The Shattuck U16 team that finished 32-17-6 and had a disappointing USA Hockey U16 National tournament (losing all three pool games) placed 6 Minnesota kids on the Section 1 team; Evan Robert/Oakdale, Collin Saccoman/Stillwater, Jordan Klehr/Lino Lakes, Rem Pitlick/Wayzata, Lawrence Jungwirth/Bloomington, and Tyler Bump/Prior Lake.  All six SSM players made the top 100 Select 15’s last summer.  Saccomen and Klehr played defense again for the Sabres this past season.  Jungwirth, Bump and Pitlick played forward and were all productive scorers for Shattuck.  The three collectively amassed 119 points the 55 games Shattuck played.  Goalie Evan Robert (Oakdale) posted a 14-9-3 record for the Sabres.  Jungwirth was one of the best scoring forwards at St. Cloud Select 15 camp last summer.

Lakeville North and Lakeville South placed 2 players each on the HP 16 Section 1 team.  North placed defense man Jack Sadek and goalie Pierce Wilson from the Panther’s Section 1AA (High School) championship team; South placed forwards Nick Swaney and Nick Oelrich on the Section 1 team.  Sadek and Swaney were on D8’s Select 15 team last summer.  Both made it to St. Cloud last year as part of the Select 15 program (made the top 100).  Swaney led the Lakeville South team in scoring last season.

Three Farmington Tigers made the Section 1 team, defensemen Devin Bernu and Erik Holmstrom and forward Justin Novak.  All three played for the Tiger’s high school team.  Bernu and Holmstrom played on the Farmington peewee A team that lost to Edina in the 2011 state championship game.  Bernu and Novak made the trip to St. Cloud last year as a top 100 Select 15 pick.  Novak led the Tigers in scoring last season.  Two New Prague players, Casey Busch and Ben Witt, made the Section 1 team; they played on the Trojans’ Missota Conference championship team last season.

Five of the Section 1 players come from District 9 associations.  Three, Jacob Roth/Rochester Century, Andy Carroll/Northfield, and Tyler Jutting/Mankato West made it to the top 100 Select 15′s at St. Cloud last summer.  Roth was one of the select 15’s that improved his play during the Select 15 process as noted in the YHH Select 15 coverage last summer.  It showed, this past winter he was #2 in points for the Rochester Century High School team.

Carroll played his second year for the Northfield Varsity last year at defense.  Jutting was one of the top goal scorers for the Mankato West Varsity.

Sam Wenner/Le Sueur played on District 4’s Select 15 team last summer.  Wenner led the Le Sueur-Henderson/St. Peter Varsity in scoring last season.  Drew Gustavson defense man from Winona led Winona’s Junior Varsity in scoring last season playing in the Big Nine.

Where the Section 1 team draws geographically from schools that tend to line-up with Minnesota Hockey’s district alignments, Section 2 does not.  This is the first real shift for the HP 16 players away from their youth alignments; players end up playing with kids they played against last year.  Eleven of the 20 players are from associations aligned to District 6 (5-Edina, 3-Burnsville, 1-Prior Lake, and 2-Bloomington Jefferson); but three are from District 3 (2-Mound/Westonka and 1-St. Louis Park).  The remaining six are from private schools (3-Blake, 2-Breck, and 1-Providence Academy).

The 5 Edina players played JV or Bantam AA last season.  The three JV players are Luke Perunovich, Sam Fuss, and Henry Bowlby.  Ryan Zuhlsdorf and Casey Dornbach played for the Edina AA State Champion Bantam team this past season.  Both Zuhlsdorf and Dornbach made the trip to St. Cloud as part of the top 100 Select 15’s last summer.  Both players played in the 2011 peewee A state championship game against Farmington, winning 7-3.

Two of Burnsville’s three players, Jack Ahcan and Brock Boeser played for the Blaze Varsity team last season.  Ahcan played defense for the Blaze, Boeser was one of the top goal scorers.  Both players made the Select 15’s last summer.  The third Blaze player on the Section 2 team is Andy Schoen.  He listed as playing on Burnsville’s JV team, but he played more for the varsity then the JV team last season.  The Blaze finished second to Eagan in the South Suburban Conference last season and lost to Edina 3-2 in the Section 2AA championship game.

Two players from Mound/Westonka are on the team, Mark Hildahl and goalie Holton Sricklen.  Neither player made the District 3 Select 15 team last year, but both on the Select 16 Section 2 team this year.  Hildahl was the White Hawks JV team #2 scorer last season.  Stricklen played bantam A hockey for the White Hawks that ended the season NOW ranked #20.

Conor Klaers played last season for the St. Louis Park bantam A team.  Klaers made the top 100 Select 15 last summer playing for District 3.

Three players, Cade Gleekel, John Ferguson, and Edmund Chute who played for the Blake Varsity team last season are on the team.  All three players play at forward.  Gleekel made the trip to St. Cloud last summer as a top 100 Select 15.  He played for the District 3 Select 15 team and was another player who got more notice as the 15 selection process moved on.  Chute made the Select 15 team for District 4 last summer after playing for the Blake Bantam B team.  Edmond Chute is one of four players named Chute that played for Blake last season (Christopher, Sam and Nash also played for the varsity).  Edmond was the #5 goal scorer for Blake, Gleekel was Blake’s #3 goal scorer and Ferguson was Blake’s #4 goal scorer.  Section 2 looks like they have a “ready made” line.

Justin Paulson and Chase Ellingson made the Section 2 team; they played for the Breck Varsity team last season.  Paulson played defense, Ellingson played forward.  Breck won the Tri-Metro league last season.  Ellingson was one of their top scorers and Paulson played the whole season at defense for the Mustangs.  Ellingson played originally for Spring Lake Park before moving to Breck.  He played for District 10’s Select 15 team last summer.  Paulson played AAA hockey for the 1997 Russell Stover team.

If there is any kind of shift going on at the high school level, the Section 4 team selected reflected some kind of change.  A section that is typically dominated by players from private schools Hill-Murray, St. Thomas Academy, and Totino Grace isn’t this year.  Instead, this year’s Section 4 team is dominated by Spring Lake Park.  The Panthers’ Varsity has produced five players for the 2013 edition of Section 4’s HP 16 team.  The Panthers selected are led by Nick Heid, a top 100 Select 15 last year that has garnered national attention playing defense.  Panthers Devon Sunell, Jared Nystrom, Noah Bormann, and goalie Aaron Furlalno join Heid on the Section 4 team.  Sunell was the #3 scorer for the Panthers last year; Furlalno played the majority of the Panther’s games in the net and posted a GAA of under 3.00 for the season.

St. Thomas Academy has not gone away.  The Cadets Danny Weihrauch, Dylan McDonald, and Christiano Versich, and Peter Tufto made the team.  Versich was the Cadets #2 scorer last season and played on District 2’s Select 15 team last summer making it to St. Cloud.  McDonald played on the District 8 Select 15 team last year and also made it to the top 100 at St. Cloud.  Versich and Tufto played on the Cadets’ Class 1A State Championship team this past season that beat Hermantown in the High School Class A Championship game.  Weihrauch played on the Cadets’ JV team last season; McDonald played for the Rosemount Bantam AA team.

Jason Krych is the sole Totino Grace player and Jacob Olson is the only Hill-Murray player on the team.  Krych just finished his second season playing for the Totino Grace Varsity.  He played for the District 10 Select 15’s last year and made to St. Cloud.  Jacob Olson also made it to St. Cloud last summer as a Select 15 and played last season at defense for the Hill-Murray Varsity that lost to Edina in the Class AA state championship game.

Jack Becker and goalie Will Swanson made the team from Mahtomedi.  Becker was the #3 scorer on the Mahtomedi’s Varsity team last season.  Swanson played for the State Champion Mahtomedi Bantam A team.  Both players made District 2’s Select 15 team last year.  The Zephyrs’ bantam A State Championship team beat Edina 6-0 in the final game a month ago.  Swanson had an outstanding season in the net for the Zephyrs.

Jared Mickelson was St. Paul Academy’s #2 scorer this past season.  Last summer, Mickelson ended up making the District 4 Select 15 team even though he played for Rosemount.  He made the trip to St. Cloud as part of the top 100.  Jared was a member of the Rosemount peewee A team that made it to the State Tourney in 2011.  One of his teammates was Dylan McDonald, now a teammate for the Section 4 team.

Two players, Colin Gallagher and Steve Malmgren, played for Sibley Varsity this past season.  Both players played full time varsity last season for the Warriors.   Riley McCann played defense for the Roseville Varsity last season.  McCann played for the District 2 Select 15 team and made the trip to St. Cloud.  Blake Lizotte was one of the leading scorers on the Chisago Lakes Varsity last season.  Jackson Cates was one of the strengths of the NOW ranked #5 Stillwater Bantam AA team last season that came close to making the state tourney.  These players round out the Section 4 team.

The Section 5 team has 15 of the 20 players coming from District 10.  Four of the remaining five come from the Hermantown Association.  The one remaining player left is Trevor Cornelius from St. Cloud Cathedral and he is a good one.  Cornelius caught some attention last year as Select 15 playing for the District 5 team.  He made the top 100 and got to play the final Select 15 games in front of a home crowd at St. Cloud.  Cornelius played in all Cathedral’s Varsity games as a ninth grader this past season.

Two of the four Hermantown players, Tanner Kimball and Jared Zeleznikar, on the Section 5 roster played Varsity for the Hawks’ state class 1A championship runner-ups last season.  They were the only sophomores on the Hawks’ senior/junior loaded state tourney team.  Kimball plays defense, Zeleznikar plays forward.

The other two Hawks, Wyatt Aamodt and Jack LeBlanc, played for the Hawks bantam AA team last season that NOW ranked #11 in the state.  The Hawks lost to state bantam AA runner-up, Duluth East, in the North Regional game for the #2 seed to the state tourney.  Both players played for District 11’s Select 15 team last summer.  Aamodt made the trip to St. Cloud playing defense as one of the top 100.

Of the 15 players from District 10, the team surprisingly tied for the most is Anoka.  The Tornadoes placed three players on the Section 5 team; Alec Seeger from the Anoka Varsity and Blake Neumann and Michael Talbot from the Anoka Bantam AA team.  None of the Anoka players played on the D10 Select 15 team last summer.  Seeger played most of last season on the Tornadoes Varisty.  Neumann and Talbot’s bantam AA team ended up being ranked #9 by NOW and getting eliminated from the chase for a state tourney entry in the West Regional by Elk River.

Two of the three Maple Grove players, Sam Franta and David Brumm, made the top 100 as selects last year.  The third player, defenseman Joshua Wente, played bantam AA hockey for the Crimson.  Two of the three Blaine players selected, Jordan Turnquist and Luke Notermann, played for the Bengal’s Varsity last year.  Both were point getters as Select 15’s last summer.  The third player selected from Blaine is goalie Jonathan Albers.  Albers played for Centennial Varsity last season.

Albers is joined on the Section 5 team by three other Centennial players; Connor Lovick, Lucas Kranz, and Tyler Nyman.  Lovick and Nyman played on District 10’s Select 15 team last summer.  Lovick made the trip to St. Cloud and played this past season on the Cougar’s Varsity team that made the State Tourney.  Nyman played on Centennial’s bantam AA team.

Justin Carlson is Princeton’s sole representative on the Section 5 team.  Carlson played last season for the Princeton Varsity.   Champlin Park’s Reese Woods made the Section 5 team.  Reese played last season on the Champlin Park Varsity.  Zachary St. John from Coon Rapids is one of the two Section 5 goalies.  St. John is another top 100 Select 15 player from last summer.  He split goal tending duties this past season playing for the Cardinal’s Varsity team.