OT: congrats to coach Kaliencki, MI hockey state championship

Of course CC won. They have talent from all over metro detroit. What schools such as Brighton have done in the past decade is far more impressive. 

My son attends CC and a couple of his classmates are on the team this year (he's a sophomore).

One awesome factoid that demonstrates the unmistakeable differences between CC and a public high school school: beer on tap at the Dad's Club meetings in the school cafeteria.

So, I was at the championship game this year when CC beat Brighton 3-0.  I'm not griping, not playing a victim, or railing against the system.  I'm a fan of the saying, to be the best, you have to beat the best.  That said, the differences between the squads was most evident in what I believe was CC's second goal.  CC took advantage of a Brighton line change that resulted in a 2-1 with a backchecker coming off the bench across the ice.  The backchecker's angle was slightly off, but enough into the body of the CC forward coming over the blue line that, if their sizes weren't so massively different, it would have taken the CC forward off the puck.  Instead, the CC player absorbed and muscled through and put the puck top right corner.  It was a great goal.  Best of the night in fact.

Honestly, this is just high school sports in general.  Kids grow to different sizes at different rates.  Both teams played well, and Brighton held firm throughout the first and midway through the second.  Brighton had a few chances, but CC carried the pressure and was rewarded for it.

As a complete aside, because it has been forever since I've attended a high school sporting event, I was completely caught offguard by the countdown to 4:20 in the third period?  I have never experienced that before, ever.  When did that start?

What's the standard of play in Michigan high school hockey?

I would be very interested to see some sort of Tournament of Champions where the state champs from Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota all get together and play a round-robin tournament.

Congrats to Hancock (D3) and Romeo (D2) state champions.  A couple of fine hockey teams that do not have the benefit of bringing in talent from all over hell.  Will they win something like 8 out of the next 10 state championships?  Hell no.  Public schools are reliant on the talent that lives in their district.  There are a couple of exceptions (Trenton, Brighton to a lesser extent) but you will not likely ever see a public school dominate like some private schools do.

The playing field is absolutely not level.  Private schools should have their own playoffs regardless of sport.  Consider how many more public schools there are than private schools and then try to digest the fact that the last time there was not, at least, one private school state hockey champion (3 divisions starting in 2000, 2 divisions prior to that) was 1998.  Also, since 2000 a private school has won 13 state titles in D3 and 12 in D1.

Admittedly, I am jaded.  My son played on a team that fell short in the semifinals against an extremely talented Grand Rapids CC team this year.  Had we won it would have been the first all public school final in D3 since 1999.  Too long in my opinion.

Of course they recruit.  I have a friend whose son could go there only if the football coach wanted him.  Another friend's son was recruited for the hockey team despite the fact they live 40 miles away from the school.  Imagine that drive every day!  Trenton doesn't recruit but they run travel teams for younger kids to play on before high school so that they are coached in the Trenton system from elementary school age.  

I played for SCS and my final year we played an Orchard Lake St. Mary's team that had an all Polish line that moved here the year prior just to play for OLSM. But I will say that SCS recruited that season as well because 5 out of 7 seniors were all recruited just for that final year. 


I'm sure it happens in Minnesota too