Not personally. My son's team played against his (former) high school pretty regularly, so I've seen him in action.

As far as him "leading" that Immaculate team to a Division II state championship, couple of things there:

1.) Immaculate is/was actually a Division I team in the state of Connecticut. The way the playoff system used to work was that each team earned X amount of points for every win/loss/tie depending on the teams they play against (i.e. a win vs a Division I school got you 6 points; a win versus a Division II school got you 4 poins, so on and so forth...). At the end of the year, all the teams that qualified for the playoffs were placed in order of their point total. Regardless of the Division they started in, the top 16 teams in terms of points played in the Division I playoffs. The next 16 played in the Division II playoffs and the remaining 16 played in Division III. So what ended up happening was Immaculate, a team that was 9-9-1 in the regular season, got to drop down to DII, play against lesser competition and win a state championship. Pretty screwy, huh? (The state has since changed the rules so that teams must stay in their own division for the playoffs)

2.) Immaculate had a pretty strong team all around last year - including one kid named Greg Haliskoe who is currently playing for Kents Hill School in Maine and led them to a DII New England Prep Championship.

For the record, I'm not trying to take anything away from Sutherland AT ALL, because the kid is a good netminder.

ndffldguy ---
I talked with Sutherland after he had been home after the FC tourney, and he had played a couple of times with his old Immaculate teammates who were also home, including Haliskoe. He said that it was good to see his friends, etc., etc., and specificly mentioned that one of his teammates (Haliskoe) had become a completely different player (dominant) after a year in prep school as a PG. Immaculate last year wasn't a big-scoring team.
We were talking here the other day about Fairfield Prep. Perhaps you can answer a question. Your son played them as often as they played Immaculate if he went (goes?) to Notre Dame of Fairfield. How did a weaker-than-usual Prep team win the Ct. D-1 title this year? I saw them play somewhere twice in the 1st half of the season, and they weren't dominant.

Honestly, Prep definitely wasn't a "dominant" team in the traditional sense of the word. It sounds cliche, but I think the stars just aligned for them. It was a combination of the usual "playoff hockey" stuff (underclassmen stepping up at the right time, upperclassmen leading the way, goaltender getting hot, etc.) and the fact that there were some big upsets in the early rounds of the playoffs. In the first round alone the # 2,4,6 & 7 seeds in Division I all lost. Having that many Cinderellas in the later rounds helped pave the way for Prep to the finals, in my opinion. What they did in the final game was flat out beat Notre Dame; nothing more to it than that. Prep came to play, took advantage of their opportunities and simply took it to them.

Definitely not the same person. I'm actually from CT, whereas most of you guys seem to be from PA. I stumbled onto this board through Google and upon reading some posts, put out my initial question in regards to Sutherland.

I will agree with you, though, as I look over some of the other strings on this board that hhfan appears to either be Mr. Sutherland or someone very close to him. For a Pennsylvanian, he's got a pretty in-depth knowledge of relatively unknown catholic boys school in Western Connecticut (i.e. Immaculate). Again, just my opinion.

In terms of my commentary regarding Prep & CT high school hockey: I was actually at the championship game at Ingalls Rink in New Haven and saw Prep beat ND; I was asked for and gave my assessment.

You guys are a pretty tough crowd here but that is usually a sign of people who know what they are talking about, so I can definitely respect that.