Westisthebest wrote:Just a question not quite sure but if Willistons goalie is on could they compete? or is BHS plays physical with the minnesota teams?
If your goalie is 'on' you can 'compete' with anyone. Consistency is key, and I don't believe any of the West teams would be capable of being as consistent as the top 3-4 teams in the EDC are. Even with the top 4 teams in the EDC, it's rare that we have consistent skill levels over here in the east. With the incredibly low number of teams (18 in the entire state), you'd expect certain schools to win more often. In the past few years, there's been hardly any schools winning more than 1-2 years in a row. That's good for the state, but with only 18 teams and 3/4 of them not being competitive with the top 1/4 it's not that impressive. Especially when the state champ in ND got demolished by the higher level MN teams. (Blaine, Jefferson, even Roseau beat Central and Grafton. Roseau was
bad.)
As for Bismarck, I think their stress on physicality would get to them. Most teams in ND tend to play physical and try to hit. Few teams in Minnesota focus on this, and rarely any of them get to state. Moorhead was about as physical as a team from MN got, but they also had a tremendous amount of speed. I think MN teams would just be too skilled and fast for Bismarck and would skate around them instead of trying to go toe to toe with them like ND teams did (Grafton, Central). Red River avoided this, and when Bismarck continued to attempt to be physical, they got penalties, and if they missed they got walked and lead to an odd man rush and a good scoring opportunity.
Even South would have had a hard time just getting to State in Minnesota this year. They had a highly skilled team and a great record against MN teams (Moorhead, White Bear, Crookston, Rochester Century, John Marshall, Apple Valley and whomever they played in their scrimmages, believe they played Breck, Burnsville and some other team?), they would have had to get through Moorhead to simply get to state. They went 5-0-1 against Minnesota teams, and (especially how they played at state) I doubt they would have gotten as far as Moorhead did.
Edit: Long post, eh?