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Bloomington Squirt: Preview and Predictions

By Tony Scott, 01/17/13, 1:30PM CST

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Every goalie’s Wurst nightmare!

We are just past the halfway point of the season for the Squirts headed to the home stretch.  Annually one of the best tournaments is the Bloomington Squirt Tournament held at Bloomington Ice Garden.  The A tournament features several Top Ten teams and several teams looking to make a name for themselves.

The A tournament is a 16 team pool play format with each pool winner advancing to the Final Four.  The runner ups in each pool advance to a very nice consolation field.

Red Pool: Burnsville, MAML, Eden Prairie, and Stillwater.  One of the more balanced pools in the field featuring two top ten teams featuring once defeated Stillwater and twice defeated Burnsville.  Don’t forget Eden Prairie who advanced to the finals of Hopkins and Final Four of the EP Tourney.

Final Four: Stillwater will advance but they must get past Eden Prairie Saturday night.

Blue Pool: Kennedy, Prior Lake, Eastview and Armstrong/Cooper.  Another well balanced pool with Prior Lake as the favorite to advance.  Don’t count out plucky Eastview (lost out in EP tourney on goal differential) and D3 darkhorse Armstrong Cooper.

Final Four: Prior Lake is too strong for Armstrong (on paper), but Armstrong will put up a good fight.

White Pool: Jefferson, Chaska/Chan, Woodbury, and South St. Paul.  Pretty good pool with CC and Jefferson.  Woodbury has amassed a nice record…it’s odd for a team to have so few quality games this late in the season.  The Predators will see their share versus these two D6 teams.

Final Four: Chaska/Chan will return the favor on Jefferson in the first pool play game Friday night (Jefferson beat CC last week) and advance to the show.

Gold Pool: Rosemount, LA Jr. Kings, Wayzata, and Edina (Green). This is the Wild Card pool.  First of all you have arguably the best team in the state Rosemount, you have a team from LA that could be either really good (AAA quality), really young (2002 players), or really bad (last year a team from the same club came to Fargo and cleaned up in the B pool).  Our research found very little data on which Jr. Kings team will be in Bloomington this weekend…hence the mystery.  Another mystery team is the Edina (Green).  An improving team that has won two tournaments (Hopkins and Spring Lake Park).

Final Four: Until I see it with my own eyes, Rosemount is the best team in Minnesota.  They will advance…but not without a potential test against LA and a for sure test from the Edina Green Machine.

Final Four: Stillwater > Prior Lake and Rosemount > Chaska/Chan
Champions: Rosemount > Stillwater

The B tournament does not showcase as many top ten caliber teams as the A tournament.  But that does not discount the quality of the field or the greatness of the tournament. It is a 13 team field, with seven teams in one pool and six in the other, with four from each advancing to the final eight for bracket play.

Predicted Final Four: Andover > Prior Lake and Edina (Black) > Rosemount (Green)

Champions: Edina (Black) > Andover (Gold)

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