North Dakota Preps

(Voting ends Thursday night)
(All Records and Rankings are EDC only, as of 02-07-09)


7 -- [#3] Grand Forks Central (10-2)at [#4] Grafton / Park River (8-4) -- 1

The Spoilers are coming into this game on a need to win basis. If Grafton wins this game as well as their Saturday game against Red River, they could clinch the third seed in EDC as long as the higher seeds win out this weekend. The Spoilers have struggled this year, but are surely not out of contention in EDC, and look to prove it here against the 3rd seed.
Central has rebounded from a tough loss to Red River a few weeks back and has rolled over some lower seeded teams in the EDC. They also play a strong Warroad team this coming Tuesday previous to the matchup, and will surely have the Knights fired up and ready for North Dakota competition again.

[#3] Grand Forks Central (10-2) at [#1] Fargo South (12-0)

Central will end their regular season going from a strong Minnesota team in Warroad, the defending champions from Grafton, and then finish with the highest seeded EDC team in Fargo South. Central will need to fight fatigue as well as a home town crowd in order to reach their goal of the second seed in the EDC.
South, who has all but clinched the first seed in the EDC, will be looking to finish their conference run just as they began it. The motivation to win this game is not only a regular season title but also a sweep of EDC opponents (assuming a win over North on Tuesday) for the season.

[#4] Grafton / Park River (8-4) at [#2] Grand Forks Red River (10-2-0-1)

Grafton, who played Red River to a close 3-2 loss in Grafton in the middle of the season is looking to show that it was a mistake. However, it'll be an uphill climb toward the #3 seed in EDC as they have to travel to Grand Forks and play the second seeded team in the conference.
Red River will be looking to solidify their second seed and will be hoping South does the same to keep it that way. With a win here as well as South beating Central, it would leave Red River to hold the second seed for the EDC tournament in Week 13. Red River will need to play solid defensively while their strong offense does its job in the other end to pull off the win.

One small correction, GFC travels to GPR. II have no idea how this will all end up but it looks like it should be fun.

Fixed it.

I have the feeling that the higher seeds will all win this week, but I've been wrong before.

i believe rr's tenacity and fire will win them this game

hockeymaster wrote:i believe rr's tenacity and fire will win them this game

I do think RR will beat GPR. They have improved and are playing pretty good hockey.

i havent been impressed with grafton this year. i believe there program is falling into a slump, they cant put the puck in the net, and just seem like there a meideocre team. i dont expect them making it to state the next couple years.

hockeymaster wrote:i havent been impressed with grafton this year. i believe there program is falling into a slump, they cant put the puck in the net, and just seem like there a meideocre team. i dont expect them making it to state the next couple years.

They're going to hit a rough patch, with a loss of a lot of talent. Grafton has a tradition of supporting a good team with their small numbers though, so I wouldn't count them out just yet.
In future years, I see domination of Hockey going back to the Grand Forks, with how WF is supposedly going to get split, South is getting split into two in 2011, it takes away two possibilities of a hockey opposition for GF. As an early pick for next year, I see a race between GFC/South, but GFC returns far more talent. (South loses four defensemen and an entire forward line while GFC loses hardly anyone)

Apparantly, during practice this week, Red River's three goalies, Brian Neis, Aaron Melland, and Mitch Byrne, caught a really bad case of the flu from sharing the same water bottle. I've talked to one of these goalies and it appears as though Andrew Butowski(spelling?) is going to be playing against grafton because of it. He has been practicing with varsity for a few weeks, however, this will be his first varsity appearance. It should be interesting to find out how this game goes now.

Yeah i also heard that, what effect will this on the Red River team?

I just saw Melland and Neis at the GFC Warroad game last night walking around like they were fine.

Yes that is where i talked to them. They said they all horrible like they were going to throw up all night. All three goalies missed school today because of it. That to me says that it is something serious. Also, Matt Malm missed practice today because of illness. If you dont believe me just ask any Red River player. It will be exciting to see a JV goalie make his debute on the last game of the season and perhaps the biggest game.

thats a ruff thing to deal with, with all do respect to the players, i dont know the severity of the flu they have, but i would of expected atleast one if not two of them to buckle down, throw on the pads, and do there job to the best of there ability, sick or not, i just dont understand missing such a crucial game. just my thoughts. and i saw the stuff about wf and south splitting, i would say that is very fair, too large fo numbers can cause domination, and francly south has gotten too large, they should still be a good team, with davies not far behind.

hockeymaster wrote:i saw the stuff about wf and south splitting, i would say that is very fair, too large fo numbers can cause domination, and francly south has gotten too large, they should still be a good team, with davies not far behind.

I honestly don't believe numbers is what decides the talent of a team, tradition does. No number of people can make up for the fact that players are born with skates on their feet (see Grafton, Roseau, and a majority of Minnesota smaller town teams like Moorhead, and Warroad). The fact is that WF, South, and the new Davies are going to struggle pretty bad in coming years (assuming players don't transfer schools to be on the better team) and will have to rebuild their programs from the ground up. Look to see more GF domination for a while when this goes through.
Grafton will continue to produce talent.

when you look at the standings for EDC you see 4 teams on top, the rest seem to struggle with low records. when i see these schools splitting(south atleast) i see a more even playing field. which i would consider an accomplishment of its own. but yes tradition does have alot to do with talent. hockey isnt a sport you acquire great skill in, your born into it, and develope long before your high school career

hockeymaster wrote:when you look at the standings for EDC you see 4 teams on top, the rest seem to struggle with low records. when i see these schools splitting(south atleast) i see a more even playing field. which i would consider an accomplishment of its own.

By this you seem to be saying that creating worse teams (by splitting schools) to even the playing field is better for hockey in North Dakota. However, I don't think that's how it should be viewed. I think that teams like Shanley, WF, North, Mandan, Dickinson, etc etc should all want to be the best, and should be working as hard as they can to be as good as the teams we have at the top. You look at the quality of talent we have in North Dakota, and we usually have at least 1-2 teams that can compete with top tier teams in the "State of Hockey". If you split our schools up to 'even the playing field' you eliminate this, and you're basically going to strip the sense of pride that these schools have in their hockey, and it will lower the overall talent of our state.

im not saying we should make any teams worse, more rather just make all the teams better, and yes north dakota has come along way in hockey, very proud of it.

hockeymaster wrote:im not saying we should make any teams worse, more rather just make all the teams better.

It's impossible to do this by taking players from one team and putting them on another. Taking talent from a team to put them on a less skilled team may make that less skilled team more competitive, but it's hurting that team that's played with them for a good 10+ years a lot more than helping the other team.

Poll ends tonight by the way.

Central routs Grafton 7-1 and can clinch the 2nd seed if they can beat South on Saturday, and could take the 1 point lead over Red River. If they lose and Red River wins, Red River clinches the 2nd spot by a single EDC point thanks to an overtime loss to South.
Meanwhile, South beats North 8-1 and clinches first in the EDC.

Saturday determines the 2 and 3 seeds in the EDC. Right now the seeds are:
1. Fargo South
2. Central/RR
3. Central/RR
4. Grafton

The 5th and 6th seed is now up to West Fargo's next two games against Devils Lake and Shanley. If they win out they clinch 5th, and if they lose they take 6th.

hockeymaster wrote:thats a ruff thing to deal with, with all do respect to the players, i dont know the severity of the flu they have, but i would of expected atleast one if not two of them to buckle down, throw on the pads, and do there job to the best of there ability, sick or not, i just dont understand missing such a crucial game. just my thoughts. and i saw the stuff about wf and south splitting, i would say that is very fair, too large fo numbers can cause domination, and francly south has gotten too large, they should still be a good team, with davies not far behind.

it will be the other way around with davies and south. all the talent is going to davies leaving south with nothing

Games are over, the Red River / Grafton game seemed to be a nail biter, ending in Overtime with Red River getting that extra bounce to win 3-2. Because Central won, Central takes 2nd place in the EDC behind South, and RR will take the second seed. Grafton will take the fourth seed.

I was at the FS/GFC game and would like to say it was nice to see some good competition in the EDC again. Although I'm a little disappointed that South didn't come out like I wanted them to, it was still a very good game. There were a lot of penalties either way (probably about 25 penalties in the game) and some of them I don't think either team agreed with, as well as a few judgment calls that the refs did badly on, but it happens. However, when the South kid got tackled by the ref as the last man back when South had their tender pulled was pretty funny and infuriating at the same time. Central got the goals they needed and shots were about even.

Central did a good job of keeping South on their regroup by a lot of dump ins and chasing, and South seemed to have difficulty catching passes that you don't normally see them miss. I'm more impressed by the Central forecheck keeping South regrouping, then losing the puck in neutral, and then getting dumped on and regrouping again. Very good job done by Central, and South is going to need to adjust and work on their catching of passes and getting it into the offensive zone if they want to get by the dumping. When South did start working it in the Central zone, they generally did very well, it's just getting there that they had difficulty with.

All in all the game was very back and forth, and I think it could have gone either way. South is going to have to learn from this loss that games aren't going to be handed to them, because it seems like that's what they're used to, and Central wanted that second seed in EDC. There wasn't too much urgency in the last few minutes of the game and Central just kept dumping it on them. I believe shots were about even (25 a piece?) and Central had one empty net goal to end the game. Game ends 4-2 in favor of Central.

Next up, EDC!

penalties didnt surprise me, both teams have been very penalized all season (no affense, its some teams way of playing), it was a very fun game to watch though, back and fourth the whole game, it was a thriller id say, congrats to purpur with the game winner you might say, seemed as if south was a little off beat, didnt play there best game, in regards to the penalties, its understandable, it happends in the close games, especially this close to the ending of the season! EDC here we come!

I haven't seen central play a game yet this year but they played a great one last night. South played good last night as well but central played better. They attacked the puck all the time and didn't allow south to take control of it at certain times.

great game to watch even tho south didn't pull it out....just makes edc much more interesting.

Great game last night except that the refs didn't allow for much flow. It seemed the 2nd period took forever. I think I held my breath for the last 3 minutes. I'm glad that Plutowski missed the empty net after the ref checked the South player to spring him into the South zone. That would have been unfair. Problem here for Central is they taught a valuable lesson to South at the right time of year for South. I am impressed with South's transition game. They sure can move the puck from their zone to your zone in a hurry. I think Seth Lang was the difference in that game. He made some timely saves to stop South's momentum.

EDC should be interesting for sure. Does anyone know the match ups for sure, I haven't been paying attention.

Thanks HH