The final post selecting the top player out of the 50 posted will be made in a few days.  YHH would like to congratulate all the players who have made this list.  If you are one of the 50, you had a good season playing hockey in Minnesota.  But YHH would also like to remind you that (making the list) means for you as you go forward, whether you play hockey in the future or not, it is what you do today or tomorrow that matters most.

For those that didn’t make the list, it does not mean you are not a winner.  If you skated and had fun playing hockey this past winter, then you have won every time you are at the rink lacing your skates.

38-#26 Jordan Drobinski/STMA AA-Jordan played center/forward for state tourney team STMA this season and was easily noticed on the ice.  One reason is his size, but the second reason is his skill set and strength around the net.  He always seems to be in the middle of the action in front of the crease, standing square to the ice with his stick down ready to score.  He is not the tallest kid, but he is solid and strong in his skates.  Opponents had a hard time moving him away from the crease.  Away from the crease, Jordan has a knack for finding the open man around the opponents’ goal.  He senses the opening and makes a good pass.  Jordan has a hard accurate shot from the blue line.  In a late season game against Cloquet AA, Jordan gave the Cloquet AA defense fits with his play, scoring two goals and assisting on two others in the Knights 6-2 win.

39-#12 Brandon McFadden/Sibley A-Brandon has probably the best physical skills of any peewee on this list.  He was a top goal scorer for Sibley A on a team of goal scorers.  His has the ability to breakdown the defense, move in for a close shot, and suddenly flip a pass to an open line mate.  He does it so often, that sometimes people in the stands are yelling for him to shoot.  He has an excellent shot, hard and accurate.  He has size, but it is quickness to the puck on rebounds that’s a killer for the opposition.  Once he is set to clean-up on a bounding puck, Brandon is difficult to move and he is deadly accurate with a hard shot that finds a way into the back of the net.  Brandon is a kid with a lot of “upside”.  He is like Apple stock when it sold at $10 a share, he is only going to get better.

40-#12 Noah Bissett/ St. Cloud AA-Noah played forward for St. Cloud this season.  On a team heavily loaded with offensive talent, Noah stood out for his ability to be a “grinder”, playing tenaciously especially when the puck is in the offensive zone.  A “rink rat” type of player; he has strong skills, is a good skater and can handle the puck especially down low.  He combined with Brad Amundson in the District 5 playoffs.  Their line scored six of St. Cloud’s eight goals in their 8-1 win over the Moose.  Noah got five assists.  At the South Regional tourney, Noah did it again.  In St. Cloud’s 6-3 win over Rochester AA in the South Regional game for the #2 seed to state, St. Cloud was trailing 3-2 early in the second period.  Noah and Amundson each scored two goals in the next 15 minutes of game time to put St. Cloud in the state tourney.

41-#9 Ben Ward/St. Cloud AA-Ben was a YHH Top 50 pick playing for the MAML last year.  He played center/forward for St. Cloud this year and had a great year.  Ben is a smooth skater, terrific puck handler, and an excellent passer who “sees the action on the ice”.  He has improved and gotten stronger this year.  He remains a great scorer never giving up on putting the puck in the net.  This year he played better defense than last year.   A good center moves with the puck and often does not commit himself to the play, but uses his position to cut off passing angles and to prevent the opponent from cutting back.  A good center’s defensive play should eventually drive the opponent into a team mate.  Ben does that very well.  He does it so well that fans think he should be more physical, but the key to watching him defend is to watch what happens when an opponent tries to make a move on Ben.  They usually lose puck control in such a way that Ben has turned the flow.  What started out as an attack on the St. Cloud net, usually ends up with an attack on their opponents net led by Ben.

42-#11 Lewis Crosby/Edina AA-Lewis was sort of invisible on a great Hornets team in the early season this year.  Other kids seemed to be the forefront of the attention, scoring goals.  He was barely noticed when YHH watched the Hornets beat Wayzata 5-1 in early November.  A week later we caught him on camera scoring a nice goal on shot from the right boards against Lakeville South.  At Eden Prairie’s and Edina’s tourney, others came to the forefront.  When the Hornets beat Lakeville South after returning from their trip to Michigan in early February, Lewis had a good game.  His skating, stick handling, and overall play was never in question; but he was now creating the opportunities especially on the breakout plays to position himself to make the play.  At the East Regional and in the State Tourney, he really played well and it showed.  Against Duluth East in the semifinals, with the score tied 2-2, Lewis took a pass from a teammate on a 2-on-2 rush with the shot on his strong side.  A Hound defender closed on him, but instead of swinging wider to avoid the defender, Lewis moved a foot towards the defender.   That small adjustment opened up the strong side shot by putting the defense at his back.  Lewis buried the puck to put the Hornets up 3-2.  Edina AA went on to win the game 4-3 and to beat Wayzata for the state championship.

43-#2 Jack Evans/Brainerd AA-The Brainerd Association has fielded up and down hockey teams the past few years.  They don’t usually fear the green and gold of Edina, they fear the black and orange of Moorhead.  Not this year.  Their association’s peewee AA was one of two District 15 associations that choose to field AA teams and the Warriors beat the Spuds.  But this story is about two Jacks.
The first Jack (picture 1) we saw at Elk River on February 9th.  He played a good game, solid player, got an assist in the first two periods of play, a nice player.  The second Jack (picture 2) we saw at the PIC in Plymouth 20 days later.  This Jack terrorized a good hard skating Woodbury team leading his team to a 4-2 quarterfinal win.  The second Jack, to YHH, looked like he had grown perhaps an inch, broaden, and looked stronger in his skates in those 20 days.  He certainly belongs in the Top 50 the way he played at the West AA Regional.  Jack #2 looks to be another good player with an “upside” (he has the tools to improve tremendously in the future).  As for the Brainerd Association, with their Brainerd A team having a good season, the Warriors are starting to build a strong program.  If the high school alignment remains the same as this year’s, in two years Section 8 AA will be extremely strong combining the top teams from D16, D15, and D5 (Brainerd, Moorhead, Roseau, Bemidji, MAML, River Lakes, and St. Cloud). 

44-#15 Austin Carrol/White Bear Lake-Austin played center/forward for the Bears this year.  This was one of the most successful seasons for the Bears since they made the state tourney in the 2009-2010 season.  The Bears finished second to Stillwater in District 2 regular season.  Both teams had identical records, Stillwater had the tie breaker.  Austin has good size, skates well, and like several of his teammates is strong at breaking down the defense at the blue line.  With Austin leading, the Bears had a great February.  They took third place in their Moose Goheen Tourney beating Prior Lake AA 5-2 and beat Stillwater two weeks later to take the D2 playoff championship and the #1 seed to the East Regional.

45-#12-Alex Miller/Shakopee-Alex is a good skating center/forward for the Sabres that often drops back to play a tough defense or Alex is a good defense man that takes advantages of lapses in an opponents’ defense to become a good skating/center forward.  The nice thing about what Alex does when he switches is that he does it smoothly such that you don’t notice where he lined up at the last faceoff.  Alex has good stick handling ability.  He skates well and good puck handling skills.  A bigger peewee, he is strong in his skates attacking the net well and was one of the principle reasons Shakopee closed the season on an upswing taking third at the St. Cloud Tourney, winning the Faribault tourney, and taking District 6’s #3 seed to the East Regional.  At the regional, the Sabres came close to making the state tourney.  Alex was scoring in bunches in those games often averaging two goals a game.  It was a good year for Shakopee and Alex helped make it happen.

46-#15 Ben Serie/Luverne-After watching the Cardinals in the District 5 playoffs, YHH thought they would do well with their defense at the South Regional and make the state tourney.  So it was not surprise when they opened the peewee A state tourney playing the first game.  What was surprising was how strong their forward line play was.  Note the phrase “forward line play” not the “play of their forward lines”.  With a short bench and only six forwards, the Cardinals did more single player substitution at forwards during their 1-0 win over Park-Cottage Grove then switching line for line at faceoffs.  It resulted in no organized single line being out on the ice, no line 1, 2, or 3.  Just three kids and it was hard to tell when and which three kids would be skating; so it was surprising to see them doing well.  Ben was one of the forwards; he skates well, has good hands, and can play at either wing or center and be effective.  He is good at working the puck around the defense along the boards, finding a teammate and then going for the net.  In beating Cottage Grove 1-0, his play like that set up the winning goal.

47-#8 Demetrios Koumontzis/Edina A-DK is a kid who plays with enthusiasm.  A smaller center/forward for the Hornets, he always seems to be in the action when the puck is in front of the net.  He has the good skills, skating, stick handling, and shooting. 

What caught YHH’s attention was the pure joy the Edina A kids had in playing the game.  It can be seen in these two pictures.  The first picture shows the Hornets piling on a reluctant goalie after beating Sibley A in the opening game of the East Regional Tournament.  One of the first kids leaping on to the pile is #8, DK.  The second picture was taken in the Woodbury Rumble Championship game, Edina A had just scored (the puck is in the back of the net) to tie Jefferson AA 1-1.  DK scored the goal and he is the kid in the middle turning to celebrate and the puck has not even fallen to the ice.  It is a great moment in the 2012-2013 season.  DK will likely be playing youth hockey for some time.  That probably means YHH will have to learn how to pronounce “Demetrios Koumontzis”.

48-#17 Jack Elias/St. Louis Park-The St. Louis Park Association’s peewee A team had a good season.  After splitting from the Minneapolis Storm, their peewee teams struggled in District 3 the past few years.  This year, the Orioles were competitive from early in the season (at the Mounds View’s Super Rink tourney at Thanksgiving) to the D3 playoffs.  YHH had them picked to edge Orono in the D3 playoffs; instead the Spartans edged St. Louis Park 1-0.  District 3 was the toughest peewee league this year (3 of the 4 teams playing in the Peewee AA/A championship games were from D3) and Park had played all three tough.   A good part of their success can be attributed to the all- round play of their forwards.  Jack played at forward more than at defense when YHH saw him this season.  He is a bigger kid that skates well, passes well, and plays position well.  Tough in skates and hard to knock off the puck, Jack is a Top 50 pick this year.

49-#2 Blake Spetz/STMA-Blake is the little kid (remember he plays for STMA and they grow them big there) in the corner of the rink.  He is a good sized peewee, but lines up with some big team mates (Zach Sjelin, Garrett Sandberg, and Jordan Drobinski to name a few).  What he does is make everything work when the STMA peewee team was on a roll and the Knights rolled quite often.  He has good hands, skates well, a good shot, and positions himself well.  But he constantly is the kid chasing the puck down in the corner or behind the net, making something happen in the “context” of the flow of the play.  YHH use of “context” in Blake’s situation is that what he does adds to the moment making it more likely that the Knights will get something out of the play; he does not blindly poke check the puck out a teammates reach forcing loss of the opponents’ zone and a re-set or feeding the puck to the goalie that results in a face off.  More likely he feeds a pass to a breaking teammate to score or snipes a puck away from an opponent trying to break out.  Blake is a nice all-around player.

50-#30 Jacob Musolf/Waconia-Jacob’s theme should be an old Beatles’ song called “A Hard Day’s Night”.  The only goalie for the Wildcats, a team that showed some spark at the start of the season, but struggled as the season wore, Jacob must have felt like he was “working like a dog” (a lyric from the Beatles’ song).  The season gets long when your team goes winless in District 6 play and ends up losing the first D6 playoff game 3-2 to match two 4-3 losses in the last two D6 regular season games.  At the Burnsville Thanksgiving tourney, Waconia lost all three pool games by a combined score of 31-3 playing some top ranked peewee AA/A teams.  At the end of pool play at Burnsville, Jacob was still battling in the nets.  Jacob has that goalie size, the quickness, and plays position very well; but it was his ability to recover quickly and reassert himself in the nets when he faces a sequence of shots that makes him a good goalie.  And all season long, he faced a lot of sequences.  At the Edina Invitational, the Wildcats lost their three pool games by a combined score of 13-8 and Jacob played some outstanding games for Waconia.  The season ending was disappointing, one goal could have helped.  But after a “hard day’s night”, Jacob is probably “sleeping like a log”.  Kids grow in their sleep.  Jacob is a fun goalie to watch play hockey.

Note: #7 Ryan Pogue/Bemidji made this list last year and probably would have made this list this year; but YHH did not see him to evaluate his play this year.  Ryan was a YHH featured player of the week in early December.