AA Rankings for 2/14/21

[karl(east)]

There weren’t very many earth-shattering this results this past week, so the result here is general stasis. That said, the challenges of ranking teams with so few crossover games grow more and more apparent by the week, and I waffled on quite a few of these. For now, I’m mostly standing pat, but the coming week could offer a little more intrigue.

1. Maple Grove (9-0)
-The Crimson put up 29 goals in two rather painful conference games. They can only play the teams in front of them, and they’re doing absolutely everything right. Their opponents this week are somewhat better—I’m curious to see if Rogers can keep it marginally competitive—but not that much better. After that we’ll finally have something resembling an interesting week for this team.
This week: Thurs vs. Rogers, Sat at Anoka

2. Lakeville South (9-0)
-The Cougars thumped a decent Burnsville team in their only action this past week. With Eden Prairie lurking in the rear-view mirror, convincing performances like that are valuable. They’ll look for more of the same over the next seven days.
This week: Thurs vs. Eastview, Sat at Shakopee

3. Eden Prairie (8-1)
-The Eagles put a good Wayzata team in running time to continue their torrid offensive pace since Jackson Blake’s return. I was tempted to nudge them up even without any losses from the teams above them, but I also think it’s safe to say that the teams they’ve been beating lately, while good, are not in the elite tier. After this week, it could be a different story: if they can be the first team to beat Benilde and avenge their lone loss, it will send an obvious message.
This week: Tues vs. #5 Benilde-St. Margaret’s, Sat at Edina

4. Grand Rapids (7-1)
-The Thunderhawks took their first loss of the season in a visit to Hermantown, but since it was a very competitive showing against a team that would be ahead of them in a two-class ranking, I’m not inclined to drop them. In a scheduling quirk, they lost their only opponent scheduled for this coming week to a state tournament in Wisconsin.
This week: Idle

5. Benilde-St. Margaret’s (10-0)
-This time around St. Louis Park gave the Red Knights all they could handle. While their pace has otherwise been pretty steady, they have yet to face a current top 15 team; now, as their schedule starts to ramp up, that will change. What can they make of Eden Prairie’s elite top unit?
This week: Tues at #3 Eden Prairie, Sat at Chaska

6. Hill-Murray (7-2)
-The Pios’ two-goals-a-game output isn’t exactly thrilling, but at least they’re reliable, and over the long haul, I tend to put more faith in these reliable defensive teams than the ones that bounce up and down on the whims of their offense. Their week is a pretty interesting one, and could tell us if they belong in the tier of top teams above them or are in the general mess that follows it.
This week: Wed vs. #13 Holy Family, Sat at #8 Wayzata

7. St. Thomas Academy (7-1-1)
-A tie with a Holy Family team they’d previously put in running time is not a positive trendline for the Cadets, and in spite of their win over Hill, they would appear to be Exhibit A of that up-and-down offensive team I mentioned in the Hill comment. To that end, I’m curious what they make of Mahtomedi, and Blake isn’t a total free pass, either.
This week: Tues vs. Blake, Thurs vs. Mahtomedi

8. Wayzata (6-3)
-The Edina win was nice, and is especially helpful in section seeding positioning for a team that has lost to Blake. The Eden Prairie loss was not nice, as the Trojans got absolutely blitzed by the Eagles. I’m not sure how much to read into that quite yet, but the coming week should definitely provide some perspective.
This week: Fri vs. Moorhead, Sat vs. #6 Hill-Murray

9. Prior Lake (8-1-1)
-Had a bit of a game with Lakeville North, but otherwise, the beat goes on here. They get a chance to atone for the tie on their record in a rematch with Rosemount this coming Saturday.
This week: Thurs at Farmington, Sat vs. #14 Rosemount

10. Cretin-Derham Hall (9-1)
-The Raiders got back to their winning ways by pounding Woodbury and the Mounds View team that beat Stillwater. Hockey is strange sometimes. What would not be strange are similar results in their second meetings with Roseville and Woodbury, both of whom they have played in the past two weeks.
This week: Thurs at Roseville, Sat vs. Woodbury

11. Andover (8-1)
-The Huskies just keep plugging along, this time dispatching of Blaine; the quality of their results is strong enough that they’re certainly knocking on the door of the top ten. There’s no reason to expect much change anytime soon.
This week: Thurs vs. Armstrong/Cooper, Sat at Osseo

12. Minnetonka (6-3)
-The Skippers took care of Duluth East and Edina this past week. While that statement isn’t nearly as impressive as it might have been a couple years ago, it is a step in the right direction and helps secure their spot in a higher tier of teams. The St. Louis Park contest this week has a chance to be interesting in what is, by their standards, a relatively easy week.
This week: Thurs vs. St. Louis Park, Sat vs. Owatonna

13. Holy Family (5-2-1)
-Time to start paying some attention to the Fire, as they’ve rattled off two solid wins and an impressive tie against St. Thomas in their last three. If they can do something with Hill this week, they might really be on a roll.
This week: Wed at #6 Hill-Murray, Fri at Hutchinson

14. Rosemount (7-1-1)
-Like Andover, the Irish continue to clip along steadily, though are perhaps a little less convincing. We’ll see if they can back up their earlier tie with Prior Lake with a second strong showing.
This week: Thurs vs. Shakopee, Sat at #9 Prior Lake

15. Stillwater (8-1)
-The Ponies took care of two Suburban East opponents that they should beat this week; one win was comfortable, the other a bit tight. In the end, that changes little. They get a decent Forest Lake team this week.
This week: Thurs at Forest Lake, Fri at Woodbury

The Next Ten

Edina (4-5-1)
-The Hornets’ competitive loss to Wayzata isn’t much of a dent, but a second shutout loss at the hands of Minnetonka takes a bit more of a toll: while this team has clearly shown it can be very competitive, they also have their share of power outages, and just aren’t breaking through enough to suggest they’re anything more than a longshot in 6AA. We’ll see if they can back up that first win over Eden Prairie this week.

St. Louis Park (7-2-1)
-The Orioles continue to prove they belong, as a close game with Benilde cancels out some of the negatives of the teams’ first meeting. They don’t really have a quality win, but a quality tie and one very respectable loss are enough here. They get a crack at Minnetonka next.

White Bear Lake (8-2)
-Time to give this team a little more of its due: while their margins aren’t always impressive and they’ve lost to the two teams ahead of them in the conference, the Bears are amassing a pretty strong record and beating the teams they should beat. They’ll look to continue that this week against Irondale and Mounds View.

Moorhead (4-4-1)
-The Spuds logged a key section win over Roseau and stuck around against Hill, even if they were distinctly outplayed. In a growing season for a young team, that’s not a bad week. A road trip to Wayzata gives them another shot at a positive result.

Centennial (5-2-1)
-Poor, poor Coon Rapids. The Cougars face something more of a test when they visit Rogers this week.

Hastings (6-3)
-Beat a couple of teams they should beat, and the beat will likely go on against Sibley and Simley over the week ahead of them. After that things start to ramp up again.

Rogers (7-2)
-The Royals fell to Totino, which knocks them back a bit, but rebounded with a respectable win over Elk River. A big week ahead features both Maple Grove and Centennial. Can they be competitive?

Blake (4-4)
-The Wayzata win is now looking like the exception, not the norm, for the Bears. We’ll see if they can muster anything against St. Thomas this week.

Roseau (5-4)
-How much do we whack a team for three straight losses in which they’ve given up five goals in each, all without their regular goaltender? For now, I’m erring on the side of forgiveness, but it has perhaps complicated the Rams’ road through the section. None of their losses are to bad teams, though they have no real quality wins against Minnesota competition, either, and they bleed a lot of goals. They’ll try to restore some order against Thief River Falls and Brainerd this week.

Totino-Grace (3-2-1)
-Beat Rogers, which is a positive, but still trying to work back from that early Covid-induced dearth of games and have a loss to Blaine on the record. Elk River this week will give a sense if they belong here or not.

[Cookster]

Thank you once again for doing this on a weekly basis. I usually walk the dog on Sunday am, then look forward to reading your recap. Makes my fingers thaw out a bit!

[HSLinemaker]

Great Job as usual! Thanks for making my day.

[BlueLineSpecial]

Karl- we're halfway thru this abridged 18 game season; probably enough time to start getting a sense of who/what each team is going to be (with the exception perhaps of teams hit with cancellations due to Covid). As you look back at your pre-season or early-season predictions, which teams do you feel you 'missed' on, if any? Perhaps underestimating Grand Rapids a bit? Overvaluing Edina maybe? Curious to get your thoughts.

Thanks as always for an enjoyable Sunday AM read

[Sparlimb]

What's interesting, is because of the schedules for Stillwater, CDH and White Bear Lake, it is really going to be hard to know where to place these teams in sections. They are playing in an unusually awful conference this year. Its a 3 team race, but we'll have no idea where they stack up versus the rest of the state. Just a thread to watch when playoffs come around.

[karl(east)]

Karl- we're halfway thru this abridged 18 game season; probably enough time to start getting a sense of who/what each team is going to be (with the exception perhaps of teams hit with cancellations due to Covid). As you look back at your pre-season or early-season predictions, which teams do you feel you 'missed' on, if any? Perhaps underestimating Grand Rapids a bit? Overvaluing Edina maybe? Curious to get your thoughts.

Thanks as always for an enjoyable Sunday AM read

Yeah, I'd say I undersold Rapids and maybe oversold Roseau preseason. After watching Edina several times I do think they have the talent I thought they did preseason (and their wins over EP and STA show this), but for whatever reason it has not come together consistently on the ice so far. Beyond that, I might have been a bit too rosy on Cretin and some of the non-MG 5AA teams, but underestimated a couple of teams that lost a lot, like Andover and Rosemount...but all of those come with asterisks, since those teams are all on the list of those playing closed-loop schedules and we don't actually know how good they are, beyond the eye test and the guesswork.

I don't think I can overstate the challenges created by those schedules. During a normal season, when teams get to about 8-10 games (usually after holiday tournaments), I make a table showing teams' quality wins/losses ties and bad losses/ties and really use that to drive the rankings. That's more or less been the bread and butter for the 10+ years I've been doing this. Last night, I tried doing it to clean up the rankings between 8-16 or so, and it proved pretty much useless; other than the Lake teams, the teams in that clump are all something like 1-1 or 0-1-1 or 1-0-1 against other good competition.

The week ahead does look more interesting than this past week, which should help some. Doesn't cure the closed loop problem in those three metro area conferences, though.

[Joe2015]

A few questions:
So where exactly would Hermantown be ranked if they were part of this ranking? How about Gentry?
Who was Grand Rapids supposed to play? Hudson/Superior?
If the EP/Benilde game streaming anywhere?

Appreciate the work Karl!

[BlueLineSpecial]

Just calculate the ratio of unicorns to leprechauns and you’ll have your answer to where Hermantown and Gentry would rank in AA

[karl(east)]

A few questions:
So where exactly would Hermantown be ranked if they were part of this ranking? How about Gentry?
Who was Grand Rapids supposed to play? Hudson/Superior?
If the EP/Benilde game streaming anywhere?

Appreciate the work Karl!

1. While I like BlueLineSpecial's approach, I'd put Hermantown at #3 (Rapids win is good but otherwise their schedule tells us near nothing) and Gentry right after Benilde (undefeated, but weaker schedule than Benilde).

2. Grand Rapids was supposed to play Superior

3. Yes, mnhockey.tv, and looks like it's the free game of the week, so even if you haven't bought their package you should be able to watch it.

[Green and White Fan]

Hopefully Roseau, can begin to get some mojo back. The Rams have been without their two top goalies, a regular defenseman and a regular forward and last Saturday without two of their top defenseman. Barring any setbacks, they hopefully will be back to a full lineup, aside from one defenseman Thursday night against Warroad. The AA test will be on the Duluth East/Grand Rapids swing. If they right the ship and perform well in those games, they should be worthy of top 20 ranking. If they struggle then it is fair to drop them out. I still believe they are the best team in the section, but time will tell.