-3, it could mean they are appropriated ranked, not worse than their ranking.
I'm especially looking forward to this week's games with SPA, Mahtomedi, Luverne, West, New Prague, Alex, Apollo, EGF, Breck, Orono, Hermantown, Duluth Marshall....there's a lot of big games this week!

Watching the EGF vs TG, I was surprised to see how fast paced the game was. EGF might have the best line in state with Bowen leading them. I give credit to TG for sticking with EGF the whole game and it could've gone their way if they scored on some of their chances. TG will be able to skate with any class A team in the state.

Having watched Cathedral and SPA play Mahtomedi this week I see SPA as clearly the better team. Despite their youth, SPA was the quicker team and caused Mahtomedi more trouble than Cathedral. Mahtomedi dominated SCC for long stretches and it took a run of penalties by Mahtomedi in the third period that let SCC bring the shots close to even up.

nosoupforyou wrote:Having watched Cathedral and SPA play Mahtomedi this week I see SPA as clearly the better team. Despite their youth, SPA was the quicker team and caused Mahtomedi more trouble than Cathedral. Mahtomedi dominated SCC for long stretches and it took a run of penalties by Mahtomedi in the third period that let SCC bring the shots close to even up.

Just in 6A there are 4 teams better than Cathedral.

Anyone with any insight on the EGF/Red River game? EGF won the 2 match ups last year 5-1 and 5-0 and get shut out 5-0 this year?!
They started their back up, who got pulled less than 12 minutes in after giving up 3 goals, but that doesn't explain scoring 0 goals...

Has anyone seen Cathedral play? They haven't won yet (can today) but the teams they've lost to also haven't lost to any MN teams yet, so it's hard to tell a lot at this point...

Any thoughts on Mankato West? They lost the majority of their starters from last year to graduation and the only ranked team on their schedule aside from the New Prauge who just shut them out and the holiday tournament is Cathedral in their second to last game. Where should they be ranked, if at all?

HShockeywatcher wrote:Anyone with any insight on the EGF/Red River game? EGF won the 2 match ups last year 5-1 and 5-0 and get shut out 5-0 this year?!
They started their back up, who got pulled less than 12 minutes in after giving up 3 goals, but that doesn't explain scoring 0 goals...

For EGF my opinion was they were sorta taking GFRR for granted because of their record against them the last few years and having just soundly beaten GF Central on Tuesday, GFRR came out blazing and wanted this game way more the EGF. This was almost a replay of a game EGF had against TRF a couple years ago where nothing they did worked right the first 5 minutes and a goalie change stabilized it somewhat. They just had a collective bad night, from the first line of the varsity game to the the 4th line of the JV, not the best showing from EGF.

Also, I feel that EGF was looking past RR to the Breck game on Friday night, a game they rebounded nicely to win 4-1.

HShockeywatcher wrote:Anyone with any insight on the EGF/Red River game? EGF won the 2 match ups last year 5-1 and 5-0 and get shut out 5-0 this year?!
They started their back up, who got pulled less than 12 minutes in after giving up 3 goals, but that doesn't explain scoring 0 goals...

Has anyone seen Cathedral play? They haven't won yet (can today) but the teams they've lost to also haven't lost to any MN teams yet, so it's hard to tell a lot at this point...

Any thoughts on Mankato West? They lost the majority of their starters from last year to graduation and the only ranked team on their schedule aside from the New Prauge who just shut them out and the holiday tournament is Cathedral in their second to last game. Where should they be ranked, if at all?

Red River is a pretty good team. They'd be competitive with a lot of squads in Minnesota.

As for West, they'll still be a top two team in Section 1A. I don't see them beating New Prague for the section because the Scarlet's have lost so much. I'd put them in the low teens for rankings (they will win games, because the Big 9 isn't a great hockey conference...), but that's just me. In the off chance that they would make out of the section and to state, they wouldn't make a lot of noise there...

Luverne should not be ranked any higher then 15 in my opinion. No way they go any higher till they make state again. That is one pucksters opinion.

grandmeadowhockeyfan wrote:Luverne should not be ranked any higher then 15 in my opinion. No way they go any higher till they make state again. That is one pucksters opinion.

Why not? Have you seen them play this year?
They made it to state last year, put up 3 goals on a very good Hermantown squad last year (one of only 7 teams to score 3 or more on the Hawks last year), and went to 2 OTs with a good Totino-Grace team and return virtually their entire team this year.
Today's game with SPA should tell us a lot about them

In my opinion West is not a top twenty team this year, but if anything right around 20. I'd look at Sartell as a team to replace them in the top twenty in your next rankings, I think they have a very legitimate shot at coming out of 6A this year. I also think you have Luverne about right, they belong in the 8-12 range in my opinion. They have a very solid team with great top end talent, the only thing I see being suspect is goaltending, but from what I've read on some other threads he played well in the scrimmages where he was actually tested.

From what I have seen from Cathedral this season, I do not believe them to be a top 10 team.. I would put them somewhere between 13-17 although it's hard to judge when they have only played 3 top tier teams. What I thought would be a strength from them this season was their goaltending but 19 goals in three games is not good enough to get them out of their section. I agree that Sartell deserves to be inside the top 20 in your next rankings based on the games I have seen so far

HShockeywatcher wrote:

grandmeadowhockeyfan wrote:Luverne should not be ranked any higher then 15 in my opinion. No way they go any higher till they make state again. That is one pucksters opinion.

Why not? Have you seen them play this year?
They made it to state last year, put up 3 goals on a very good Hermantown squad last year (one of only 7 teams to score 3 or more on the Hawks last year), and went to 2 OTs with a good Totino-Grace team and return virtually their entire team this year.
Today's game with SPA should tell us a lot about them

Definitely should not be any higher than 15, based on the SPA game today