This past weekend brought the Braemar Summer Hockey Festival, a series of summer scrimmages in Edina that lack the team from Edina. The tournament’s name was only partially accurate, as issues with Braemar’s South rink forced some games over to the Bloomington Ice Garden. Still, it was more than enough to entertain us hockey-starved fans, and a rink is a welcome escape from a 90-degree day in the Twin Cities. I saw part or all of seven of the Saturday scrimmages, which featured 22-minute halves in pool play. I didn’t stick around for the Sunday playoffs, but that really isn’t the point here: it’s more of a chance to get a quick idea of where teams stand four months out from the start of the season.

There’s no shortage of reasons to put little stock in the results here. Some kids miss the games for a variety of reasons, rosters are far from set, and coaches are free to be experimental with little regard for scores. Elite League tryouts also coincided with the final day, which I suppose is convenient for the Greater Minnesota teams in town for the scrimmages, but drains some talent from the Sunday finals. Still, coaches’ Twitter rants to the contrary, they also can be pretty good predictors: last year’s included a semifinal Grand Rapids and Eden Prairie, arguably the top two teams in the state by the end of the season, and most of the teams that looked not very good there stayed not very good.

Just figuring out who is who in these scrimmages can be a chore. Some teams match their players’ jersey numbers to the ones they wore last season, while others do not; some lost so many players that it’s hard to guess anyway, while Prior Lake likes to go with football numbers. (Was that you in the #70 sweater, Jackson Jutting?) There are no roster sheets, unless one happens to receive one from the Holy Family Hype Department. There’s always a smattering of odd-colored breezers and socks that make it clear who’s new to each team, too: before long, they’ll get the proper garb.

The defending champions were in town, and with Blake McLaughlin back in tow for his senior season, all is not lost in Grand Rapids. They had a low-scoring weekend, looking fairly tame except when McLaughlin flipped a switch, as he did in the dying minutes of a contest with Chanhassen, scoring twice and very nearly setting up a game-winner. For a few minutes there was a hint of the old magic up front, and Rapids could still be a thorn in someone’s side. The 7AA foe they slew in dramatic fashion in last year’s semis, Elk River, also rolled out a very green cast and had a quiet weekend, though there were some flashes from some of the new kids to give hints of relevance.

One of the bigger winners of the weekend was Wayzata, which coupled some opportunistic scoring with the typical Trojan defense. They fought past Holy Family in one of the better games of the weekend, put an impressive beating on Lakeville North, and were the only team to seriously test eventual champ Duluth East. Of course I thought the Trojans looked good in last year’s edition of this competition as well, and they took a few eons to get back to that level during the season, though get back they did. The Fire, meanwhile, have no shortage of talent but have some sorting to do: the forward lines seemed unsettled beyond the clear top talents of Ben Almquist and Garrett Pinoniemi, they have a goalie situation to sort out, and their defense, which should be their rock, got caught out on occasion against Wayzata. Holy Family’s roster is a jumble of new transfers in and holes left by departures, and this evolving cast of characters at the school with the most open borders in the state may take some time to jell.

I didn’t see Eden Prairie, but there were some rave reviews of Chris Konin, a Rhode Island and New England prep school transplant and who logged a hat trick against Elk River. The post-Casey Mittelstadt era doesn’t look too worrying for the only team to play in the past five State Tournaments. Having experienced players makes a difference when others are more unsettled, and this may help explain senior-heavy Eastview’s somewhat surprising run to the final. (I didn’t get a firsthand look at the Lightning.) Veteran Bloomington Jefferson seemed hit or miss; they stuck with East for a half before the Hounds overwhelmed them, and they scuffled back and forth with Benilde for a spell before they put away a very raw Red Knight group. Ken Pauly is never a quiet man on the bench, but I’d never seen him as distraught as he was midway through Benilde’s 10-1 undressing at the hands of East, in which his defense left trucking lanes down the center of the ice. Neither Lakeville really stood out, so it will likely be a down year in 1AA, with South looking somewhat better than North in limited viewing. And while Prior Lake may have missed their most opportune window to break through in 2AA, there’s enough left to give some good teams fits.

The team that did the most for its preseason stock this weekend was Duluth East. The Hounds were far from complete in Edina: second line forward Nick Lanigan and defenseman Will Fisher were out hurt, and top line center Ryder Donovan, fresh off his commitment to North Dakota earlier in the week, went off hurt early in the final group stage game and did not return. They also had a bunch of kids in the Elite League tryouts. But one could be forgiven for not noticing: the Hounds steamrolled through the weekend, and were tested just once, by Wayzata in the semis on Sunday morning. Longtime linemates Donovan, Ian Mageau, and Garrett Worth looked lethal, all three complementing each other and imposing their will, but there was little drop-off to the second and third lines, with a smoother-skating Ricky Lyle turning heads (or was it just the helmet he pulled out of a time capsule?) and Brendan Baker seamlessly sliding into Donovan’s spot when he got hurt. The defense, lacking Fisher, was on the small side but plenty mobile and able to control the puck, while Lukan Hanson, the heir apparent to Kirk Meierhoff in net, was hardly tested in the games I saw.

This is all cause for pleasure in Greyhounds Nation, but they know as well as anyone that nothing is won in July. Experienced, system-driven teams like the Hounds are well-built to succeed early on while others are still sorting through their parts. Continuous improvement is the key, and the new kids in black bantam breezers have some growing to do, too. We have yet to see what some of their biggest competition at the top of the rankings, from Edina to Moorhead to St. Thomas Academy (to say nothing of the 7AA rivals nipping at their heels) have to offer. But at this point, what’s not to like? Let’s start the countdown to November.