Beyond the Scoresheet

2009-10 season preview

Welcome in to another season of NJ high school hockey. As always, I’ll be keeping information up-to-date as much as possible at www.njhockey.org and providing my own thoughts and information on this blog as time permits.

To start the season, here’s my preseason top 10 as published in Hockey Night in Boston. Be sure to look for the newspaper at your local rinks.

PRESEASON STATE TOP 10 (last year’s record in parentheses)
1. Delbarton (27-2-1)
2. Bergen Catholic (14-8-1)
3. CBA (22-5-2)
4. Seton Hall Prep (10-10-3)
5. Bishop Eustace (22-6)
6. Don Bosco Prep (10-11-3)
7. Morristown-Beard (22-4-1)
8. St. Augustine Prep (3-19-2)
9. Gloucester Catholic (21-2-1)
10. Ramsey (25-1-2)

SCOUTING REPORT (after the jump)
Continue reading 2009-10 season preview…

09-10 coverage underway

Hey y’all … Things have been and still will be very busy for me at work here in Houston, but I do intend to maintain the information on NJHockey.org this year (I make no promises for the blog) and have started by posting schedules I have seen and the alignment I have detected at the moment on the division-by-division schedule & results document.

Obviously, almost the entire state was affected by realignment. The Gordon will split into National and American conferences. I have not heard how the playoff structure will work, but certainly the American appears to be the ‘A’ league and the National ‘B.’ I don’t know if playoff qualification will reflect that.

Elsewhere, almost all of the teams from Passaic, Hudson, and Bergen counties joined together in the Tri-County Hockey League, split into Passaic and Hudson-Bergen divisions. They made the unfortunate decision to mandate crossover games, which means a whopping NINETEEN league games for those teams, including such mismatches as Fair Lawn and St. Joseph Montvale against Hudson Catholic TWICE. Ouch. I believe there will be two cup tournaments here, not one.

Some of the remaining northern teams (Glen Rock, Paramus Catholic, Tenafly) pulled out of the NJIHL and joined the remnants of the NBIAL in what I’m tentatively calling NBIAL A and NBIAL B – no confirmation on that yet from coaches or administrators. I’ll admit I haven’t had time to reach out to very many yet. Somehow Hackettstown seems to be without a home, so I’m unaware of the situation there. Good to see River Dell back in league play. No idea what the NBIAL will do for a postseason tournament.

The NJIHL is left with some horribly mismatched divisions (Montclair-West Orange, St. Joseph Metuchen-Edison, anybody?) that are a reasonable fit geographically. I guess. And we’ll have two St. Josephs in the same division again! Always exciting.

The Skyland Conference, which I think has ceased to exist in other sports, pulled its teams (except Bernards) into a hockey league, finally pulling Pingry out of the MCSSIHL after more than 20 years. No longer will the Big Blue dream of two county championships in one season. That league ought to be very competitive and have plenty of room for non-conference scheduling.

There were minor adjustments in Morris County (new program Morris Catholic replaces Pingry, four-division set-up) and the CVC (WWPN to the Colonial, Princeton and Robbinsville to the Valley, Hightstown to the Patriot). Union County remained the same.

The Shore appears to have remained the same, which is odd since Howell obviously deserves to move up and there could be as many as three new programs (Colts Neck [now confirmed as staying JV], Jackson Liberty, Ocean Township), although I have not been able to confirm any of those.

Finally, on the independent front, I have no idea of the status (varsity and/or league) for Colonia, East Side, Hackettstown, JFK Memorial [possibly staying JV], Monroe, and Woodbridge [confirmed as varsity, independent]. Maybe they can form their own independent league.

As always, you can keep me posted at jty [at] njhockey.org.

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.