The 2025 Boys Hockey Class A Tournament features some familiar faces and some new blood coming to St. Paul this year and this looks to be shaping up to be a very good overall Class A Tournament. With no real dominant team this year in Class A and all eight teams finishing in the final top 20 Class A ranking this should be one of the better Wednesday through Saturday Tourneys in Class A history that we have seen.

Youth Hockey State Champs Ready to Replicate Success

Two of the BHS Hockey Class A teams in this year's field come in with a championship pedigree from their youth hockey days. East Grand Forks Senior class, when they were in middle school, were able to win back-to-back Bantam State Titles coming up through the youth ranks, and they will want to replicate that now in St Paul. Hibbing/Chisholm's 9th grade, Sophomore & Junior classes won both the A Pee Wee & A Bantam State titles in the same year. The Blue Jackets are young and talented and have gone through two of Class A's top five teams just to get here. They are ready to replicate their youth hockey success at the X this coming week.

Coaching Legend Back at State in a New Class

Northern Lakes made a big splash this offseason when they hired coaching Legend Mike Randolph to take over their young and growing program. Things started out with a bang as they became the State's all-time wins leader when the Lightning won their opener, and though they went through some adjusting, they came into the tourney 15-5-1 since the beginning of the new year. Now Coach Randolph will do something new as he will be behind the bench as a Head Coach for the first time in Class A, and it's his 19th appearance overall, which ties him for the most ever for a Head Coach with the late great Willard Ikola.

A competitive Class A Wednesday Quarterfinals?

One of the knocks on the Class A State Tournament is the blowouts produced on Wednesday in the Class A Quarterfinals between the seeded and unseeded teams. Now gone is the unseeded version, and this tournament field would appear to be one of the more even we have seen as all eight teams finished ranked in the top 20 of the final Class A rankings and with no colossal gap this year between the top two or three and the rest of the Class A field it would appear we should be in store for the best Wednesday we have seen since the epic upset Wednesday of the classic 2017 BHS Hockey Class A Tourney.

Class A's Mr. Hockey Hot Stick

Only one BHS Class A Player made the 10 finalists for Mr. Hockey this year, but St Cloud Cathedral's John Hirschfeld is a very deserving recipient. He is also on one of the most ridiculous hot streaks we have seen in Class A history coming into the tourney as in his last 10 games, of which Cathedral went 9-1-0, he has an eye-popping 14 goals and 30 assists for 44 points to average 4.4 points per game. He is now finally healthy after dealing with an injury to start the year, and he will be a fun player to watch as he tries to carry his team to back-to-back titles this coming week.

Alumni Head Coaches

This Class A tournament features four of the eight teams coached by alum head coaches. Aaron Jaminck of Hibbing/Chisholm, Tyler Palmiscno of East Grand Forks, Robbie Stocker of St Cloud Cathedral, and Tony Sandbulte of Luverne are all coaching the teams they once wore jerseys for in high school this week. It's a great trend to continue to see this year, as even with new teams, we have alumni returning to the community and teaching the game they love to the next generation of program stars.