Storm beats St. Louis Park 6-0

The game is a rivalry game of sorts.  For a number of years, the Minneapolis Association was split between Minneapolis Washburn and Minneapolis Southwest.  For a number of years those two associations formed the core of District 1 hockey on the Minneapolis side.  When District 1 stopped competing at the traveling level, Washburn and Southwest joined District 3 and eventually combined with the St. Louis Park Association at the peewee A level.  They played under the name of Minneaplis Park until the 2010-2011 season when the Minneapolis Association, now the Storm, and St. Louis Park fielded their own peewee A teams in District 3.

Tuesday, St. Louis Park faced the NOW ranked #3 Storm in a game played at the St. Louis Park Rec Center.  The Orioles showed up with two players out with injuries skating only ten forwards.  Still, Park played the Storm evenly for the first half of the opening period before the Storm broke the game open with four goals late in the period.  Minneapolis’ Lachen Reid the first goal.  Reid picked up a rebounding puck in the left slot.  He broke right across the slot and beat Park’s goalie William Pinney low left.  Four minutes later, the Storm’s Landon Peterson scored off a rebound to put Minneapols up 2-0.  With three minutes left in the period, a Strom tripping penalty put St. Louis Park on the power play.  The Park was controlling play in the Strom’s zone when Minneapolis’s Seamus Foley managed to beat the Park defense on a breakout.  Foley scored to put the Storm up 3-0.  With less than a minute remaining in the first period, Peterson scored his second goal to put Minneapolis up 4-0 at the start of the second period.

Two minutes into the second period, the Strom struck again.  This time, Maxie Zabrinski scored for the Storm on a hard shot from just inside the blue line right beating Park's goalie low left.  Four minutes into the second period, Minneapolis’ Gavin Best beat the Park defense at the Orioles' blue line center and soloed down the slot to score.  Best goal ended the scoring 6-0.  After taking a 6-0 lead, the two teams settled.  No more goals were scored in the remaining game time.

Minneapolis had struggled in the early minutes of the game Tuesday.  Their lines were out of sync initially but once they started to roll, all three lines played well.  For the Oriole defense, they could work the puck out of the corner, but had difficulty in making the breakout play along the boards from their zone to center ice.  Minneapolis is a solid team and their defense pinched often to contain the Oriole forwards.  In the end, the Storm skate three tough lines that simply go from good, to better, to best in a game.  The problem the Storm opponents have is that any one of their three lines they typically skate can go from good, to better, to best in any time in a game.

Jefferson ties Eden Prairie 2-2

The Jags and Eagles played a seesaw game Tuesday that saw Jefferson tending to dominate play in the first half of the game and that saw Eden Prairie dominating play in the second half.  Two Eden Prairie penalties early in the game aided the Jefferson in sustaining pressure in the opening period.  The second Eagle penalty resulted in a goal. It took Jefferson's power play ten seconds to set up in the Eagle's zone and score.  The Jags’ Brady Burton, playing at the right point, stepped inside the blue line edging in toward the slot and fired.  His shot was partially screened and beat Eden Prairie’s goalie high right to put Jefferson up 1-0.  But as the opening period was ending, Eden Prairie was starting to control the play in their zone in the corners.  They were forcing Jefferson's forwards wide.  Jefferson was still controlling the puck but only on the perimeter.

Thirty seconds into the second period, Jefferson drew a penalty.  Ten seconds into the power play, the Eagles worked the puck low left.  The Eagles 16 beat the Jag’s goalie Basil Kansheh with a shot from the left crease area to tie the game 1-1.  Eden Prairie started to dominate the play after that goal and when Jefferson drew a penalty halfway through the period, the Eagles seemed ready to take the lead.  They moved the puck into the Jags’ zone, but their points got caught up on the power play.  It resulted in a two on none rush that ended with the Jag’s Brett Herbert scoring the shorthanded goal to put Jefferson up 2-1.

At the start of the third period, Jefferson looked tired.  It soon became apparent that the Jags would win or lose the game depending on how their defense would play.  Eden Prairie opened the third period with their offense struggling.  Nothing happened for the first four minutes until Jefferson drew a penalty.  The Eagles controlled the puck on the power and attacked the Jag’s net but could not beat Kansheh.  The Jag’s goalie made some tough stops on hard shots from the slot.  But with less than 15 seconds left in the power play, an Eagles' forward beat the Jag defensive crossing the Jefferson blue line and scored on a solo skating down the slot to tie the game 2-2.  Kansheh had to work hard after that score, facing a number of tough shots in the final six minutes of the game.  The Eagles could not beat him.  The game ended in a 2-2 tie.  Kansheh had 14 stops (YHH count) in the third period.

What is next?

In a weird year, Minneapolis’ win over Park also counts in District 3’s peewee A league standings.  The Storm now has a 21 point lead over their nearest D3 competitor, Osseo/Maple Grove A.  The Minneapolis AA team will play 28 D3 peewee A league games and 20 D3/D6 Peewee AA league games this year.  All 20 D3/D6 games are counted in D3 peewee A standings.  Second place, OMG A, and third place Orono A will play 18 D3 games.  The Storm will win the D3 title and has a shot of pulling off a double title winning season by beating Edina on January 22nd.  But only pride is at stake in these two leagues.  Since the splitting of peewee A teams in AA and A (now in its third season), the AA teams play in district leagues ad hoc with varying levels of participation.

The only target for the AA teams each season has become the year-end seeding into the three regional tourneys (East, West, and South) and district play does not directly affect the seeding process.  Simply put, there is no competition week by week in league play that has significance in post season play.   Last season, some districts tried to separate AA and A into two leagues, but few districts had enough teams to make a reasonable schedule.  The impact of mixed leagues this year has not helped.  It adds games, but does not up the competition.  That is left to weekend tournaments.  If anything, the impact of mixed leagues demonstrates that quality of play for most AA teams is not improving.

In D3/D6 play, Minneapolis now leads second place Edina by three points, but the Hornets have played two less league games.  Edina lost to Chaska/Chanhassen Monday 5-4.  Minneapolis has six games left on their schedule; Edina has 8 games left.  The two teams played to a 3-3 tie earlier in the season and have one more regular season league game scheduled.  They will meet at Braemar Thursday, January 22nd.  It will a great game to watch.  Both teams will play two more games before then.  The winner of the January 22nd game will be the favorite to win this year’s D3/D6 title.  Both teams will be playing for pride.  It is most likely both teams will be in the Peewee AA State Tourney to be played March 13-15 in Woodbury.  Edina and Minneapolis are strong candidates to be ranked #1, #2, or #3 by the end of regular season and to be placed in different regional tourneys.  Each #1, #2, #3 ranked team has a shot at two seeds to the state tourney.