Scout and about

The Maine High School Hockey Invitational puts the region’s best on display

By Sam Pfeifle

Sometimes, big extravaganzas don’t work out so well in Portland. Remember the Portland Festival of World Cinema? They scored big names for year one, but never made it to year two. New Year’s Portland and the Maine Festival? Well, they certainly didn’t keep Maine Arts afloat.

If the Maine High School Hockey Invitational’s rapid ascension is any indication, however, it may just be that Mainers like their hockey a lot better than their foofy arts and movies. Beginning last year with seven Maine teams and five from out of state, all playing at the Portland Ice Arena, the event has more than doubled in size for 2002, with 16 Maine teams and 12 from the surrounding New England states (and one from Pennsylvania) playing at both the Portland Ice Arena and Yarmouth’s Travis Roy Arena over the course of six days from December 26 through New Year’s Eve. With each team playing three games, your basic hockey freak has the chance to see 40 games in those short six days — and at just $5 a head each day (no games on Sunday), those are some cheap tickets to what should be some very competitive games. Last year, all but one game was decided by two goals or less.

But, to tell you the truth, Deering High Hockey coach and main tournament organizer Gary Prohlman has you, the hockey fan, playing second fiddle. His primary interest here is expanding the reach of Maine high-school hockey in general: both sending its best players off to play at higher levels and exposing Maine’s best and brightest to the best players on their level.

“Last year, we had a great state championship game between Falmouth and Yarmouth,” says Prohlman by way of explanation, “but there were only a few scouts in the audience to check out some of the state’s best players.” Coaches and scouts looking to stock their prep, junior hockey, and college teams have few resources, so many of them are reluctant to make the trip to Maine, even to see two of the state’s best teams go at it. The simple fact is that even the best teams have only a couple of players who might make an impact at the next level of competition — and possibly not any.

However, if you put 500 players in a tournament together, scouts know they’ve got a good chance of seeing somebody special. And Prohlman and his committee of coaches, athletic directors, and interested parties make everything as easy as possible.

“We put them up for free in local hotels,” says Prohlman. “We have a player profile on every kid that’s playing, with their statistics and SATs, extracurriculars, and grades. So, if a scout sees a great player and wants to know about him, he’s got it all at his fingertips.” Even if a coach can’t make the tourney, they can bone up on some of the state’s best players if they check out www.mainehighschoolhockey.com and see the profiles online for themselves. Prohlman and others in Maine hope that giving kids this opportunity to showcase their talents will keep them from moving out of state to more traditional hockey havens like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, North Dakota, and Michigan.

A coach from Bryant College told Prohlman he picked up two players from last year’s tourney, and this year the number of scouts should be at least doubled, some coming from Division 1 schools.

All the big names in Maine hockey will be here for them to see: perennial powerhouses like St. Dom’s and Lewiston, the aforementioned class B champs and runners up, and newer powers like Portland and Cheverus. And the out-of-state teams they’ll be playing aren’t patsies by any means. Austin Prep and Lincoln-Sudbury are perennial contenders in Massachusetts, Hanover and Berlin figure to compete for the state title in New Hampshire, and Saint Raphael Academy has lost its first four out of the gate this year, but play in Rhode Island’s most competitive division.

Plus, this isn’t a bracket-style tournament, which means that teams are paired according to their expected ability to compete against one another and powerhouses won’t be feasting on weaker teams in the early rounds. Prohlman points to Cheverus, whom Lewiston needed three overtimes to beat for last year’s class A championship, and their tough schedule. They line up first against Hanover, then Austin Prep, then finish up with Falmouth — creating an interesting matchup of the best from classes A and B. Every game should be a showcase.

This serves three purposes: 1. The fans see a great game every time. 2. The scouts get to see the best playing the best, which makes a difference. “They don’t want to see some kid score six goals against a team that shouldn’t even be on the ice with him,” notes Prohlman. And 3. Players from Maine learn what to expect from the outside world.

“Your obligation should be to get the student-athlete to the next level when they’ve run out of challenges at their current level,” says Prohlman. “But some people jump the gun. Hopefully, tournaments like this with show them that it’s not their time to go.”

There are bonuses beyond hockey, too. Hannaford has ponied up for 10 $1000 scholarships that will be awarded to some of the tournaments best student-athletes, sportsmanship is emphasized by having teams meet at center ice before each game to exchange tokens from their home schools and states.

Of course, for the fan, it’s all about the level of play, and it should be very high. “The kids understand,” says Prohlman, “when they come here that they might get seen more over these four days than over the rest of the whole year.”

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com. “Game On” tackles all manner of marginal sports and runs once a month.

 

The Maine High School Hockey Invitational runs from Dec. 26 through 31 at the Portland Ice Arena and Dec. 26 through 28 at Travis Roy Arena. Visit www.mainehighschoolhockey.com for full schedule of games.