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Jason Schmitt is the editor of MIPrepZone.com, the high school sports website for The Oakland Press. He has served as the sports editor for a number of newspapers, including the Daily Tribune in Royal Oak and the Macomb Daily in Mount Clemens. In his time in the industry, he has covered every high school sport and has served a a beat writer for boys and girls soccer, boys and girls tennis, hockey, wrestling, bowling and cross country.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Hockey season preview

I know I'm a little bit behind in putting together a hockey preview for the 2011-12 season. But I did manage to put together a listing of the Top-10 teams in Oakland County.
It's never an easy chore to try and rank teams the caliber of those that reside here in Oakland County. Seventeen of the top 20 teams ranked in divisions 1-2 were located in southeast Michigan. Six of those were right here in the county. And quite often many of those teams play each other. Generally that's a good thing. It allows us to see how the teams stack up.
But that can also be a ranking curse, as the teams beat up on each other, leaving me to wonder just how the teams stack up. About the only thing I was able to decipher was that Catholic Central is the best hockey team in the state. The way this team is playing (7-0), it could rival the dominating performance of the Shamrocks' 2009-10 campaign, which ended up with a near-perfect season and a state championship.
Make sure to follow this blog throughout the winter season for updates and the latest coverage of high school hockey. And make sure to follow us on Twitter @MIPrepZone.