Park Cottage Grove ranked #13 by NOW finished the season with a .500 record; and the PCG team finished 10th in 12 team D8 Peewee AA/A league. After playing mostly AA teams all season, the Wolfpack (also called the Wolfmen by YHH) came alive at district playoff time beating #4 ranked Sibley to win the D8 playoffs. At the East Regional played at Wakota, Park-Cottage Grove continued their winning ways by sweeping the East regional beating 10th ranked Shakopee 5-4, a tough North St. Paul that was making a strong post season run 4-3, and #1 ranked Edina to win the East championship.
Cottage Grove’s late season run is fueled by their defense, especially their goal tender Luke Maul and solid play of defenseman Andrew Hawn. Their offense is persistent. Led by Keegan Oberding and Mason Porter, they are tenuous playing the whole game constantly probing for that opportunity to score. It lulls the opponent and makes the “Wolfmen” an extremely dangerous team.
Luverne is ranked #24 by NOW. They have 9 forwards on the team and will be playing teams that skate three lines at Faribault.
The Cardinals will be the closest team to a home team at Faribault this weekend. The Cardinals have skated in D9 for a number of years until this past season and usually represented D9 well in previous post season play.
Luverne compiled a .670 season record this season. They finished in second place in D4/5 Silver Peewee A league behind New Ulm-Sleepy Eye. They lost to NUSE 1-0 in district 5 championship playoff game, beat St. Cloud A 3-0 to take D5 #2 seed to South Regional. In front of a home crowd in the newly refinished Blue Mound Arena, the Cardinals beat Rochester Black 7-2 for South #2 seed to state.
Luverne has a furious defense led by one of the biggest peewee A player in the state, Trey Roberts. Roberts is a large version of Toby Sengvongxay. Toby played the same way for another 9 man Luverne Peewee A team a few years ago and was one of 20 Select 15 players to represent Minnesota at National tryouts last summer.
Both Toby and Trey had to play conservatively. They had to be aware that they would be on the ice 60%+ of the time during the game. For all his size, Roberts is an extremely quick and smooth puck handler. Fatigue, not the opponent, is Roberts’ nemesis on the ice.
On offense, the Cardinals tend to not substitute lines, mixing in a lot of individual substitutions during the game. The Cardinal forwards play off each other well and can move the puck low in their opponent’s zone, giving themselves chances to score. They are aggressive and are led by Declan Beers, Coy Gonnerman, and Ben Serie.
In a tough call, Luverne pulls a mild upset. The Cardinals win. But whichever team wins this opening game, that team will be the sentimental favorite in the semifinals on Saturday.
The second game on Friday matches the Minneapolis Storm and East Grand Forks.
The Minneapolis Storm is ranked #2 by NOW and have quietly compiled an .800 season record. The Storm took second place in D3 regular season finishing behind Orono, lost to Orono 5-2 in D3 playoffs, beat Crow River 3-1 for #2 seed to West Regional. They swept through West Regional beating Spring Lake Park, Crow River, and Orono 4-2 in a wild championship game at St. Louis Park to claim the #1 West seed to the state.
The Storm did not look good in the early season and nobody expected much from them when they played in the Burnsville Thanksgiving Day tourney. But they swept their pool, gave one of the top ranked AA teams, Eastview AA, a game in the semifinals before losing 4-1. The Storm went on to beat Hastings AA 2-1 to take third place.
Both Eastview AA and Hastings AA made it to AA regional tourneys this year. The last team the Storm beat to win the pool at Burnsville was Park Cottage Grove 4-3.
Since the Burnsville tourney, the Storm has been steadily improving, particularly at defense. If there is one team that has an “axe to grind” at Faribault it is the Storm. They lost to Edina 9-4 in early December and will be anxious to avenge that loss. The Storm has good size at forward. Their forwards were moving the puck well in the D3 playoffs and the West Regional and are led by Jacob Erickson, Jake Hale, and Spencer Sande. Their defense play has been good and the Storm have solid goal tending in Oliver (Ollie) Evenson.
East Grand Forks is NOW ranked #47 and had an under .500 record for the season. Still they are D16’s regular season champions and came close to being the D16 playoff champs, but lost to Warroad 5-2 in the playoff championship game. The Green Wave took D16’s #2 seed to North, beat Greenway 4-3 in overtime, beat Denfeld 5-2 in semifinals, lost to Virginia in North Championship game 7-4. After all those games, their state tourney ticket came down to beating Warroad. The Green Wave did, 3-2 in double overtime, for the #2 seed.
EGF plays a dozen or more games with North Dakota teams each year. As a result, this year they did not have a large number of games reported to YHH (15 games total). One thing that YHH needs to fix before next year’s rankings, is to find a way to include the North Dakota teams.
The EGF games that have been reported to YHH are blowouts, mostly the Roseau Tourney results, hence the #47 NOW ranking.
That makes it hard to gauge the Green Wave this year. They could a tsunami or they could be a ripple. They are skating 11 forwards and will have one of the shortest benches at Faribault. The real question is how much has EGF improved in the past two months since Roseau? If they play like past state tourney entries from EGF, they will be tough.
The Storm win, too many Green Wave unknowns.