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Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:05 am**

It used to be a honor to be named to these teams, Startribune use to do their homework and had 3 teams at the most and no honorable mentions. Pioneer Press also did their homework and only had a handful of Honorable Mentions. Ap no one knew where they were coming from and CA was a little slanted because some coaches would not always vote for the best kids but the kids they were told were the best.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:21 am**

MNHockeyFan

Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 378

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:05 am Post subject:

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ghshockeyfan wrote:
FINAL

HOCKEY • GIRLS

ASSOCIATED PRESS POLLS • FINAL

• Provided by Let's Play Hockey newspaper. First-place votes are in parentheses.

• Class 1A: 1. Blake (7), 2. Farmington, 3. Crookston/Red Lake Falls, 4. Hibbing/Chisholm, 5. Breck, 6. Warroad, 7. Alexandria, 8. New Prague, 9. Austin, 10. Mahtomedi, 11. South St. Paul, 12. Roseau, 13. Richfield, 14. Simley, 15. Shakopee.

Strange that Austin, at No. 9, is the only ranked team from Southern Minnesota in the final A and AA AP team polls, despite the Southern MN teams having 29 AP All State individual selections.

MnHockeyFan,

I think you are on to something

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:28 am**

Icall wrote:MNHockeyFan,

I think you are on to something

Yeah I was thinking how could they have so many great individuals but only ranked team out of 30? Either the coaching is really bad or they never pass the puck.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:49 am**

ghshockeyfan

Joined: 05 Jun 2003
Posts: 3860
Location: Edina/IGH/NSP MN
Posted: 28 Feb 2007 23:23 Post subject:

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Icall wrote:
Startribune has All Metro, announced the Tuesday of the State Tournament week.
Pioneer Press Has All State, announced the week after the State Tournament.
Associated Press has All State, announced the week after the State Tournament or the next week.
Coaches Association has All State, announced at the Ms. Hockey banquet.

Which reminds me...

If you want to know the real "elite" group, just look for the kids that are mentioned on all or 3-of-4 of these lists. That is the equivalent of what boys all-state teams were many years ago I assume when they only named a select 5-10-15 kids very tops??? Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about...

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:16 am**

I have stated this before and I say it again!
- Nothing is as surprising as to let Sports Writers perdict, rate, or vote on anything. Far too many writers ( I will eliminate the SPORTS title) could also report on or rate recipes in the TASTE sections of their newspapers. Being uninformed is predictable, an uninformed vote is distasteful.
But, put 7 or 8 larger Newspapers in a 75 mile radius and guess what? The voting will be wrong and unrepresentative.

Again where is the NE Minn. representation.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:24 am**

I went to Os hockey spring league tryouts last night and seen the future of girls hockey, I have seen alot of girls hockey in my day but I have never seen a group of girls fly up and down the ice like this group, with the exception of 4 or 5 girls these were the best of the best..and they were talking about? everything hockey except all state honors so yes it does stink on how the all state teams are picked, but after seeing this group of girls i saw that it really dosn't matter and buy the way that the papers have chosen there teams they are becoming somewhat irelivant.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:44 am**

What will make it really a joke is when the Phase 3 ND camps are picked, and there are girls going to Lake Placid who were left off of these 'All-State' teams.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:41 am**

wow I'm amazed you guys caught on so quickly... the whole point of the all-state list was to see how long it took for everyone to figure out that it was a fake...the real one will be out in a few weeks

so your problem is there are many southern girls on it.. i agree 100%.. no one south of lakeville is any good.. i mean why do we even let them compete? and Austin being ranked!? They made it to state because they suck, have a week section and tied Breck because they accidently shot at the wrong net... talk about luck!!

someone should write a letter... enough of us do and maybe they can play at their own little level... we could have Metro State and Every Other Team Sucks State... that way all the truly good teams will be recognized and all the truly okay players on those good teams can get HM

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:07 pm**

finance_gal wrote:I went to Os hockey spring league tryouts last night and seen the future of girls hockey, I have seen alot of girls hockey in my day but I have never seen a group of girls fly up and down the ice like this group, with the exception of 4 or 5 girls these were the best of the best..and they were talking about? everything hockey except all state honors so yes it does stink on how the all state teams are picked, but after seeing this group of girls i saw that it really dosn't matter and buy the way that the papers have chosen there teams they are becoming somewhat irelivant.

how was the turnout for OS last night? i'm curious to know how many teams that they will have this year because i know a few players who did it last year and loved it and i think they had 4 teams?

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 7:29 am**

there was about 65 to 75 girls at the first two sessions of tryouts, and they were incredible! I was suprised at how good the competition was, everyone there including the U14 girls have superstar potential and I can tell this is the type of league that is needed to bring everyones game up a notch

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:18 pm**

Bensonmum wrote:What will make it really a joke is when the Phase 3 ND camps are picked, and there are girls going to Lake Placid who were left off of these 'All-State' teams.

I don't put a whole lot of stock in the Lake Placid teams, either. I see some girls on this team that absolutely should not be on it and there's girls left off this team that absolutely positively SHOULD be on it.

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 1:49 pm**

so many of those so called elete teams and national teams are beauty contests where they see who can suck up to the coaches the most, i say put everygirl in the state on the ice and skate them doing drills and let the last ones standing go, at least then you would know that the people that go are really the ones that want to be there and they have the drive to push themselves to be the very best

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 1:55 pm**

If anyone has the data, we should look at which players did NOT make P3/Lake Placid/NY for NDP but went D1.

That would tell us if NDP missed players I would think.

BUT - be sure that we account for the fact that players may have been injured or turned down the honor...

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:38 pm**

It's kind of funny to see parents come join me on the dark side after the seasons over...I don't know enough about how the Lake Placid team is chosen to comment on it. But if it's based solely on coaches opinions I'm sure there are plenty of girls that get missed simply because of coaching turnover let alone the incompetency of a few.

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 5:30 pm**

It's highly unlikely the all state selections made by local sportswriters could be very accurate. Few if any writers can lend enough attention or expertise to girls high school hockey in the face of other, often more dominant sports to provide an accurate assessment of players. If you're lucky you might get someone who bothers to look up the stat leaders which becomes their list, sprinkling in a few leading players from the local teams for good measure. Take these for what they are worth. The coaches polls are really the only ones worth their salt, and even then there may be a bias toward their team, conference, section and players who they've competed against. One can only hope consensus is created by the law of averages.

As for NDP, we have to remember that if this is indeed a beauty contest, well then beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How the player happens to perform in the brief tryout, who they happen to skate with and against, the style of a particular coach, etc., I don't think we can accuse the system of being busted or calling coaches incompetent. Opinions are just that--you hope the law of averages yields the optimum results, but it doesn't always. I can easily see a kid being missed in NDP that ends up D1--sometimes a coach sees something, is able to bring out something and develop the player, is a late bloomer, or the player is a perfect compliment to the team's assets, but doesn't stand out as an individual. Or as Herbie called them, not the best players, the RIGHT players.

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:41 pm**

keepitreal wrote:It's highly unlikely the all state selections made by local sportswriters could be very accurate. Few if any writers can lend enough attention or expertise to girls high school hockey in the face of other, often more dominant sports to provide an accurate assessment of players. If you're lucky you might get someone who bothers to look up the stat leaders which becomes their list, sprinkling in a few leading players from the local teams for good measure. Take these for what they are worth. The coaches polls are really the only ones worth their salt, and even then there may be a bias toward their team, conference, section and players who they've competed against. One can only hope consensus is created by the law of averages.

As for NDP, we have to remember that if this is indeed a beauty contest, well then beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How the player happens to perform in the brief tryout, who they happen to skate with and against, the style of a particular coach, etc., I don't think we can accuse the system of being busted or calling coaches incompetent. Opinions are just that--you hope the law of averages yields the optimum results, but it doesn't always. I can easily see a kid being missed in NDP that ends up D1--sometimes a coach sees something, is able to bring out something and develop the player, is a late bloomer, or the player is a perfect compliment to the team's assets, but doesn't stand out as an individual. Or as Herbie called them, not the best players, the RIGHT players.

Well stated.

Posted: **Sat Mar 03, 2007 2:53 pm**

All State and All State Honorable Mention are voted on by the coaches. The All Metro teams are voted on by the press. So I put more stock into the All State than the Metro teams especially when you have some sports writers that have never played asport in their life. The NDP I son't even know what to say about that, it is prepicked and really screwed up, which is too bad because it could really mean something and it should.

Posted: **Sat Mar 03, 2007 3:40 pm**

Some clarification about awards/recognition/identification (as well as some opinions):

A) All-State:
1) Pioneer Press - selected by writers. I know of very little coach/outside input.
2) AP - selected by writers from various papers throughout state that choose to submit votes/input? I know of no coach input in this. ***Note that writers usually only know their local kids well, and don't have a strong overall view of G Hockey as a result. Thus, they may put more/some kids up that aren't deserving in the context of the whole sport/state.
3) MGHCA (Coaches' Assn.) - players nominated by their HS coaches, ballot compiled based on these nominations, votes returned by HS coaches, can't vote for your own players. Panel of section reps finalize winners. ***IMHO this is the most "real" all-state team by far as the process is best.

B) All-Metro:
Done only by Star Trib - selected by writers based on coach form feedback in which a coach can nominate/mention and speak about any players in the metro/state as well as nominate their own player(s) if they have one/any. Some would argue that this list is better/more accurate than PioneerP or AP All-State as it involved both coaches and media in the process vs. just one or the other.

C) All-Conf.:
Different conferences do this differently. Some allocate # of AC based on team finish in Conf. Some have coaches nominate kids and then the conf. coaches vote on who is deserving (again, usually not voting for own kids). Usually ACHM awards are a certain # per team to most deserving kids. Many times it's common for older players to win these awards in the case where all things are considered equal talent wise between two players. For this reason when you see a 3-4-5-6 year AC award winner, that's pretty impressive. ALSO though, realize that not all Conferences are created equal, meaning a player that may be AC in one conference may barely be HM in another... And, also some Conf. recognize different % of players - meaning one conf. may recognize 35 AC kids total but another only 15, and this isn't always proportionate to the # of teams either...

D) NDP
Most fair and unbiased identification/selection process of best kids in region (mainly in the state). Very few kids are overlooked if any, and I've seen only a select few examples of situations where a kid was overlooked in this process (IMHO). No process is perfect, and everyone is entitled to their OPINION (this is mine), but really truly the ones that usually complain about NDP are the ones that aren't involved - which I can understand - but still disagree with. I won't get into the specifics of the process as it's well documented in other threads in this forum.

Re: NDP P3/NY/Lake Placid/Rochester, I ask again, what D1 kid (that didn't turn down the honor) didn't make it to P3/NY/Lake Placid/Rochester??? Please remember - NDP is a preliminary identification process for National Team consideration...

Re: All-State: If you look at all three entities that do this, and see which kids are on all (or all but one) of the lists, that group is likely your true "classical" All-State & ASHM group.

Posted: **Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:18 pm**

I'm sure the girls that were chosen for NDP are all very deserving, But there are certanly girls that are overlooked because of coaching resignations or coaches that just don't seem to care. There is so much parity among the top players in high school girls hockey that a girl can be easily missed by a system that is judged by a group of people that cannot even admit there may be incompetent coaches among them. The only other people tha I have ever seen with this attitude is government workers and the teachers union.....I'm happy for the girls that were chosen for NDP, my daughter isn't driven enough about hockey to acheive that honor but I'm happy that she is so well rounded and has lots of other interests. As for incopetent coaches, My daughter has given up hockey because of incopetent coaches and won't be playing next season.

Posted: **Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:49 pm**

I can say that I know for a fact that there are mechanisms in place to guard against coaching turnover and intentional neglect by coaches. Not perfect, but better than nothing being done.

What bothers me more is the statement about a coach driving a kid from the game. Was it playing time, accolades, &/or something else that led to a kid not playing?

I have to say that I'm all for protecting coaches. There will be legitimate problems from time-to-time with coaches, but I bet it's rare at best.

Posted: **Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:58 pm**

The problem was plain and simple the coaches dedication, one coach did not show up once all season long, another coach was late nearly every day for practice, a third coaches main concern was how everyone else was going to get his daughters the puck and the head coach let this all happen under his nose and did nothing about it. at the begining of the season I predicted they would finish at number 30 and I think that they finished at 26, they didn't get better all season, they stayed the same because the coaching did nothing to make the team better. My daughter said it best when she said the coaches ask them to get better and work hard while there not doing the same....It all comes down to a lack of integrity

Posted: **Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:33 am**

My daughter plays for the same school as yours Hockeygod and I have a pretty good idea who you are. I hear what your saying about the program and what you say in your last posting is correct. There were plenty of days we wondered why we even showed up for practice because nothing got done. Maybe your daughter should look into a recreational league somewhere because she really seems to enjoy hockey but like alot of people, she just didn't enjoy the situation. Good luck to her.

Posted: **Mon Mar 05, 2007 12:40 pm**

She could play U19?

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