Beyond the Scoresheet

missing out on a classic Friday night

Y’all. I clearly missed out on some ridiculously good games Friday. Let’s start in my neck of the woods – Morris County. For the first time since 1998, both semifinals went to overtime. That Thursday nine years ago was one of the most exciting nights of hockey I have ever seen (Randolph upsetting Delbarton in OT in the opener, Morristown upsetting Morristown-Beard in a shootout in the nightcap). It sounds like Friday rivaled it in every way. In the first game, Morris Knolls avenged last year’s semifinal loss to Chatham with a shootout victory after a 2-2 tie. The second game pitted Randolph against Morristown-Beard for the seventh time in nine years! It’s unbelievable how often these two have met in the semifinals. Beard had won six in a row, almost singlehandedly causing Randolph’s failure to win a third Mennen Cup title, but the Rams turned the tables with a 3-2 overtime win. I don’t often say I’m jealous of Dan Breeman, and I’m not willing to go that far, but I would have liked to see these two games.

Elsewhere, the first true NBIAL championship lived up to its billing, as Northern Highlands edged Fair Lawn in what I’m sure was a thriller, 3-2. Down south, Point Pleasant and Brick Memorial finished overtime tied 5-5. Unlike past NJIHL championship games, the teams decided the championship with a shootout. I’m not sure if there is any precedent for this in New Jersey history. I don’t even know if it’s in the NJIHL by-laws. At any rate, Brick Memorial won the shootout 2-0 to capture the Southern Blue Cup (can we get names for these things already?) In the other South Jersey finals, Middletown North won its third Dowd Cup in six years with a 5-2 win over Wall. St. Augustine Prep ended Monsignor Donovan’s 13-game unbeaten streak with an impressive 5-1 win, pulling away in the third period. Everybody is looking ahead to a possible St. Augustine Prep-Delbarton semifinal, forgetting that both teams have to get past tough first-round and quarterfinal opponents first.

In North Jersey, Sparta finally broke through Wayne Valley’s defense for a 3-1 win, while Glen Rock confirmed what everybody expected by holding off West Milford for a 3-2 win and a second consecutive cup title. From Blue Division to Red Division in two years for the Panthers! Finally, Notre Dame breezed to the Mercer County Tournament title, 7-1. Tough to get too excited about that.

I don’t know if Saturday can live up to Friday, but you know if I was in town, I’d be checking it out. Enjoy!

Brackets available!

njhockey.org has published the state tournament bracket. We’ll analyze them later, after the Dynamo-Puntarenas match. Overseeding / underseeding report coming up …

Continue reading Brackets available!…

explaining my seeds

Okay, I’m not ready to finalize my suggested seeding for the state tournament yet because we don’t know at-large qualifiers yet. But on maybe the best day of the season – ice cup playoff Monday – I want to explain how I arrived at some of the current seedings. There have only been two major changes from the initial rankings, so I’ll deal with the groups in which the teams bunched, for me. The top five were fairly easy.

Continue reading explaining my seeds…

February Top 20 poll

Alright, alright, everybody loves a Top 20 ranking. I had to do a Top 10 this week for my Hockey Night in Boston write-up, so here’s a full Top 20. Not easy to come up with, necessarily, but fun to discuss. Here we go …
Continue reading February Top 20 poll…

Q & A

One note of interest – Pingry and St. Augustine Prep will play one week from today at Bridgewater Sports Arena. Now that’s the kind of late-season scheduling we like to see!

Also, a few questions and answers on this Friday while awaiting results from the 30 (!) games on schedule tonight. Read on …

Continue reading Q & A…

division tiebreakers

Hey, y’all. Sorry it’s been so long between posts, and I apologize for the lack of rankings to give everybody something else to talk about. Things have been pretty busy down here, between looking for a job (I even had a Jersey hockey connection try to help me out, so keep your fingers crossed for me) and writing for HNIB (my next deadline is 2/6, so expect a ranking around then) and playing indoor soccer (almost broke my toe last night), not to mention my day job; things have been pretty hectic.

You’ll notice the Ice Cups page is up and I’ve made a few minor tweaks to the division pages. The solid line across the schedule now indicates (except where I’ve neglected to make the change, and I’ll get to it) the state tournament cutoff date. You know the rules – teams must have at least a .500 record at the conclusion of Feb. 12 and have satisfied a few basic scheduling conditions to be eligible for the state tournament. Plus Gordon teams, plus at-large bids (teams must be within four games of .500 to apply for an at-large bid). So that’s D-Day for a lot of teams around the state. Keep in mind that NJSIAA Tournament Director Paul McInnis has informed various coaches that shootout AND overtime losses during regular season play count as TIES for state tournament eligibility. I will continue to give a win or loss for overtime results, but not for shootouts. Also, the gray background for a game indicates it is a ‘cup’ game (why I classify the NJISAA tournament as a cup and not the Titans Cup, we’ll never know).

Finally, the most common question I’ve been receiving has been about division tiebreakers. After conferring with various people, our dear Mike Morreale among them, I have reached the following conclusions. NJIHL division ties are broken by:

(1) Wins; (2) Head-to-head results; (3) Goal differential in division play; (4) Coin flip. I’m not 100 percent sure about goal differential, because I seem to remember a Gordon Conference tie decided by coin flip in 2004-05, but it’s possible there were mitigating circumstances.

In Morris County, ties are broken by the following, taken directly from league by-laws:

Criteria for breaking ties for tournament seeding:
a.        League standing.
b.        Head to head competition.
c.        Your record against teams seeded ahead of you.
d.        The team who has defeated the higher seeded team.
e.        Head to head competition with team ranked directly below.
f.        If tie still exists head to head with every succeeding team below
until the tie is broken.
g.        If three or more teams are tied, the composite record of all teams
that are tied against each other.  If one of the three teams is eliminated
at “H.”, return to “B.” to break the tie among the remaining two tied teams
and follow the tie breaking process from there.
h.        If a tie still exists – least amount of penalty minutes in league
games.

In the NBIAL, you’re on your own. Nobody even knows what kind of tournament that darn league is having, let alone who qualifies for it how. The ADs up there need to get their act together.

Feel free to email me or post here with questions and I’ll try to answer them later this week. And, if you want to continue reading really random rambling, click below.

Continue reading division tiebreakers…

going bowling!

Time for my weekly post before I head to N’awlins for the R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, my school’s first bowl appearance in 45 years. I’m proud to say that my father was a student at Rice when he attended our last bowl appearance back in 1961 … he’s flying in from Jersey so he can attend two in a row! Along with several of my roommates and buddies, there will be plenty of proud alumni on hand in the Superdome, and a decent turnout of Rice fans – we sold out our 6,800-ticket allotment.

I’ve had a lot on my mind this week, but there’s been some exciting stuff on the ice as well. Tracking down holiday tournaments has been crazy, so my thanks to those who sent me the SCT and PCT seeds and information on other tournaments. I had to piece together the schedule for the Hamilton Hornet Holiday Invitational from highschoolsports.net schedules and follow prep school tournaments on their respective sites. I still need final pairings for the Bayonne and Montclair Tournaments. And if everybody knows of another St. Joseph in the area, we could have a fun tournament in which all four schools would have the same name.

Okay, on the ice … Delbarton only beat Rhode Island’s LaSalle Academy 1-0, but the Green Wave held a major (36-12) shot advantage. Delbarton will get a much stiffer test today against defending R.I. champion Bishop Hendricken. In other Gordon Conference action, Seton Hall Prep and Pope John have been very impressive of late, while tonight’s St. Peter’s Prep-CBA game is one of the games of the week.

There are a lot of teams out there that deserve some attention, but I want to highlight a few recent big wins … Governor Livingston beat West Orange for the first time since 2003 (0-4) with a 2-1 win the other day … Nottingham recently earned its first win of the year with an 8-2 demolition of Valley Division struggler Hightstown … Lawrenceville and Princeton Day both showed well in their respective tournaments last weekend … Verona finally won a close game with a 4-3 win over St. Joseph (Metuchen) … Watchung Hills has been on a roll lately and still drew a brutal first-round SCT matchup … Brick Memorial and Point Pleasant appear on a collision course atop the Southern Blue … The top two Morris County divisions and the NBIAL could easily lead the state in ties at their current clip.

Finally, in other media coverage, you can check out the Summit-Cranford game online tomorrow at SportsNet America. Hats off to the Star-Ledger for its terrific job of getting scores up on the same night they happen instead of waiting until the next morning. I get a lot of queries about scheduling rules and state tournament regulations – the NJSIAA does have an online document that settles a lot of that, so check it out. Still no official word on how the NJSIAA considers shootout results (Westfield and Old Bridge are definitely interested), but they will always be considered ties on this site. And kudos to Mike Morreale for his opening rankings – I don’t have a lot of criticisms and I don’t plan to throw out competing rankings until I have seen at least one game, so that means after Christmas at some point.

As always, I can be reached by e-mailing jty [at] njhockey.org.

Watch the Rice game Friday night on ESPN2, and go Owls!