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Yeah right but how many 'truly elite hockey players' are there per year? By that I think you mean players that are locks for the NHL. So they show-up at 18 and move onto pro hockey at 20 - college coaches rent these kids for two years and bid them farewell otherwise they would greatly prefer to have a freshmen 20 year old man rather than an 18 year old kid who will give them 4 years.
Hockey will remain broken as long as the Canadian Junior beast continues to need be fed and the US Juniors and colleges play along. Screw it and just say a college kid will 'age-out' of college hockey on their 23'rd birthday (or whatever # you want).
All this talk of D1. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a D1 student athlete?
Many make it sound great, but your daily life is planned out for you and there is no time for other things, I know this because I lived it not to long ago.
You parents throw it around like if your kid dosent make it he is less of a player. I went D1, my cousin went D3, now that I look back on it and our experiences, he definitley had the better experience. While I was in the weight room, or doing some meaningless PR for the school, he was doing normal college things, and while I was taking a summer class because of hockey, he was at the beach with our friends and family.
Dont get me wrong, I worked my a$$ off from the time I was 15 years old to get the opportunity to play D1 and I am proud of it, but some of you need to check into reality here. Now that I am helping some local programs I cant beleive how many parents truely believe their son or daughter has what it takes at 12 or 13 to make it and they are offended when I tell them to slow down and enjoy the time now. My parents didnt spend all of this extra money on skills and multiple teams for the entire season, I had to beg to go to 1 spring tournament and a few skates in the summer and I did just fine.
If your kid has it, he will be fine, if not, there is no amount of skills/tournaments that will change that.
Many of these parents ask about genetics, and the truth is it does make a difference 99.9% of the time. Both of my parents are 5"10', I grew to be 6"0' and I was considered small. If genetics shows you are only going to be 5"9' then i would honestly set your goals realistically, D3 is where you will belong.
1 last thing to remember is that all of these schools are finding players from all over the world who want to come and play here, so it may seem your player is right up in the top bracket of talent for your small area, he is most likely not even on the radar of most of these teams.
If you are lucky enough to be in a draft like this, enjoy it, love every minute of it.Good luck to your kids.
Not the previous poster, but has a similar college experience (but baseball). You miss out on a lot of experiences if you choose the athlete path. It's a big cost to pay. Maybe not $250K (or more like $125k when I went), but it's a significantly different college experience than normal.
I do not see this supplanting USHL but I guarantee the will pass all the other Tier 2 leagues within a few years. 10-15 years down who knows.
Perhaps a local plays in the USPHL, features and then does a year out west.
Perhaps they combine leagues? RG pretty good with the exit strategies you know!!
"If genetics shows you are only going to be 5"9' then i would honestly set your goals realistically, D3 is where you will belong."
This is so true. Go watch a good D-3 team play and you will see some great players, some that look pretty old, some that can really skate, some that are pretty good...the whole gambit but one thing I noticed is almost every kid that can actually play he is undersized for his position by D-1 standards. Sure there are a few bigger kids but they have obvious holes in their game.
Well said. Sound like a NESCAC guy!