Beyond the Scoresheet

Snow day!

Apparently it snowed a bit up there. I wouldn’t know anything about that, but I have heard that pretty much everything has been postponed.

Mennen Cup semifinals - Saturday, 4:15 (MK-MB) and 9:00 (Pin-Ran). Mennen Cup finals will be Monday at 7 p.m.

Shore Conference finals - Monday at 6:15 (Shore B / Dowd) and 8:30 (Shore A / Handchen)

NBIAL final & third place - Tuesday at 7 (Final) and 9 (Third Place)

There’s also a hot rumor going around that today’s NJIHL games at South Mountain have been moved to Monday.

Thanks to Nancy Hughes, Brian Wilkinson, Roger Jones and others for keeping me in the loop.

Shore seeds

The Shore Conference does things its own way, and I think it worked out pretty well in this case. I have the criteria for seeding in the Shore A and Shore B tournaments … lo and behold, the Shore counted all 17 or 19 league games. Unbelievable. After the number kept getting downgraded all year, from all Shore games to all Shore A or Shore B games to division games only, they ended up using the whole lot.

According to tournament director Brian Wilkinson, the criteria were:

1. Shore Conference record (all games)
2. head to head
3. common opponents (they’re all common opponents, so I’m not sure how this would work)

Shore A
1. St. John Vianney 15-0-2 (32 pts)
2. Red Bank Catholic 14-1-2 (30 pts)
3. Monsignor Donovan 14-2-1 (29 pts)
4. Brick Memorial 10-5-2 (22 pts)
5. Brick Township 10-5-2 (22 pts)
6. Wall 8-7-2 (18 pts)
————————–
7. Middletown North 8-8-1 (17 pts)
8. Toms River East 7-10-1 (15 pts)
9. Toms River North 5-12-0 (10 pts)
10. Middletown South 1-15-1 (3 pts)

Shore B
1. Rumson-Fair Haven 12-5-2 (26 pts)
2. Toms River South 10-8-1 (21 pts)
3. Manasquan 9-8-2 (20 pts)
4. Red Bank Regional 8-8-3 (19 pts)
—————————–
5. Jackson Memorial 7-9-3 (17 pts)
6. Point Pleasant 6-12-1 (13 pts)
7. Southern Regional 4-15-0 (8 pts)
8. St. Rose 0-19-0 (0 pts)

The most interesting note is that Rumson-Fair Haven would have finished third in Shore B North if only division games were counted but won Shore B handily (five points) when using the overall method. It is important to note that the schedule was not balanced - A teams played two games against division opponents, while all crossover games were aligned geographically. The Bricks, therefore, had a slight advantage over Middletown North and Wall by having to face less private schools, and Shore A south teams probably had a slight advantage as well.

The criteria also meant that Wall got in ahead of Middletown North by a single point, while North was one point ahead in the division-only standings. I think the Lions might be pretty peeved by that. Next year, this criteria should be publicized and codified in November, if not earlier, so teams know what they’re dealing with.
Still haven’t heard word on names for the cups.

tragedy

http://www.northjersey.com/news/aroundnj/Wayne_teen_struck_and_killed_crossing_Route_23.html

RIP.

Shore Conference gets it (mostly) right

The much-maligned Shore Conference has heeded the advice of ice hockey coaches and administrators and scrapped its plans to have one tournament. Instead, there will be a six-team Shore A tournament four-team Shore B tournament. Regulations for the tournament, always an interesting read, can be found here.

My only beef with the set-up is the following lines: “Division winners are granted an automatic entry to their respective tournaments. The seeding committee will determine the remaining entries and all seeds.”

I am still mirky on the criteria that will determine “division winners” and how that fits in with the private school requirement standard to most Shore tournaments. More importantly, what’s the point of all these league games if seeding is not going to be determined by league standings. All the Shore B teams are playing each other twice; take the best four records from those games? Or count the Shore A games, for all I care, but let the seeding be determined by standings, as in the other leagues, and not by subjective seeding.

Otherwise, a big thumbs up. Any chance Paul McInnis and the NJIHL will sell off the Handchen Cup and Dowd Cup trophies to the Shore Conference?

A big thanks to all the Shore Conference coaches and administrators who pushed for this.

Delbarton vs. Hill-Murray updates

Yes, it’s a scrimmage, but we all want to know who wins when Delbarton takes on Minnesota power Hill-Murray this afternoon in the Great White North. Thanks to an enterprising Delbarton parent, I am privy to a few updates this afternoon, so here’s what’s happening:

1st half: Delbarton 2, Hill-Murray 2. I’m told Hill-Murray has twice taken the lead, only for Delbarton to tie the score. The first Green Wave goal came on a point shot deflected off of a Hill-Murray stick. Delbarton’s second goal came from Mike Smigelski, assisted by Andy Bell. Delbarton is rolling four lines so far, I hear, and Infante has played well in goal. Hill-Murray with a 14-13 shot advantage.

2nd half: Hill-Murray 6, Delbarton 2 (cumulative). Sounds like it actually was a scrimmage. The teams tried some special-teams situations in the second “half” and rotated most of their players in. The play continued to be very physical, particularly toward the end. Sounds like Delbarton definitely held its own.

Shore Conference playoffs

I had the Shore Conference hockey playoff system explained to me Saturday. It took about 20 minutes. I have been told by a local that Shore Conference rules may appear to the unfamiliar to be “quirky.”

He was putting it mildly.

While there may be changes in the future, I’m being told the first Shore Conference tournament (Shore Cup? Jim Dowd Cup? I don’t know if there’s a name yet) will be conducted by Shore Conference by-laws. Which means an 8-team tournament featuring:

• Shore A North public team with best divisional record
• Shore A South public team with best divisional record
• Shore B North public team with best divisional record
• Shore B South public team with best divisional record
• private school (not sure how they will choose)
• at-large
• at-large
• at-large

Is that bizarre or what? I’ve got so many rants and raves about this, I don’t know where to begin.

At-large teams will be chosen by committee. Let’s look at it slowly and figure out how this will play out.

1. Wall / Middletown North (Shore A North public)
2. Brick Memorial / Brick (Shore A South public)
3. RFH / RBR (Shore B North public)
4. TRS / Jackson (Shore B South public)
5. St. John Vianney (private)
6. Red Bank Catholic (at-large 1)
7. Monsignor Donovan (at-large 2)
8. the other Brick school (at-large 3)

Not an awful tournament. Assuming seeding is subjective, you have 1-SJV vs. 8-TRS, 2-MD vs. 7-RFH, 3-RBC vs. 6-Brick; 4-Wall vs. 5-Brick Mem. … or something like that. Semifinal matchups would be SJV-Wall, MD-RBC. But there’s not much of a level playing field or incentive for Shore B teams.

Now, to my questions:

Why are Shore teams forced to schedule 17-19 games within the conference if only 6-8 of those count for postseason seeding?
Why are the private schools treated differently for purposes of the postseason tournament but not the regular season? That screws over teams that have to play four division games against private schools.
Why does the Shore B schedule make all Shore B teams play all other ones twice?
What the heck will happen when CBA comes in next year?

But I guess it really boils down to this: Why does the conference mandate that its teams play all these games that have no bearing on the conference postseason?

first-win shout-outs continue

Edison picked up its first win in school history by beating West Orange 5-2 on Saturday. Congrats to the Eagles! And I think I forgot to give Dayton some love for its win over Old Bridge on Thursday. We’re still looking for Old Bridge and West Morris to garner victories, but they’ve had winning seasons before. Hats off to Edison - that first win is always special.

NJ HS hockey makes the Uni Watch Blog

If you’re an online blog junkie like I and some of my friends, you may be well aware of the Uni Watch blog, which occasionally turns into a Uni Watch Column on ESPN.com’s Page 2.

Well, the Uni Watch blog in this post linked to a slideshow of the high school hockey jerseys hanging at the Prudential Center - which I think is really awesome, by the way - and so you should all check out this post. Maybe if enough people follow links from my blog, the Uni Watch will link back to mine!

Also, if you missed it, Rick Nash scored a ridiculous game-winning goal in the final minute that was SportsCenter’s top play of the night last night - still waiting for a YouTube link.