Greater Boston Jr Bruins are 11-4-1 and ranked ninth in Massachusetts 15U Tier 1, outside the state tournament cut for a third straight week. The gap they need to close has gone from 0.56 to 1.43 to 1.95 — it has more than tripled while they have kept winning.
The club holding eighth ahead of them is East Coast Militia (National), at 7-9-1. That is the widest spread between record and position on any Massachusetts list at either age group this week, and it is entirely a function of who each team has played.
Eight teams from this tier reach the Massachusetts state tournament, so the gold bar after eighth place is a cut line, not decoration. We publish the top ten — the eight that would qualify today and the two closest to getting there.
A team also has to play 18 games to be eligible. That is a Massachusetts Hockey requirement and it applies at every tier. A GP figure in amber means that team has not reached 18 yet.
Rating is the number that orders the list, and it is what separates eighth from ninth. MyHockeyRankings weighs who a team has played, not only what its record says, which is why ranks and records disagree all over this list.
On records. The lists publish Wednesdays and clubs post results through Tuesday, so a late score can land in a team's record before it reaches that team's rating. We print each record as it stands and never calculate how a club did over a given weekend.
| Rank | Team | Record | GP | Rating | vs Wk 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Masters Academy 15U AAA | 12-5-1 | 18 | 92.07 | – |
| 2 | Middlesex Islanders East (Prep) 15U AAA | 16-3-2 | 21 | 91.96 | – |
| 3 | Boston Jr Eagles 15U AAA | 16-7-0 | 23 | 91.76 | – |
| 4 | Northeast Generals 15U AAA | 10-9-4 | 23 | 90.37 | – |
| 5 | Cape Cod Whalers 15U AAA | 10-10-2 | 22 | 90.02 | ▲ 1 |
| 6 | Neponset Valley River Rats 15U AAA | 5-10-4 | 19 | 89.94 | ▼ 1 |
| 7 | Boston Americans 15U AAA | 11-2-2 | 15 | 88.00 | – |
| 8 | East Coast Militia (National) 15U AAA | 7-9-1 | 17 | 87.83 | – |
| State Tournament cut line — top 8 qualify9th and 10th on the outside | |||||
| 9 | Greater Boston Jr Bruins 15U AAA | 11-4-1 | 16 | 85.88 | – |
| 10 | East Coast Wizards 15U AAA | 12-7-1 | 20 | 85.86 | NEW |
For the Jr Bruins the arithmetic is unforgiving. Beating teams rated below them moves the number very little; the schedule that would move it is the one they are not playing. They also sit at 16 games, two short of the 18 required to be eligible at all, so the remaining fixtures have to do two jobs at once.
At the top, Masters Academy have separated. They and Middlesex Islanders East (Prep) were rated identically at 91.85 last week. Masters are now 92.07 to 91.96 — a clear if narrow 0.11. Boston Jr Eagles are third at 91.76, which puts the top three inside a third of a point of one another. None of the top four moved a place.
Bay State Breakers have dropped out of the top ten, replaced by East Coast Wizards at 12-7-1. The Breakers were the extreme case of a thin schedule a week ago — 6-1-0 across seven games — and a rating built on that little evidence was never going to hold still.
Seven of these ten are eligible, the most of any Massachusetts tier. The exceptions are Boston Americans at 15 games, East Coast Militia at 17 and the Jr Bruins at 16.
Below the top four, Cape Cod Whalers and the Neponset Valley River Rats swapped fifth and sixth. Both carry losing records inside the cut, as does Militia in eighth: three of the eight qualifying places at this tier are held by clubs under .500, while the two best records outside it belong to the Jr Bruins and the Wizards.