Brennan is an outstanding Goalie with a great head on his shoulders. This past year he had 11 shutouts and several more one goal games for the Rebels. He had two very notable games in the nets this year. The first was 1-0 win over district rival Elk River. They beat the Elks 1-0 and Brennan had 45 saves. In the South Regional, Brennan turned away 71 Wayzata shots in a quadruple overtime loss to the Trojans.

One of the most steady Goalies we saw all year was Patrick Fontaine. Amazing considering the fact that Patrick is a Squirt. Usually Squirt Goalies are "athletic" or "fearless." But in the case of Fontaine, he was all of those superlatives and more. We first saw Fontaine at the Eden Prairie Tournament where he turned away 41 shots to beat #2 White Bear Lake in the Semifinals. We also saw him at the YHH Squirtacular, Fargo and the District 6 Maroon playoff. Each time we were impressed with his mechanics, his steadying influence and most important the way he was stingy with rebounds and goals.

Great players usually have a great story. Cade decided to play goalie the Summer prior to Squirts. For the past three seasons has played and trained on his own without any formal Goaltending training. His story continued in the BIG Pumpkin Semifinal game against Edina. The Prior Lake standout held the vaunted Edina PWAA team to just one goal for 41 minutes until the levy finally broke with a minute to go. The Lakers nearly upset the Hornets that Sunday morning and almost pulled it off again later in the season. He earned All Tournament Team honors that weekend and earned the respect of all coaches that peppered him in league play and tournaments. One PeeWee AA coach said of Kujo, "that kid is the best goalie I've seen in 20 years...he is the future of Prior Lake hockey."

Probably the most talked about player in the MN State Bantam Tournament was "the Goalie from Grand Rapids." They likely used this term because they were too afraid to pronounce his last name, Stejskal (pronounced Stay-Skal) or they had never heard of him. Both are likely true. The latter is true because Stejskal entered the season in his only second full season of playing Goalie. Yes. Read that sentence again. The kid who made a name for himself, literally, helped his team to a State Championship had only two years of Goalie under his belt? Yes.

We first saw Zach this year in the Blue Ox Tournament in Brainerd. Someone said to me, "Tony, you gotta see this kid from Grand Rapids...he's unbelievable." No doubt, that statement describes the way he and his teammates played the last six weeks of the season.

Like most of the Goalies on our Finalist List, each has a unique story. Ryan Ullan is unique because he played Bantams as a Seventh grader for the Bluejackets. What makes his story fun to tell is how tall he stood in some really big games. One District 12 coach told us of Ryan, "besides trying to stop Perunovich, scoring on Ullan is almost as hard...they are a nice team because of those two." We saw Ryan twice on both of Hibbing's visits to Minneapolis this Winter. What stood out most about his ability was he was never out of position and he played very high in the crease at all times - he showed remarkable confidence in both games we saw.

YHH will announce the winner of the award on Tuesday, April 29 at 7:30 pm. The announcement will be done live on YHH via a live stream at Stauber's Goalcrease in Edina.