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The best ever high school hockey player from Minnesota – RIP Henry Boucha.

LARSMONT – Being retired and unattached has some built-in advantages. I am basically able to run my schedule the way I want and see fit. 

As a result of that I got to see a great deal of this year’s Girls State High School Hockey Tournament and all of the Boys tourney. As always it was an epic event and on the Boys Championship Saturday night another attendance record was set with 20,346 fans on hand and a whopping 140,442 came through the turnstiles for the four-day hockey-palooza. 

That’s a far cry from the days of my youth in the Capital city when the tourney was held at the old St. Paul Auditorium, featured only eight teams and a big year was when it pushed an overall attendance toward 25,000 fans or so. But times change and things grow and hopefully improve. 

In this instance there has been both growth and improvement. This is THE premier event of high school sports in the U.S., bar none. It is two weeks of each year that captivates the majority of the entire state. We love it, celebrate it and there are few neutral parties anywhere in the NorthStar state when it comes to these championship tournaments.

In viewing both the girls and boys tourneys I was enthralled by the play in the quarterfinals but afterward I couldn’t get them out of my mind. 
Perhaps this was an unusual year but the quarterfinals mostly lacked any real tight or contested games. As time went by post-tournaments this kept gnawing at me to the point where I wondered if anyone else was giving this any thought. In examining the available data from this year’s tourneys this is what I found.

In the girl’s tourney in the Class A quarterfinals the four games had a combined score of 16-3 with one shutout. In the semis that figure was 7-4. The final had a 5-2 score. The Class A featured 6 outstate teams and 2 from the Metro area. In Class AA the quarters had a combined score of 21-3 in their 4 games with 2 shutouts. The semis had a 6-3 tally and the final had a 2-0 score. There were 2 outstate teams and 6 from the Metro. 

At the boy’s tournament the Class A quarters had a 24-4 combined score for 4 tilts with one shutout, the semis were much more competitive with an 11-9 combo total and the final was a 3-1 game. There were 6 outstate teams and 2 from the metro area. In Class AA the combined scores in the quarters were 17-8 with one shutout. The semis had a combination score of 11-3 and the championship game was a 2-1 nailbiter. There were 2 outstate teams and 6 Metro teams.  

In all four groups the quarterfinal games were mostly non-competitive. In three of the groups the semis were more competitive while one was not. In the championship round for all four groups only one team had a dominating performance. In considering the “championship” bracket games only, I viewed a win by 3 goals or more as a “blowout” victory. Between the 28 games of the four groups using that criteria 15 games qualified. 

This is some of the basic information I compiled at tourneys end. What does it mean? How would one interpret it? In the middle of doing this I couldn’t help but think back to late last season when a local parent wrote an opinion piece for the News-Tribune that spoke to the situation of his alma mater staying in the Class A category when in all likelihood they have a good enough program to move up to Class AA. 

He opined that their program’s dominance of the class coupled with the lack of desire or consensus to compete at their proper level of play only damaged the chances for other programs to experience the nirvana of a championship title. The piece was written by Scott Pionk of Hermantown.  
I’m not going to list all of the Hawk’s accomplishments as a program. They are impressive and the list is lengthy. Congrats to them. They put a ton of work into their youth and high school program and have been a tremendous success story. And – they have followed all of the rules and policies put forth by Minnesota Hockey and the MSHSL. 

As a former amateur hockey administrator I can recall a few USA Hockey meetings where program enrollment was discussed. We talked about how to build it and protect it once that was accomplished. That was years back but sticks with me to this day. I took it pretty seriously. It’s easy to get players to stick with winning programs. It isn’t easy at all when a program is at the back of the line, sometimes for seasons on end.  

If you have the misfortune of being in that boat how do you temper that and maintain enrollment? That’s where the discussion invariably turned to ensuring you are playing at the proper level of competition.
 

You can all but guarantee yourself some enrollment problems if you are trying to hang with the best when you aren’t at their level. Most kids who pour their hearts into something only to never have success at it will eventually seek out other pursuits. What are you trying to accomplish if you play at a level beneath your advanced skills? 

At some point wouldn’t you want to see how good you really are? That’s what people with thoroughbred horses and race cars do. 
Or is it only about easily filling trophy cases and massaging a few egos? I’m not sure. But I am sure that a mere five weeks back I wasn’t considering any of these issues. And now after watching the quarterfinals of four groups play some games that raised my eyebrows a bit, I’ve been thinking about them a lot while remembering that every single player on all 32 teams were giving themselves and their teams everything they had. 

That’s where the beauty lies. Win or lose, each of these kids was playing their hearts out, united for their teams and teammates in a common pursuit. 32 teams. 4 Champions. You knew when you signed on there would be joy and there would be disappointments. 

The moments of joy will be unforgettable, the disappointments are acceptable if all factors are level and you gave it your all. When I see four groups of quarters that feature 16 games and a combined score of 78-18, I figure the question needs to be asked. Are all things level here?

I know that cream rises to the top. I know there is a small finite group of players that have everything they need to excel in terms of training and teaching and the resources to obtain it. I know there are families and their players who have agendas and harbor visions of grandeur. I know there will be champions and those that are not. 

But that one simple question still won’t go away. 

Perhaps there is no answer because there is no problem. Just maybe my interpretation of the quarterfinal results needs a deeper look, maybe not. I’ll ask one more time just in case though, is everything level in state high school hockey here? PEACE