MN equivalent to Ontario 99 Bantam AA

[57special]

Ran into a 99 AA Thunder Bay team on the weekend that was playing in a Bantam B2 Tourney. They destroyed the competition, including a 8-0 finals win against a B2 team that was also racking up wins by uneven scores.

I always find the Ontario system a bit confusing, and i know the level of competition is different the farther away you get from southern Ontario/Toronto area, but shouldn't a 99AA team be playing against MN Bantam A teams at the very least?

[O-townClown]

Yes.

[Ugottobekiddingme]

No, please refer to the "class A/AA enrollment question topic posted under the HS thread". Canada follows different rules when looking at the free lunch program. The ratio has changed dramatically under the current economic situation, they follow the 1/4 or .25 ratio that allows diversity within competition not yet realized under sanctioned USA hock guidelines. This will be all discussed and noted at the next MN Hockey meeting.

[JSR]

Ran into a 99 AA Thunder Bay team on the weekend that was playing in a Bantam B2 Tourney. They destroyed the competition, including a 8-0 finals win against a B2 team that was also racking up wins by uneven scores.

I always find the Ontario system a bit confusing, and i know the level of competition is different the farther away you get from southern Ontario/Toronto area, but shouldn't a 99AA team be playing against MN Bantam A teams at the very least?

It's hard to say and honestly they probably found it hard to say as well. Much like other states in the USA, Canada is dominated by AAA hockey so a good share of the top players play AAA winter hockey. Hence leaving their AA clubs uncertain of where they fit in when they play outside their area, now you throw in the fact that Canada follows the same birth year rules that the rest fo the USA follows and you are never certain who you should play from MN. Wisconsin "A" teams have the same problem, you are never quite sure how good your association team is relative to MN competition because of the different birthday cutoffs combined with not know the competition up there very well year to year. Should our A team play a MN AA team, or an A team or a B1 team or a B2 team and depending on the association you are playing you'll get different results. In hindsight I am sure that team would have done something different but my guess is they had no knowledge base going into that tourney for that particular team so they "guessed" the best they could..... Now if they do it again I'd call them out on it but if it's the first go around it probably was just them not being sure.

[57special]

new info on the situation (I wasn't there). Turns out the AA team barely beat a Tonka B2 team early in the Tourney, so perhaps they weren't playing way underneath their level.

BTW, not all of Canada is a slave to the AAA system. Toronto/Golden Horseshoe teams are where the vast majority of AAA teams exist.

[JSR]

new info on the situation (I wasn't there). Turns out the AA team barely beat a Tonka B2 team early in the Tourney, so perhaps they weren't playing way underneath their level.

BTW, not all of Canada is a slave to the AAA system. Toronto/Golden Horseshoe teams are where the vast majority of AAA teams exist.

I don't think anything I said indicated that they were all "slaves" to AAA. Same goes for Wisconsin, or Michigan or Illinois or anywhere else you find AAA, you also find good associations teams/players in those places too that don't play AAA.... none the less it doesn't make anything I said less true and also this particular team it was stated was from Thunder Bay and Thunder Bay does have the AAA Thunder Bay Kings pulling many of that areas best kids, so my statement applies, in fact you telling us they had some close game(s) with a B2 team only establishes more evidence to everythign I said..... also, while Toronto is a huge metropolis that has a lot of AAA teams but I think you are discounting Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City, Montreal and Vancouver as places that have a host of AAA teams as well that are not part of that Golden Horseshoe area....