Beyond the Scoresheet

Ice Vault tripleheader

I hit up the Ice Vault tonight for a scheduled quadrupleheader that ended up having three games, including two headliners: Bergen Catholic-Don Bosco Prep and Ramsey-Northern Highlands. I was warmly received by all, and it was great to put faces with names in several different instances.

For the record, I believe this was my first visit to the Ice Vault in four years, going back to a state game and the NBIAL Cup finals in 2006.

On to the games …

Continue reading Ice Vault tripleheader…

Back in Jersey; has it always been this cold?

I have a long-running love affair with the Cron Tournament, always held in the first three weeks of December at Warinanco Rink in Roselle. (For more on our shared history, check out my post from 2006, the first year I missed an edition entirely). Anyway, after missing the last three tournaments, I saw my first Cron action in four years tonight.

The short version is that in the third-place game, Summit and Westfield played to a 0-0, overtime tie that was, to me, exactly what the score reflects: evenly matched teams with trouble scoring. In the final, Morris Knolls reclaimed its title (the Golden Eagles’ six-year winning streak was snapped last year) by pounding Johnson (the team that snapped it) by a 13-4 score. Dillon Garritty won the MVP award for Knolls. More after the jump …

Continue reading Back in Jersey; has it always been this cold?…

Opening Day!

Nothing like the first day of hockey season. My plane landed in Houston around 8:30 CT tonight, and I immediately checked to see if my phone was getting internet service. By some miracle, this is one of the roughly three days per month that the internet was working, so I was able to get a couple of scores right away. I got the smell of a rink yesterday by checking out the skating rink at Penn while in Philadelphia, and now some scores to really kick things off.

As always, first-day scores don’t mean a whole lot, but here’s what I learned from the scores I’ve seen for Tuesday:

• Delbarton is for real. I mean really for real. They were obviously favored to beat Don Bosco Prep, but 10-0? That blew away my expectations. I haven’t talked to Bruce Shatel or Greg Toskos yet, but you have to figure Delbarton is already in great form coming off its pre-season prep tournament in New England. It’ll be interesting to see if they can maintain that for four months. Looking at the scoring report, the Green Wave’s top line of Kenny Agostino, Mike Ambrosia, and Mike Pirovano absolutely lit up the Ironmen, producing four of the first six goals. Matt Gelnaw had two goals and an assist to provide some depth.
• Break up the Shore C! These second-year teams went 4-0 on December 1, including Howell’s 1-0 win over Brick Memorial and Freehold Township’s win over Steinert. There were also wins for Manalapan, 4-3 over WWPS, and Marlboro, 7-4 over Monroe. But the first two are the big two. Howell was the class of the division last year, going 19-4-1, winning the Dowd Cup, and a state playoff game, so they definitely won’t sneak up on anybody this year. But the Rebels lost to Brick Memorial in the Public A Round of 16, so they started off 2009-10 with a little bit of revenge thanks to a third-period power play goal from Eddie Pyskaty and 23 saves from Zack Peras, including some big ones in the final minute. The Freehold Township win may bring even better news for the division, since the Patriots were only 10-10-2 last year, including losses to St. Rose and Toms River South and 0 wins against teams that finished with a .500 or better record. To beat Steinert – nobody’s powerhouse but traditionally a solid public squad – could be an indicator of a very strong division this year. John Talamo netted six goals for Freehold Township. And remember, Shore Conference alignment gets adjusted every two years, so all five Shore C teams and first-year teams Jackson Liberty and Ocean Township are playing for a more competitive division in next year’s standings.
• I was surprised by the 3-3 tie between Montgomery and West Essex. Nothing against Wessex, but I had Montgomery as one of the Public A favorites this year. West Essex jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first period, and the Cougars had to rally for a tie. Not the way the Cougars wanted to open, but it is a good sign for West Essex, which could be very competitive in Public B.
• The Halvorsen Division will be close once again. Jefferson eked out a 5-3 win over Mountain Lakes (with the benefit of an empty-netter) to open the schedule tonight, with two goals from Luke Combos and a goal and three assists from Jimmy Stokes. Combos scored the game-winner with just 2:23 left after the Lakers had come back from a 3-1 deficit at the second intermission. John Dagger (great name) made 32 saves to keep Lakes in it. I can’t see very many easy games in that division with these two teams, Mendham, Morristown, and Pequannock. Morristown and Mendham meet on Thursday in a big-time game this early in the season. Pequannock was last year’s whipping boy, but the other four teams all accounted themselves very well in the state tournament, so hopefully they’ll all find a way to qualify again this year despite slugging it out against each other.

Wednesday’s 22 games include some interesting ones like Bishop Eustace-CBA, PDS-Randolph, Chatham-Cranford, Middletown North-Old Bridge, Mendham-Bridgewater, Pope John-Gloucester Catholic, Notre Dame-Hopewell Valley, and Paul VI-St. Joseph Metuchen.

A reminder to email confirmed scores to jty [at] njhockey.org.

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.

Dynamo highlights from May

The month of May was a good one for us down in Houston. In five games, we went 4-0-1 to run our unbeaten streak to seven games and move up to second place in the Western Conference. We had some great goals to call, too, so here are some of the highlights I got to call in May:

Continue reading Dynamo highlights from May…

What I’ve been doing …

You may have noticed that I haven’t devoted as much time to New Jersey hockey, in terms of blogging or immediate site updates, as in years past. There are a few reasons for that, but the biggest one is that my job with the Houston Dynamo is a huge time commitment and really challenges me all the time in ways that some of my other jobs haven’t.

So I expect that in the future, I will try to keep running the site as is, with as up-to-date game schedules and results as possible, and continue writing for HNIB, but rankings and blog posts on here will come less often than in the past.

It’s an inevitable consequence of growing up, I suppose. At any rate, after the jump, I’m going to give a few updates on my work life, so if you’re curious, read on.

Continue reading What I’ve been doing ……