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Apple Valley senior Peter Sikich had two older siblings win state hockey tournament championships, sister Michelle and brother Chris. Whether or not Pete wins this week is secondary. He made it.

"It's unreal, nothing beats it," Peter said Thursday over the cacophony coming from the locker room after the Eagles' Class 2A, Section 3 championship game victory. "I was part of our soccer team that won state this year, but this tops it. There's more people here at the section finals than there was at our state finals in soccer."

Boys' hockey has never lacked attention. Sports Illustrated dropped by the state tournament in the early 1980s, as did Howard Cosell. Nearly 30 years later, the state tournament is still a revered event and a hot ticket.

But this year's tournament, the 10th at Xcel Energy Center, takes place in a different reality for modern players and coaches. Among the defining characteristics of the era: the rise of private school powers and talented players with specific skills and multiple options.

It's not necessarily better or worse, but it is important to understand where we are and how we got here.

Private schools, public success

Les Larson grew up on St. Paul's East Side and attended Hill High School in Maplewood. Most of his classmates came from Harding and Johnson neighborhoods. A few came from nearby North St. Paul or Roseville.

Larson and three other future Division I defensemen helped the Pioneers win the Independent state tournaments in 1970 and 1972. One year later, a player came in from Edina, "which back then was like the other side of the world," Larson said.

The world has changed. Private schools, which must recruit students by nature, have increased their visibility through athletic success.

"If you have success, kids come," said Larson, now the coach at Breck, a private school power in Golden Valley. "That's the way we are at Breck right now. Good hockey players want to be on TV."

Private schools were first allowed to compete in the MSHSL state tournament in 1975, and for years Hill-Murray was the only power. The Pioneers missed the tournament only four times from 1975 to 1993 and for a while were the only private school to win a state title (1983 and 1991). Since 1999, six different private schools have won their first state championship. In all, private schools claimed 12 state championships from 1999 to 2009.

Success breeds success. Breck won Class 1A titles in 2000, 2004 and 2009 and had 47 players try out for hockey this season -- the largest number in school history. Hill-Murray, 2008 Class 2A champion, makes its fifth consecutive state tournament appearance this year. Television exposure, as Pioneers coach Bill Lechner put it, is "legal marketing" for private schools.

But it is hard to market a bad product, so private schools such as Breck and Benilde-St. Margaret's made a conscious effort to compete for top student-athletes. Larson called Breck's arena a "Taj Mahal" complete with maple stalls in the locker room, a weight room and a study hall with wireless Internet access. "Hockey is our flagship sport," Larson said.

Thinking back to his early days at Benilde-St. Margaret's, boys' hockey coach Ken Pauly said he can name "five absolute studs that were our students who went to public schools because they didn't want to play for us because we stunk." The culture soon changed, and success followed.

"It became a question of, if you can be a great school and have great arts and activities, why is sports any different?" Pauly said. "We needed to step up. We had to bring it forward."

Only four metro-area private schools play in Class 2A with the large public schools: Benilde-St. Margaret's (which won Class 1A titles in 1999 and 2001), Cretin-Derham Hall (the 2006 2A champion), Hill-Murray and Holy Angels in Richfield (champs in 2002 and 2005). Private schools that combined to win six Class 1A titles since 2000 are Breck, St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights and Totino-Grace in Fridley.

Does staying competitive in a growing private school market mean some schools would benefit from opting up to Class 2A? Larson said such a measure "is not even close to being needed" at Breck. He cited such successful payers as current NHLer Blake Wheeler and the Fulton brothers -- Jordan, a senior now at Minnesota Duluth, and Dustin, a former Division III All-America at Hamline. Pauly, who left Benilde-St. Margaret's to coach for three seasons at Minnetonka, said moving the Red Knights to Class 2A was the right decision.

"Sometimes you have to get a bigger dream," Pauly said. "We are proud of our two state championships, but when I got to the Class 2A state tournament coaching Minnetonka, the place was packed and I thought, 'This is the state tournament.' A kid can achieve his goals at a Class 1A school, and some players and programs belong there. But does playing Class 2A attract a competitive kid? Yeah, it does."

Training changes

Said Breck's Larson: "One of the hardest things to accept for us old guys is, we used to have to work so much harder, so how come these kids today are so much better?"

Year-round development through camps and clinics plays a role. But such coaches as Edina's Willard Ikola and Bloomington Jefferson's Tom Saterdalen long ago learned the game at a high level, brought their knowledge to the high school ranks and produced championship hockey teams.

A goaltender for Eveleth in the late 1940s, Ikola remembered practices for their free-flowing scrimmages rather than repetitive drills. While coaching at Edina, where he won eight state championships from 1969 to 1988, Ikola ran a rigid practice schedule written out on an index card he kept in his hat. Saterdalen, who won five state championships from 1981 to 1994, studied under hockey mad scientists such as Jack Blatherwick and Herb Brooks.

Coaching has become a more exact science. As Hill-Murray's junior varsity coach in the early 1980s, Lechner worked with all 20 players on the ice. Now he works primarily with the forwards while his assistants focus on the defensemen and goaltenders. As a result, Lechner can sweat the details.

"For me to sit there with a lefthanded forward who is taking a draw and tell him where to put his thumb -- you can't do that 1-on-20," Lechner said.

The extra coaching, along with the Fall Elite League, which provides high-level competition outside of the high school season, have allowed Minnesota-born players to chase their state tournament dreams while fulfilling their potential. Of the 19 Minnesota-born players drafted by NHL teams in the first round from 2000 to 2009, 13 played in the state tournament.

The next 10 years

Of those 13 NHL picks, five did not finish their senior seasons at a Minnesota high school. High-level alternatives, such as the U.S. Hockey League and National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, Mich., will continue to skim off the top of Minnesota's talent pool.

Talent will surely remain, but which schools will produce the next great teams? Looking back, metro hockey hotbeds have rippled out from city schools to various rings of suburbs. Perhaps slowing outward expansion means successful teams will periodically rise and fall from established communities like fans doing the wave at a sporting event.

We've already seen some evidence of that: In the past 10 years, seven of the nine different teams to win Class 2A state championships did so for the first time.

But regardless of their school's location, enrollment or status, the dream is alive and strong within the hearts of puck chasers. It's been passed on from Eveleth legend John Mayasich's wooden stick to today's players who fly up and down the ice in pursuit of one goal.

"It's a dream come true to play in the tournament," said Minnetonka senior Max Gardiner, who will do so for the first time this week. "It's awesome because you have about 18,000 people cheering on young kids who take a lot of pride in playing for their school."