This weekend, the top elite players have been placed on one of two teams, the Minnesota Red or the Minnesota White. Both teams will play in a eight team tourney at New Hope this weekend. Quarterfinal games will be played Friday night (starting at 5:15 PM) at the New Hope Ice Arena.
In the upper bracket, the Minnesota Red plays the Edge Boys Prep team out of Calgary, Canada. The Red are led by Carter Roo, Johnny Panvica, and Spencer Naas. Five of the Red players (Cooper Watson, Matt Berkovitz, Brett Gruber, Michael Wilson, and Charley Graaskamp) are Wisconsin players and one, Jade Miller, is from North Dakota player.
The Edge Preps come into the tourney with a 14-6 record. They are led by senior Taro Hirose who has posted 26 points in the Edge’s first 20 games.
In the second game in the upper bracket, Minnesota White plays an All-Star team from Massachusetts. The White rooster has 17 Minnesota seniors on the team, four juniors, and one freshman, Joey Anderson. The top scorers in the Elite league were split between the Red and White teams. The White team ended up with Tommy Novak, Mitchell Slattery, and Joey Lau.
The upper bracket has Shattuck’s Prep team playing Northwood School from Lake Placid, NY. Shattuck’s Preps are ranked #1 among USA Hockey’s U18 Tier I teams; Northwood School’s team is from a private prep school in New York with a student body of 170 and whose record is private.
The second upper bracket game matches Hill Academy against a team from the Michigan Development Hockey League. Hill Academy, located in Ontario, has a Varsity program that draws players from minor hockey association teams. Those players work with Hill Academy staff three times a week on skills while playing for their minor associations. The Varsity Program then forms a team to play in tourneys as a team to represent the Hill Academy.
At New Hope this weekend will be one of those teams from Hill Academy’s Varsity Program. They will be playing the a team drawn from the Michigan Development Hockey League. The MDHL has just completed its fall season. Six teams competed in the league this year. Each team played a 16 game schedule with the playoffs completed last weekend.
The way the draw has been set up (with the two Minnesota teams in one bracket), the tourney organizers hoped that one of the two Minnesota teams could make the finals. The bet here is that Minnesota White will end up playing the Shattuck Preps in the championship game.