Something I like about youth hockey in District 8 is the involvement of Wisconsin teams in league play. But it was always a mystery why they played at the Minnesota levels that they did. That is until I simply took the effort to find out. The Wisconsin rules as I understand have two tiers of hockey, Tier I and Tier II. Tier I is what I call AAA-an undistricted team fielded by an organization that registers three or more players from districted teams and is eligible to enter Regional and National Tournaments. Wisconsin has 6 Tier I organizations including the Fire. Each organization has to field a minimum of three teams.
Tier II requires an association to classify each association 1-4 by an association’s ability to support and field hockey teams. A top association is Division 1 and the lowest association is rated Division 4. Each association rating becomes part of the team rating. The selection process for the Tier II association teams are the same, A, B, etc. Top players in the association are rated A, but the association rating is added in front of that team, to make it 1A (top association) or 4A (lowest association).
Wisconsin has 6 regions that contain all Tier I and Tier II hockey teams. The Wisconsin Fire AAA team is listed as part of Region 6 for example. Region 6 has two Division 1 Associations, Hudson and Eau Claire. Onalaska is in Region 6 also. The Hudson top rated peewee team is rated 1A because it is a Division 1 association. It plays in D8 Peewee A league. The Onalaska top peewee team is rated 2A because it’s association is rated as Division 2 and it plays in D8 Peewee B league.
Wisconsin has mite, squirt, peewee, and bantam tourneys at each division and team level (for example, they have Division 1 Mite Tourneys for A, B and C levels; Division 2 Mite Tourneys for A, B, and C levels and so on. Each Region sends a representative. The tourney field is filled out by the host team and a wild card selection to end up with 8 teams. Currently there are two Division 1 teams in Region 6. I suspect those two teams would play each other to go to state.
This Saturday, I was off to see the Onalaska, Wisconsin team play Woodbury Blue at Aldrich Arena. Woodbury Blue has a good team this year, Onalaska has struggle standing 2-8-2 in D8 Peewee B league. The Onalaska team drove the 150 miles from the La Crosse area to play this morning at Aldrich.
Aldrich is a large arena and is a better venue for a high school hockey game then a youth game. The parents and supporters of both teams were lost in the size.
The arena was warm, and the sight lines nice. I found a comfortable seat and settled in, noting that from the few banners hanging that the arena must be home for Hill Murray. It had a musty odor and a parent commented on smelling the odor and another answered that it was “probably because this was the first arena they had been in the past two months warm enough to have an odor”.
The Onalaska team came on the ice in black uniforms with white trim. Their starting center was a girl. You could easily tell because her hair hung down loosely covering her number on her back. My wife commented that our granddaughter, who plays hockey, doesn’t like a pony tail either. The knot hurts under the helmet. I would never thought of that before.
The first period was an evenly skated game and that surprised me. Woodbury Blue had the better skills, but the Onalaska team countered with better positioning on the ice. Both teams passed the puck well, but the Onalaska team had difficultly taking advantage of scoring opportunities. The first period was scoreless as both teams had pressure in their offensive zones. As the second period opened, the Onalaska team started to control the flow, keeping better possession of the puck and spacing themselves.
Halfway through the period, an Onalaska defenseman whiffed on the puck. Onalaska was setting up an attack from just inside the red line. The puck was left laying for a Woodbury forward to pick up and skate in unopposed, scoring to put Woodbury up 1-0. The game became even again as Woodbury started to apply pressure. With three minutes to go another defensive mistake gave Woodbury a two on one rush that resulted in a tip-in goal. Woodbury had a 2-0 at the end of the second period.
The third started with Woodbury on the power play, but Onalaska forwards combined on the center ice face to take control of the puck and turned it into a two on one rush and a goal from the slot to narrow the lead to 2-1 within the first 10 seconds. Two minutes later, the Blue came back for a third goal on a double deflection of a shot from below the face off circle to take a 3-1 lead. The Onalaska team sagged after that deflection and Woodbury mounted a fierce attack containing the play inside the offensive zone.
But then the refs called a double minor on Woodbury just inside the four minute mark putting Onalaska on the power play. Just before the first minor expired, Onalaska forwards combined on a nice passing play that resulted in an easy wide open net goal to narrow the score to one 3-2. Woodbury was still on the penalty kill, but Onalaska could not mount another offensive attack in the last two minutes. The final score remained 3-2, Woodbury Blue.
I left thinking it was great that something like this can happen. Two teams from different states being able to compete against each other in regular season competition. I think the kids skating had fun. From the evenly played game, the rules of each state’s hockey association worked to match each of these teams so they could play and have fun.
Peewee Tournaments (Part 5)
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