Higher Caliber Tournament for 2000 2001 2002 birth year???

mackjogger · Post by **mackjogger** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 12:36 pm

Which Tournament draws better teams?
EASTON OR WALLEYE

observer · Post by **observer** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 1:54 pm

Things change. The Walleye Tourney started as one of a few "Super Elite" AAA tourneys. It was hosted by the 95 Blades which was a very good team. They invited only the top 4-5 95 AAA teams in the country to play against them. They battled them at other tourneys so knew who they were. Super Elite used to mean that you were allowed to tweak your roster with guest super players to make the teams, and the tourney, super elite.

They've changed the tourney and now it appears to be just another AAA tourney, with several levels, and a strong field. It probably wasn't much of a fundraiser for the Blades originally but now, as several other organizations have done as well, it's become a large hosted tourney with a chance to make some good money for the Blades.

At the younger levels, who knows? You get to the 97, 98 levels and things are pretty well defined. Both look to be very good tourneys.

terrymoore1717 · Post by **terrymoore1717** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 11:17 pm

Observer is pretty close to correct but not exactly.

We have expanded the Golden Walleye this year to seven levels (97-03) at Mariucci, Ridder and BIG. As before. we limited each level to a small group of competitive teams.

One big change this year is that we are working with Selects Hockey as co-hosts of the tournament. SH has a unique ability to recruit players from all over North America. We have players from many different states and provinces coming to town this year.

The tournament this year is a combination of upgraded clubs (e.g 98 Icemen adding some high level players) and pure "tournament teams" made up of strong players from various clubs that come together just for this weekend.

We expect a very high caliber of play that will be fun to watch. We are at the U of M and BIG all weekend and there is no gate fee.

JSR · Post by **JSR** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:41 pm

Terry,
Are you guys trying to tie this tournament into the 5 Skills Camp that is going on this week which is also part of Selects Hockey? Is that a long term goal to have the two be sort of part of eachother?

terrymoore1717 · Post by **terrymoore1717** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:17 pm

We have been building a relationship with Selects for some time now. This year, we decided to try working together on the Golden Walleye and we helped them work some local connections with the five skills camp. Also, our Blades teams were in the camp this week.

Selects has quite a few teams in the Walleye and they also used their North American connections to bring in some other very strong groups.

JSR · Post by **JSR** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 11:32 am

terrymoore1717 wrote:We have been building a relationship with Selects for some time now. This year, we decided to try working together on the Golden Walleye and we helped them work some local connections with the five skills camp. Also, our Blades teams were in the camp this week.

Selects has quite a few teams in the Walleye and they also used their North American connections to bring in some other very strong groups.

Very nice. It sounds like a great camp. My son has a few friends at the camp (we unfortunately had a conflict so could not attend) but we can't wait to hear from them how it went. Thanks