So I was recently asked my predictions for how things will shape out at the end of the season and although I'm not big on predictions, I decided to acquiesce the request.
It's always hard because we don't know how the bracket will look yet but in an ideal world: Semi's are #1 seed Prep over #4 seed ND-WH and #3 seed Xavier over #2 seed Hamden then Xavier over Prep in the championship. I'm not biased towards Xavier, I really think it's their year, they got the leadership and experience in the plethora of senior forwards, a talented goalie headed to prep school next year, and a defense that gets better every game. The only thing to look out for is a major upset (Xavier, 13 seed, only lost to Hamden last year because of an own goal and an in-game injury to forward Brandon Reid)...the potential is more than definitely there in DI this year (S Windsor, Gbury, West Haven, even North Haven, ND-Fairfield, or Ridgefield). Match-ups play such a huge role in playoff games so it's hard to say that those teams will make it to the semifinals. The seeds determine the match-ups and I just based those seeds off what I think each teams record will look like at the end of the season. I will certainly make predictions when we get there in March though.
Also, there has been much talk about if private schools recruit and if public or private schools are better at sports...I felt the need to weigh in. Bottom line: Prep/ND/Xavier/etc would not be playing hockey if they recruited, the CIAC is not dumb. The reason they usually have better players is that they draw students from a wider area but you see public schools that are really good at hockey because their town is a "hockey hotbed" like Hamden, New Canaan, Ridgefield, Darien, Glastonbury, etc. The same thing applies to other high school sports.
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