HighSchoolHockeyForums.com

I realize that Edina typically have strong high school teams. The past three years they were supposed to do major damage according to Minnesota hockey scene.

Coming into this year:

Loaded team
Senior leadership
History on their side
Every publication had Edina, Edina, Edina
Blah,Blah,Blah

What happened to Edina? I watched Edina not only beat # 1 Jefferson in the section championship but they dominated the game. Then they go to state and struggle? Edina did not play with the same intensity in state as they did against a very good Jefferson team. Giles said in the StarTribune that he's been waiting all year for Edina to come together and play as a team. Which tells me that Edina was up and down all year long. Is this acceptable for Edina hockey? I see a trend with Edina hockey the past few years and it's not good.

They lost their best player before the season started and I don't think many people realized how much he meant to the team. He wasn't only the best player in the state but he was the leader of the team on and off the ice. If he would have played this season I believe Edina would have lived up to the hype. They still had tons of talent on the team but the whole season it felt like there was a missing piece to the team whenever they took the ice and that missing piece was Budish he was going to be the key to their success this season. I still believe they should have taken the title this year without him and still believe they are best team in the state but Budish was the missing part in winning the state title this year.

yes i agree with both comments, a tough conclusion to the edina season.. hopefully with hard work and determination the hornets can get stronger this summer and get back into business next year... hats off to a great season and thank you to all seniors!

Everybody knows that talent will only get your so far. I think, in the end the Hornets were out-worked.

I wouldn't say they "struggled" too badly in 2 of their 3 state tourney games. They picked the wrong one to have a bad night, though, and Moorhead deserves a lot of credit for playing like a team on a mission.

With Budish, they probably would have been unbeatable. Without him, they were still probably the most talented team in the state, but there were cracks in the walls, to the point where a team that plays its best game (as Moorhead did) is capable of getting a win. The goaltending, while not bad, was not as good as the four teams that finished ahead of them. The first line was amazing, the second line was good, but the 3rd wasn't quite up to the level of some other teams'. The defense was good, but not world-class, and I thought they (other than Baker) struggled quite a bit against Moorhead. Baker's partner in particular did not have a good night; I counted at least 5 times in which he failed to hold the zone on easy passes and such. It ended up being the perfect storm, and Edina found itself with a one-way ticket to Mariucci.

I've gotta believe it's coaching. Edina was hands down the most talented team in the state this year, and all of you who watched the section finals against Jefferson can back me up when I say that, when this team played up to their talent, there is not a team in the state who is within 3 goals of them. If they play every game as well as they did vs. Jefferson, they go undefeated this year and they go down one of the best teams ever in MN. Even if they play 75% as well as they did vs. Jeffeson, I still don't think there's a team in MN that can beat them. It's the coaches job to get a team to play up to their potential, especially in the biggest game(s) of the year, and Giles did not do that.

yes, edina lost bdish, but theres a bigger problem. Giles only played one line the WHOLE time. granted that one line is insane, but there edina, they have a JV team, a jr. gold A team, and two junior gold B teams, and all of them went to state, and im supposed to believe that edinas varsity team could only produce one effective line??

They had everything in the world going for them, even without Budish, but the staff could not get it together and win the big one. But in their defense, Moorhead played a great game and all the hype in the world will not win you a championship. As an AHA fan I know this first hand.

Sometimes players play bad games as well and I think that might have been the case here. Sure the coach can say all sorts of things but sometimes, especially with a venue like the X, players get nervous and lose their hands or something like that. That was my observation.

Gr8 wrote:Sometimes players play bad games as well and I think that might have been the case here. Sure the coach can say all sorts of things but sometimes, especially with a venue like the X, players get nervous and lose their hands or something like that. That was my observation.

Yes players do get nervous but not these kids. This is Lee's 5th state tourney as well as Everson, Gaarder, and Baker's 3rd. They can handle the nerves by now.

Hill-Murray wrote the book on how to beat Edina. You hit them and hit them some more and play agressive defense. If Lee, Everson or Gaarder get by you, so what, but they are not used to being hit and it throws them off. Gaarder can handle the hitting, but Lee and Everson tend to not do as well.

Lee is agressive, but likes the one way contact where puts someone on their butt, he doesn't like get hitting by kids who actually enjoy hitting. Everson tries to find open space to get a shot off and it is a lot easier against a passive defense that doesn't take chances.

MAybe things would be different if they had Budish, but woulda, coulda, shoulda never got anyone anywhere, they still had a team capable of winning state that got beat by a scrappy team that wanted to hit and played tight and agressive defense.

Bottom line, a defense on its heels and protects their net will get destroyed by Edina, but an agressive team defense can put Edina on its heels.

Edina was just off. We can all make excuses for why but if anyone showed up to watch the Hill game for the consolation you would know that. That game could have easily 9/10-2 if Edina buried pucks that they had open nets for. The same thing happened in the Moorhead game. Edina's passes were just a tiny bit off and the chances they had to put the puck in the net werent put away like they needed to be. This team clearly deserved to be the topped ranked team in the tournament and we all saw how one off game will hurt you especially against a skilled team like Moorhead.

bulldog14411 wrote:Edina was just off. We can all make excuses for why but if anyone showed up to watch the Hill game for the consolation you would know that. That game could have easily 9/10-2 if Edina buried pucks that they had open nets for. The same thing happened in the Moorhead game. Edina's passes were just a tiny bit off and the chances they had to put the puck in the net werent put away like they needed to be. This team clearly deserved to be the topped ranked team in the tournament and we all saw how one off game will hurt you especially against a skilled team like Moorhead.

Very good comments, but I posted comments about AHA and all I heard was excuses, excuses and excuses. Fact is that Moorhead played great and Edina was probably looking past Moorhead and like I posted about the Jefferson / Edina game. The coaching staff should have noticed something in the first period, made adjustments and taken it to them in the second and third. I feel most bad for the players, they busted their butts all year and could not finish the job.

Zamman wrote:Very good comments, but I posted comments about AHA and all I heard was excuses, excuses and excuses. Fact is that Moorhead played great and Edina was probably looking past Moorhead and like I posted about the Jefferson / Edina game. The coaching staff should have noticed something in the first period, made adjustments and taken it to them in the second and third. I feel most bad for the players, they busted their butts all year and could not finish the job.

I agree with you. You cant take anything away from Moorhead they showed up thursday and Edina didnt think they had to and payed for it. I'm not so sure you can blame the coaching staff either. I'm sure there were adjustments made, things just didnt work out. You bet it's frustrating but it's how state works. It was good to see that they, like many teams hoping to win state and lose in the first round, didnt give up and skated and went out and proved that they were an impressive team this year who just missed out on thursday.

Don't be surprised if Ankeny is not starting next year. Alot of people don't know the back up, Girard, but he is hands down a better goalie than Ankeny. Expect some good competition between them next year.

I don't think the Budish excuse works. Yes, he is a very dominate player, and an even better leader. But Edina was easily the most dominate team on paper. Do you know how many teams would love to have just one of those players? Baker, Lee, Everson, Gaarder...and others. Moorhead didn't have nearly as much talent as that. Budish is good, but wouldn't make a 3 goal difference in my mind.

I think it came down to Edina looking past the first game, and they just simply didn't have the usual speed and good play.

I think the ridiculous hype given Edina was a problem. If they play Moorhead 10 times, they probably win 8. But any one game can be won by the underdog. Look at the MN Wild. They just beat San Jose. There is even more of a talent discrepancy with the Wild and Sharks. Hockey is about the only sport where a team with supposed superior talent can lose. Edina just picked the wrong night to lose. Just the nature of the sport.

rinkrat90 wrote:I think the ridiculous hype given Edina was a problem. If they play Moorhead 10 times, they probably win 8. But any one game can be won by the underdog. Look at the MN Wild. They just beat San Jose. There is even more of a talent discrepancy with the Wild and Sharks. Hockey is about the only sport where a team with supposed superior talent can lose. Edina just picked the wrong night to lose. Just the nature of the sport.

I agree with everything you say, except: "Hockey is about the only sport where a team with supposed superior talent can lose." All you have to do is watch a few NCAA basketball games starting this week, and it won't take long before you start to see some higher seeded teams go down.

What's wrong with Edina?

I think it says a lot about the program that anything short of a state championship is considered a huge disappointment. Grand Rapids in 2007, Hill in 2008, and Moorhead this year.

Edina won about 80 games the last three years, was 9-0 in Sections, and won 6 state tournament games leading to three trophies. Yes, they were expected to win at least one state championship. Keeping things in perspective, these accomplishments would be enough for a parade in many communities.

All really great comments and observations. Combine them all together and I think you have the answer. My hats off to the seniors and the players on Edina. Really tough loss but an incredible group of kids with amazing talent and a great season record. They will all do well in the future and hats off to a great Moorhead team for showing up to play great hockey this past weekend. Good luck to Zach Budish. Seems like he has handled his injury in a very mature manner and it will be great to watch him play for the U. Watching the quality kids on Edina and Moorhead made me proud to be a hockey fan.

MNHockeyFan wrote:

rinkrat90 wrote:I think the ridiculous hype given Edina was a problem. If they play Moorhead 10 times, they probably win 8. But any one game can be won by the underdog. Look at the MN Wild. They just beat San Jose. There is even more of a talent discrepancy with the Wild and Sharks. Hockey is about the only sport where a team with supposed superior talent can lose. Edina just picked the wrong night to lose. Just the nature of the sport.

I agree with everything you say, except: "Hockey is about the only sport where a team with supposed superior talent can lose." All you have to do is watch a few NCAA basketball games starting this week, and it won't take long before you start to see some higher seeded teams go down.

NDSU versus Kansas?
Anyone?
Anyone?

Ah, nevermind.

Doglover wrote:All really great comments and observations. Combine them all together and I think you have the answer. My hats off to the seniors and the players on Edina. Really tough loss but an incredible group of kids with amazing talent and a great season record. They will all do well in the future and hats off to a great Moorhead team for showing up to play great hockey this past weekend. Good luck to Zach Budish. Seems like he has handled his injury in a very mature manner and it will be great to watch him play for the U. Watching the quality kids on Edina and Moorhead made me proud to be a hockey fan.

Very well said DL.

ArcticGrunt wrote:Everybody knows that talent will only get your so far. I think, in the end the Hornets were out-worked.

Hard work will beat talent that's not willing to work hard every time

scoreboard33 wrote: Gaarder can handle the hitting, but Lee and Everson tend to not do as well.

Lee is agressive, but likes the one way contact where puts someone on their butt, he doesn't like get hitting by kids who actually enjoy hitting. .

FYI: Gaarder is #27, he is the shorter scrappy guy, (5'10" 170)

BUDISH is #22 and was the center last year on that line but is injured and did not play this year. Budish is a big (6'3" 225) kid who loves to bang bodies on the rink and football field as their middle linebacker.

LEE is #9 and played center this year on the line with Gaarder. Lee is a big kid (6'2" 220) who loves to bang bodies on the rink and football field. He rushed for over 2,000 yards the last two seasons in his role as a QB.

I know it's tough to keep all those players identifided correctly when they never lift their masks and don't have their names on their jerseys.

It wasn't Edina losing that surprised me as much as it was how they lost. Usually a team ranked #1 with that much talent loses because either their goalie played bad, or the other goalie stood on his head. Prime examples of these are CDH victory or DE and HM over WBL in sections. I thought Edina's goalie played well against MH and Marks was good, but not great against Edina.

A lot of very good things are being said here.

Edina's loss in thoe 07 tourney was probably the least surprising. They were very good, but they ran into a White-hot (pun intended) Rapids team that was already coming off two huge upsets and had been to the state title game the previous year. Edina was young and new to the scene, and Rapids knew exactly what they were doing. It was a very unlucky draw for the Hornets.

08, for me, is the hardest to understand, as Edina was clearly the most talented team in the state. They had 5 D-1 players on their power play, for goodness sake. This is the only one on which I think you can pin some of the "blame" on Giles. I was not a fan of overloading that top line, and you could tell they were worn down by the time they got to Hill in the state championship, particularly after coming off an exhausting win over Benilde. Don't get me wrong, I think Giles is a very good coach who does a lot of things right; he practically won them the 3rd Minnetonka game with brilliant line matchups. But I think he dropped the ball on that call.

As scoreboard said, that Hill game wrote the book on how to beat Edina; 4 of their 5 losses this year followed that exact same formula. Moorhead followed it perfectly with their aggressive defense, forechecking, and by getting out to an early lead and not letting up. Though this team was still incredibly talented, they were missing Budish, Gleason, and a seasoned goalie from the previous year, and none of those were really properly replaced. No one could replace Budish, the defensive unit was not nearly as good despite having one excellent player on it, and the goaltending, while not the biggest flaw, wasn't quite as good as the competition. Those shortcomings were enough that one bad game cost them their shot at a title.

rinkrat90 and O-townClown also bring up an excellent point about the expectations. As a Yankees fan, I can attest to the damage that heaping unrealistically high expectations upon a team can do. Related to that is how failure the first time around can snowball and turn into some sort of mental block--the "here we go again" mentality. I've seen this at work with the Yankees, Duluth East hockey from 06-08, and some people from White Bear Lake could probably tell you some stories here too. To the stars of the Edina senior class's credit, they never seemed to get caught up in this. However, there are 12 other people seeing regular ice time on this team, and maybe it did hit them a bit, who knows. But I really don't think the flaw here lies in anything Lee, Everson, Gaarder, or Baker did.

Hopefully what stays with these kids are the fun times, dramatic wins, and many achievements they've piled up over these past 3 years, and not the pain of those three losses. They've had a very positive impact on Minnesota hockey. As for Edina, knowing their history, the program should be fine. No coach can do everything right, and Giles is an excellent hockey mind has every right to stay on in Edina for as long as he desires.