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Tag: Player Development Camps

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2024 Development Camp Women's Hockey

Why U18 National Teams Shouldn’t Only Have Offensive Defenders on their Roster

Last week, I re-watched the Canada vs Czechia IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship semi-final game. Czechia won the game 4-2 after losing to Canada in the Group A game 8-1. I noticed that two of the Czechia goals were a direct result of major mistakes by the Canadian defenders. I then saw that the shots on goal were heavily in favor of the Canadians when the score was 3-2 at about 43-11 (ended up being 47-12 for Canada).

This got me thinking, how could Canada lose a game that they so clearly dominated in terms of offensive opportunities?

Two thoughts came to mind:

  1. Czechia did an amazing job learning from their group game with Canada and played a defensive structure which minimized Canada’s high risk chances. Czechia then capitalized on the few opportunities they had to score.
  2. Similar to my observations about the USA Hockey U18 selection process, Canada probably puts a bigger emphasis on fielding a team with offensive D than well-balanced defenders. As a result, a couple of defensive mistakes cost them the game.

This is just my hypothesis, I could be completely wrong.  And let me be clear, any player that makes the Canada or U.S. U18 teams are exceptional players.  They can all skate well, pass well and shoot well.  There is no doubt each of them deserved to be on the team. But maybe, they are too similar in their skill set?

When it comes to roster construction, sometimes you need to include one or two 200-foot players to complement the more offensive players.  Specifically, there are usually tradeoffs between a great puck handling D with a hard shot vs. someone who is technically better at 2-on-1s, clearing players in front of the net, playing the penalty kill or defending 1-on-1 zone entries.   An analogy would be having 7 Erik Karlssons playing defense for a single team – at some point in important games against good teams there will be times you need the D to keep the puck out of your own net.  Once again, this is not to say that those highly skilled U18 players aren’t good defenders, but when they go up against the top 2 or 3 forwards on a national team, they will also need to be technically strong on defense.

Let’s look at some data to support why I can understand how a coaching staff would  put together a roster with so much offensive power at the U18 level.

2023 IIHF U18 World Champsionship Shot Totals

Canada outshot their opponent by a 6:1 ratio throughout the tournament. They also had over 40 shots per game.  I would suspect they felt the team could outscore all opponents as long they didn’t have any major defensive hiccups. 

Of course, you are probably asking – weren’t they planning to play the U.S.?  Like all Canadian teams, they probably expected and planned to play the U.S.  at some point – likely in the gold medal game (given the new format of A/B group play this year, they wouldn’t play each other in group games).  So Canada would still need to be prepared to play a high-powered offensive USA Hockey team.

Then I looked at the shot total for the 2023 Under-18 Series which took place in Lake Place between the Canada and USA.  Team Canada swept all 3 games against the U.S. team by a combined score of 15-3.  Here were the shot totals:

uSA Canada u18 Summer Series SHot Totals

A couple of possible reasons for Canada to justify having highly offensive defenders… Either the felt they could still outscore Team USA and defend well enough to beat them.  Or, maybe their D were never tested enough in the USA-Canada Series to expose some of the technical weaknesses against world-class scorers.

So what?

During my experience attending and analyzing multiple USA Hockey camps/events, I have felt that the players being selected have had their offensive abilities overly weighted in the evaluation process.  Now, I am fully onboard with most of the high-end, offensive D being the ones being picked. However, including one or two defenders who can also keep the puck out of your own net at critical points of an important game can be the difference between winning and losing in the medal rounds.  Having a little more balance on the blue line could be the difference between winning and losing in big games.

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2023 Development Camp Girls Hockey Player Development Women's Hockey

The USA Hockey 2023 Girls 16/17 Camp Feedback Process – Part II

My Recommendations

Read Part I Here

Feedback is a gift.
Giving feedback is hard.

Having led performance feedback to dozens (if not hundreds) of people I’ve managed in business, I recognize it is one of the most challenging interactions to conduct in my career.  At the same time, I was taught how to take it seriously and learned many of the best practices to ensure a positive outcome from the process for both parties.  

It is pretty clear from the parent meeting at the 16/17 Girls camp (and the letter that accompanied the feedback/rating letter) that USA Hockey  wants to make no doubt that they are providing a variety of different levels of feedback for each player at the national camps. The details of this feedback were clearly explained in Part I on this topic.

And it is important to recognize that they really do care about giving feedback – because they have dedicated time and resources to the process.  I also wanted to also acknowledge that is takes a non-trivial amount of effort to provide detailed feedback to about 400 players across 4 major camps each summer.

At the same time, I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about this topic trying to figure out why almost everyone I have spoken with is disappointed with the USA Hockey Girls National Camp selection and feedback process. And here is what I came up with…

At the end of the day, the current process does not solve the unmet need of the players – which is to have actionable direction on their highest priority development areas. This is because the robustness of the feedback is not commensurate with the level of commitment and investment the players put into making, preparing and attending the camp.

And my reason for this is the following:

The feedback is too generic. For almost all the players, it’s just too simplistic/superficial without personalized examples and not actionable enough.

Here are my recommendations:

  1. Standardize a More Robust Process – The coaches should go through a training session on how the process works and what the expectations are from the coach on the process, content & delivery. All players should receive player-specific information using a common format, but with player-specific examples in the review. While the coaches should have flexibility to adapt the process to their style, each performance review (in addition to the attribute ratings mentioned in Part I) would require the feedback to include each of the following….
  2. Include Player-Specific Key Statistics (e.g. pass completion rates or turnover rates). Nothing is more powerful than data. Being able to show a player how they compared on key attributes compared to their peers makes things much clearer. This became quite evident to me in my analysis of the 16/17 Camp forwards and defenders.
  3. Support with Player-Specific Video Clips  –  showing a player exactly what they do well and how/when they make mistakes provides “hard-to-argue” credibility to the stats and the coach’s feedback. This would likely use a video analytics system like Instat/Hudl so each player’s shifts could be coded.
  4. Prioritize Key Areas to Focus On – Darryl Belfry consistently talks about High Frequency – Low Success Rate Situations.  Video and statistical analysis will surface these situations. Then a coach should be using them to focus on a limited number of these game patterns to prioritize (3-5) situations/skills for a player to work on.

These four recommendations would require a significantly greater amount of time and resources than the current effort being done at the USA Hockey girls camps. There may not be time to aggregate everything during that week.  But the feedback session does not need to occur at the camp. It can be done a week or two after the camp via a video-call.  What matters most is that the players are getting their needs met as to where to focus and improve as a player.  Ideally, there would be someone in leadership who was solely responsible for player development and not directly associated with the selections for the U18 camp or team. I know it can be done, because I have seen first-hand more robust feedback processes on the boys side at both the USA Hockey and junior hockey levels.

Final Thoughts

The best organizations focus relentlessly on their customers. One of the biggest ways to ensure these organizations are meeting the needs of their customers is to ask them for feedback. Specifically their overall satisfaction with a question like “Would you recommend [product/service] to a friend or colleague?” followed by “Why?”. In my few years interacting with USA Hockey both as a coach and a parent, I have never been asked for my feedback on the programs I’ve been been engaged with. In essence, USA Hockey has a monopoly on the national team programs so it is understandable that they may not need to be as customer-centric as an Amazon or an Apple. But, if leadership for USA Hockey female national camps wants to continuously improve their program, just like their players do, it would be great if they solicited their own feedback on areas they can improve as an organization. Who knows…maybe getting the gift of feedback on themselves may translate to improved performance on the ice?

Feel free to send feedback on our posts or Champs App to feedback@champs.app

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2023 Coaching Girls Hockey Player Development Women's Hockey

The USA Hockey 2023 Girls 16/17 Camp Feedback Process – Part I

I have a lot of passion about feedback when it comes to hockey player development, because I think it is probably the most important factor to improve player performance.  Darryl Belfry, who is regarded as one of the best player development coaches in the world, uses actual game analysis as the primary way to provide feedback on improvement areas for players.

As the governing body of hockey in the U.S., USA Hockey understands the importance of player feedback. At the USA Hockey 16/17 Girls Camp which took place in Oxford, OH this past June, feedback was highlighted in the parent meeting as a key component of the camp.  In Part I of this post about the USA Hockey Girls Camp feedback, I wanted to focus on understanding the three levels of feedback  utilized during and after the camp.  Part II of this topic will discuss my thoughts on how effective the feedback process has been.

1. On-Ice Feedback  – During Practice and Games

Just like with their regular teams, coaches were quite consistent in talking to players individually and in groups during practices to share their thoughts on specific, tactical ways to improve a drill or situation.  Same for a player coming to the bench during one of the games after a shift – coaches would lean over to players and give advice on what adjustments could be made to improve a player effectives.  These situations are quite comfortable for all the coaches at an event like this since most were DI coaches or previous DI players.  As I mentioned in my previous post about player feedback, in-game comments are the easiest for a coach to communicate.

2. One-on-One Feedback with one of the Team Coaches

All teams had two head coaches.  On about the fourth day of week-long camp, each player had a 10-15 minute conversation with one of their coaches.  It is my understanding that most players were asked to do a self-review in anticipation of the meeting.  From talking to several parents, the coach-player conversation was then highly dependent on the coach. Some coaches were well-prepared and had video clips to show players as a way to communicate their feedback, some coaches had simple basic priorities for players to focus on while others relied on the player’s self-evaluation as the primary source of the feedback conversation.  Given the variance in feedback methods, I suspect the feedback meeting process was not highly structured by the camp organizers.

3. Letter Grade and Player Development Performance Criteria

About four weeks after the end of the 16/17 Girls Camp, my daughter received by snail mail a form letter which included an evaluation which is supposed to serve as a benchmark for a player’s performance at the camp.  This entails a letter grade and a rubric on the “Player Development Performance Criteria”.  Here are the details.

At the top of the player evaluation sheet, the players was provided a rating of A, B or C with the following explanation

“A” grade = Excellent – ranks in the top 1/3 of players at camp

“B” grade = Good – ranks in the middle 1/3 of players at camp

“C” grade = Below average – ranks in the bottom 1/3 of players at camp.

The Player Development Performance Criteria had 5 possible selections (from best to worst):

  • Excellent
  • Very Good
  • Good
  • Fair
  • Poor

Each skater then had attributes selected within two categories.  General and position-specific attributes with a selection in one of those five boxes (“X” for each attribute).  Here are those attributes:

General:

  • Makes Possession Plays (i.e. keep team on offense; limited turnovers)
  • Angling: pressure to take away time/space; dictate play with body/stick
  • Stick Positioning
  • Deception
  • Quick Transitions
  • Off-Puck Habits & Puck Support
  • Scoring Ability
  • Physicality
  • Athleticism
  • 200-Ft Player
  • Skating Ability (north/south; agility; speed)

Defenders:

  • DZone Execution First
  • Puck Retrievals
  • Good First Pass or Exit
  • Win Race Back to D-Side of Play/Net
  • Wine Board Battles
  • Deter Offensive Opportunities
  • Scan to Make Exit Play; Fast Transition to Breakout
  • Work Well with D-Partner
  • Gap Control: (North/South & East/West)

Forwards:

  • Puck Retrievals & Ability to Stay Off the Wall
  • Ability to Leave Perimeter and Gain Inside Ice
  • Owning Space with Puck
  • Scanning/Awareness of Teammates & Opponents
  • Use Teammates to Make Plays
  • Zone Entry: Ability to create depth/layers/lanes
  • Create & Maintain Offense

I don’t know the process that was used to aggregate the evaluators feedback, but am assuming they collected a populated rubric from all the evaluators for a position and then aggregated the data to take an average of the selections.  (I hope they used some online tool to aggregate this all, because there are lots of ways to simplify collecting this information).  Then I suppose this compiled data was used as the rating for each player’s Development Performance Criteria. I would then assume the average across all Development Performance Criteria was calculated and the each player was force ranked into one of the three tiers to give the letter rating of A,B or B based on which third they ranked.

Other than the rating and the rubric box selection – no other personalized information was included in the feedback. No short paragraph summary (like you would see in a student report card) from the coach or evaluators to provide additional context was provided.  

It is important to note that the ratings are based on the criteria described above.  If different criteria were used (which will be discussed in the next post), then a player’s rating might be different if those criteria were closer or further away from the capabilities of a player.

In Part II on this topic I will share my perspective on the good, the bad and the ugly of this feedback process.

Read Part II Here

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2023 Development Camp Girls Hockey Player Development Women's College Hockey Women's Hockey

Analyzing the USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Camp Forward Selections for the U18 Camp

USA-Hockey

The is the second analysis I have done about the selections for the USA Hockey Girls U18 Camp which took place last week. The first was about the defenders picked to go to the U18 Camp. Now that the selections of the forwards from U18 Camp to go to the Women’s Festival were announced a few days ago, it makes this analysis even more interesting because none of the top 3 point-getters from either the Girls 16/17 Camp nor the U18 Camp were selected to advance to the next stage in the process.

WHAT?

Similar to the previous post, rather than engage in a subjective discussion on who was selected, I thought it might be helpful to collect some analytical data and metrics to understand how top players performed at the 16/17 camp and compare them to a couple of the players who weren’t selected.

WHY?

When you don’t select the top 3 point-getters from either Girls 16/17 Camp or the U18 Camp, there are bound to be a lot of folks who wonder what the selection criteria is for making it to the next stage of USA Hockey. I don’t know the answer to that question. But I can analyze the video of each shift for several of the top players picked and not picked to see if there is an obvious difference between the two segments. The purpose of this post is not to say who did or did not deserve to be selected to the U18 Camp. Instead, it is to help provide perspective and context to other players and parents the types of metrics that demonstrate the level of play needed to be selected.  And ideally, individual players do their own self-analysis to see how they compare.

HOW?

I watched and coded specific attributes for every shift in all 4 games for every player in this analysis using the USA Hockey TV footage. I collected more metrics than are listed below, but I feel that the attributes shown, provide the right amount and level of data to gain an understanding of the level of play for this position. Note: Sometimes the live stream footage didn’t always focus on the area of the ice where the play was taking place, so it is very likely the odd play may have not been accounted for.

WHO?

Here is the list of the 13 players selected to go to the 18’s camp

Since I only had the time to watch 5 players – I watched 3 selected forwards plus 2 top players who weren’t selected. Those 3 forwards represented a mix of the forward selections.  I am not identifying the names of any players because singling out any individual player is not my objective.  For full transparency, in this analysis I do know the parents of one of the players.

SO WHAT?

Do I think the 5 selected were in the Top 10 forwards at the camp, almost certainly. Do I think there are 3-5 other players that could easily have been selected instead – also, almost certainly. There is no algorithm to calculate and rank the top players. I don’t know the selection criteria, so whatever they may be (whether well-structured or not) at the end of the day what matters is results. As stated in the parents meeting, the results of the last two U18 World Championships was not the result USA Hockey wanted – so we will see if the current process yields better results.

THE ANALYSIS

2023 USA Hockey Girls 16-17 Camp Analytics for Forwards Selected to Advance to the U18 Girls Camp

Note: Players 1-3 were selected to go to the U18 Girls Camp – Players 4 & 5 were not selected

Some notes on the tracked attributes:

  • Takeaways = a one-on-one situation where the player gains control of the puck from directly challenging the other player
  • Giveaways = full change of possession to the other team (e.g. a missed pass, dump in/out, rim or redirected puck)
  • OZone entries = skating across the blue line with full possession of the puck
  • Team Shots For/Against do not include shot attempts that did not reach the net. Only SOGs were included.
  • I am not including the point stats or PIMs for any player since they can already be found on the USA Hockey website
  • There were additional attributes I tracked like “faceoffs won” but they indirectly show up in other higher-order key metrics. Since not all the forwards played center, I didn’t include the faceoff attribute.  But I did want to note, that one player was very good at faceoffs while another was not.  The one that won most of their faceoffs did see that reflected in other measurement areas since many faceoff wins led to greater possession time.

OTHER THOUGHTS

  • From all the players and games I’ve watched, it seems (and it’s only natural) that really good plays are rewarded disproportionately more than their equivalent poor plays are punished (e.g. creating a “wow” scoring chance vs. causing a “wow” scoring chance for the other team). Forwards tend not to surrender many negative scoring chances unless they are somewhat negligent defensively.  So, it seems likely that creating offense is highly disproportionately weighted in player evaluation.
  • Not all players gave the same defensive effort throughout a game, whether it is being tired or laziness.  But over the course of four games, it was pretty clear who consistently tried to play a 200-foot game (vs. cheating a little defensively or taking some shortcuts).
  • Scouting and evaluating is not an exact science.  In my humble opinion, most of the scouts/coaches don’t watch any player enough to really get the full picture.  It is sampling data – and while it is directionally correct, when there are many players within a close band it is hard to discern who is absolutely the “best” player. And who you pick may vary when you are building a team for a short tournament and need different types of players. 
  • After watching over 20 hours of individual game footage, this process is somewhat exhausting. It takes a lot of work to watch and tag each type of play. I can’t imagine being a scout and trying to watch 10 skaters live on the ice throughout an entire game.  At the same time, the insights are quite valuable.  I hope that college scouts leverage Instat to watch players individual shifts (if a club/prep team uses Instat) to evaluate the full body of their work rather than just sampling one or two periods of a game during a tournament or showcase weekend. To me, it is hard to watch multiple players in a game rather than on just one player at a time.
  • Note: We are still waiting to on the written feedback and letter rating that we were told all players would receive.  If you are a player or parent from 16/17 Camp who has a received this feedback, please reach out and let me know. Update: We did receive the USA Hockey Feedback on July 27th – I will be writing up my thoughts on the feedback process in a upcoming post.
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2023 Development Camp Girls Hockey Player Development

Analyzing the USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Camp Defense Selections for the U18 Camp

USA-Hockey

As I mentioned in my previous post about USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Camp, there was a a mix of perspectives on the selections for 18’s camp.

WHAT?

Rather than engage in a subjective discussion on who was selected, I thought it might be helpful to collect some analytical data and metrics to understand how top players performed at the camp.

WHY?

The purpose of this post is not to say who did or did not deserve to be selected to the U18 Camp. Instead, it is to help provide perspective and context to other players and parents the types of metrics that demonstrate the level of play needed to be selected.  And ideally, individual players do their own self-analysis to see how they compare.

HOW?

I watched and coded specific attributes for every shift in all 4 games for every player in this analysis using the USA Hockey TV footage. I collected more metrics than are listed below, but I feel that the attributes shown, provide the right amount and level of data to gain an understanding of the level of play for this position. Note: Sometimes the live stream footage didn’t always focus on the area of the ice where the play was taking place, so it is very likely the odd play may have not been accounted for.

WHO?

Here is the list of the 13 players selected to go to the 18’s camp

For D analysis, I included the 3 players selected plus another ‘top D’ player who was not selected. I am not identifying the names of any players because singling out any individual player is not my objective.  However, I can say, that I personally do not know any of the players or their parents that were included in this analysis.

SO WHAT?

Based on my analysis, I don’t have any issues with the D selections since measuring defense is not an exact science.  I am sure there were other players for whom there is an argument they could have been selected instead – but the differences are hard to discern in just 4 games and I don’t expect the selection committee to be perfect in only picking players based on their game performance.

All selected players made several really good plays (both offensively and defensively) in their four games – many of which were ‘highlight worthy’.  At the same time, these same players made multiple, significant turnovers/mistakes which resulted in high scoring chances for the other team. This goes to show you that none of the D were anywhere close to being perfect. But overall their consistency over 4 games is what you can see in the metrics.

THE ANALYSIS

Note: Players 1-3 were selected to go to the U18 Girls Camp – Player 4 was not selected

Some notes on the tracked attributes:

  • Offensive Shot Attempts does not mean the shot made it to the net – as mentioned in my previous post, I estimate almost 80% of all point shots were blocked or missed the net.
  • Turnover = full change of possession to the other team (e.g. a missed pass, dump in/out, rim or redirected puck)
  • I am not including the point stats or PIMs for any player since they can already be found on the USA Hockey website
  • Note: With only 4.1 goals per game combined between both teams, all the top players played strong defensively and were not on the ice for many goals.  This can be seen in their “On-ice goals for/goals against ratio” (this is different from the traditional +/- stat). 
  • There were additional attributes I tracked like offensive zone entries and good defensive plays. In addition metrics like pass attempts or turnovers could be segmented further by situation – however, given the outcome based of the measurements presented here, I feel they are a good representation of how each player played.

Finally, yes, I did a similar analysis for my daughter’s games (for her eyes only). And we are using the results to prioritize her summer development plan.

NEXT ANALYSIS

I have already started working analyzing the Forwards who were picked for the U18 Camp. This is a little more complicated since there were 5 forwards selected. I will not be doing goalies, because I don’t feel qualified to do so – and as mentioned previously, from what I’ve been told by goalie experts, there is a huge weight given to one-on-one time spent with an evaluator to judge goalies.

Categories
2023 Girls Hockey Player Development Women's College Hockey

More Thoughts on the 2023 USA Hockey 16/17 Girls Development Camp

This is the second post about the 2023 USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Development Camp

You can read the first post here

I wanted to get this our right after the camp, but didn’t have time before taking a week-long vacation.  But here are some additional thoughts that I compiled during my time in Oxford:

  • The operational excellence of the camp was consistent the entire week – kudos to the organizers for such a well-run event. Especially when compared to many other camps, showcases and tryouts I have seen on both the girls and boys side of hockey
  • Unlike the previous camp I attended, I now appreciate all the different paths to hockey excellence there are in the U.S. I could now see where all players came from that I learned about over  the last couple of years – hockey academy, top clubs, prep and Minnesota
  • The last two days of games brought a whole slew of additional DI and DIII coaches to Oxford. I personally saw coaches from just about every school  (over 30 DI teams) – however there were some top programs where I didn’t see a representative (e.g. Wisconsin, UMD, Colgate, Northeastern) and several NEWHA schools (note:  they may have been there, but I just didn’t see them).
  • One DI coach did tell me that some of the players looked tired for the fourth game – while another thought there was better team play the last two games compared to the first two games.
  • 7 players who were at 16/17 camp this year were at 18s camp last year.  1G , 2D  &  4Fs.  Two of them were players who were selected from the 2022 16/17’s Camp to go the 2022 18’s Camp – the other 5 went direct to 18s last year.
  • Here is the list of the 13 players selected to go to the 18’s camp
  • 5 of those 7 2022 18’s Camp players were selected to return to the 18’s camp this year from the 16/17s Camp
  • In  general,  I noticed a big difference between the average 2006 and average 2007 player. seemed to be weaker. That one extra year of development is noticeable not just size, but hockey IQ
  • Interesting stat – the Girls 16/17 Camp averaged 4.1 goals per game (combined both teams) while the Boys 17 Camp averaged 10.0 goals/gm and the Boys 16 Camp averaged 8.6 goals per game. Significantly less scoring on the girls side.
  • Unofficially, I estimated that about 80% of point shots were blocked/never reached the net – surprisingly low for this level of play
  • It seems that just watching games isn’t sufficient to judge players – while important – there really are a lot of nuances you can get from practices that you can’t see from a live stream that likely factored into players selected for the 18s camp
  • Depending on position and length of shifts, most players only had between 40 and 50 shifts to demonstrate their abilities over the course of 4 games. Which isn’t a lot, all things considered.
  • Based on talking with multiple parents and players there was certainly a mix of perspectives on the selections for 18’s camp.  I will hold off judgment on skaters until I spend more time reviewing video of the players selected in comparison to other top players who were not selected.  I do not feel qualified to analyze goalies, especially based on past conversations with expert goalie coaches – but I do know that you can’t just rely on game performance in goalie evaluations.
  • I can’t include everything I want to discuss in this post, so I am going to publish additional posts sourced from the camp including:
    • A candid conversation with a DI coach on their detailed recruiting process for their 2025 recruiting class
    • Applying some analytics to the players selected from the 16/17 camp for the 18’s Girls Camp
    • My thoughts on the 16/17 Camp feedback process – which is dependent on receiving the official player feedback report via snail mail expected sometime this week.

Next:

Analyzing the USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Camp Defense Selections for the U18 Camp

Categories
2023 Development Camp Girls Hockey Player Development Women's Hockey

A Few Thoughts After the First Two Days of the 2023 USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Development Camp

Read Part II: More Thoughts on the 2023 USA Hockey 16/17 Girls Development Camp here

  • The new location at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio is superb. Arena is outstanding, campus is beautiful and facilities are all close to each other.  Big upgrade from St Cloud.
  • Camp seems very well organized and excellent use of technology to keep players and parents informed
  • Parent meeting with Kristen (Wright) Sagaert discussing the process of player feedback and letter grades sounded very promising. Hopefully the execution delivers on the expectations that were set.
  • Jerseys are pretty nice. Still no names on the girls jerseys, but boys 17s camp going on concurrently have them
  • Playing on NHL sized rink this year – noticeable difference in time and space for players compared to the Olympic sized rinks in St Cloud
  • Quality of hockey is a little more team oriented and a slightly higher pace than what I saw last week at the showcase in Rochester.
  • Different experience watching in person than via streaming, games seems much faster in person.
  • Many college coaches watching the first day, but not as many as I expected. 
  • Saw at least a couple of DI head coaches who don’t normally go to tournaments or showcases, but are here.
  • At least 5 coaches were previous Champs App podcast guests  🙂
  • Delayed offsides were permitted on the first day. Interesting that they aren’t following USA Hockey rules.
  • First day averaged a little under 5 minutes of penalties per game, which is only about 10% of the game time (46 minutes). So far that seems quite reasonable compared to past years

Note: The details of the camp are very similar to the 15’s Player Development Camp that I previous wrote about in two parts

Update: Forgot to mention that the in-arena DJ is very good. Not the same music as every other rink. Plus the penalty-specific tunes are spot on.

Read Part II: More Thoughts on the 2023 USA Hockey 16/17 Girls Development Camp here

Also: Analyzing the USA Hockey Girls 16/17 Camp Defense Selections for the U18 Camp – Champs App

USA-Hockey
Categories
Development Camp Girls Hockey Player Development

Observations from the 2023 USA Hockey Pacific District Camp

Earlier this month my daughter attended the USA Hockey Pacific District Camp for the third and final time (she’s aging out of the U18 events).  Now that the results have been posted, I am posting my thoughts on this year’s event. Feel free to read my previous summaries from the 2021 camp and 2022 camp to understand the three year experience.

Overall, operationally speaking, this was clearly the best run district camp of the three she attended.

Just like previous years, there were three practice/skills sessions and three games. The practice/skills sessions were well organized and structured – and in my opinion, allowed the evaluators to see how players performed both offensively and defensively beyond just the games.

More Teams

There were some significant changes from previous years.  First, the number of teams for the 16/17 age group was increased from 4 teams to 6 teams (the 15’s age group had 4 teams similar to last year). There are arguments to be made on both sides about the pros and cons of increasing the number of players invited to attend. However, on-balance, as we try to grow the girls game on the west coast, I think it worked out just fine. The overall level of play may have been a little diluted, but the goodwill from attending the event works for me. Plus, the extra money it generated allowed more USA Hockey staff to attend from all over the country. 

More Coaches

Unlike the last couple of years where it seemed to be only 2-4 coaches watching from the stands while another 2 coached from the bench. There seemed to always be at least ~6-8 coaches scouting from the roped-off coaches section in the stand.  Another big change, as referenced above, was not only the number of participating coaches, but also the list of coaches and their role during the weekend was shared with all attendees via email.  In the past, I had to work hard to identify who all the coaches were and decipher the role they played. The day after camp ended, we were emailed the full list of coaches, where they were from and what role they played (evaluator, volunteer, USA Hockey Staff) – which was awesome.  No more guessing.

The only complaint I heard via several parents (from their daughters) was that it seemed that some of the coaches were over-coaching on the ice. There were lots of times coaches would stop drills and call everyone over or a coach would give detailed feedback to a specific player.  Feedback is good – I love player feedback – but at an event like Districts, players don’t want to get drill-related  feedback from every coach they interact with. What players really want is feedback on how to improve their overall game.

Same Number of National Camp Spots

I am not sure what players and parents expected in terms of realistically making the USA Hockey National Camps, but the odds aren’t good for most players.  Here are the numbers of National invites (based on % of registrations of girls in the Pacific District):

Notes:

  1. Only 1 2008 forward was selected to go straight to the 18s Camp (last year 1F and 1 D went straight to 18s)
  2. Goalies are selected at the national level and not dependent on the proportion of district registrations

So hopefully, most players, especially those who were invited from the alternate lists (or not even originally selected) understood they were long shots to make it National Camp and were just happy to go to Las Vegas.

Goalie Development

Another positive from the event was when I talked to the goalie coaches for the district and she explained how they evaluate goalies, the process of providing goalies feedback and tracking their development from year-to-year.  I wish they would have done something similar for skaters – because in the 3 years we’ve gone, there has been no pro-active mechanism to receive feedback from the event for skaters.

A few other points:

  • Games were two 32 minute running-time halves – which was 2 minutes more than last year
  • The refs were less noticeable this year compared to last year.  Which is a good thing.
  • The jerseys were 100 times nicer than previous years (not embarrassing to have mismatched jerseys and socks like last year) – with a number scheme which made it clear who were 2006s and 2007s.
  • It would have been nice to also have the jersey #s included in the roster lists that were sent out so parents didn’t need to try to figure who the players were by themselves
  • Everyone had to travel to Vegas for the weekend, with many coming from out-of-district.  I hope parents and players felt that the total cost of the weekend was worth it. Unless you were driving from California, the weekend had to be super-expensive.
Categories
Development Camp Girls Hockey

A few notes from the 2022 USA Hockey Pacific District Camp

This past weekend I was in Las Vegas to watch my second USA Hockey Pacific Districts Camp.  The general format was pretty much the same as last year, with 3 practices and 3 games. However, there were a few subtle differences from the previous year that I wanted to share. Here are my notes:

Camp Structure

This year, my daughter was participating in the 16/17’s group (made up of 2005 and 2006 birth years).  There was also a 15’s group (2007 players) just like last year, but in addition there was a 14’s group (2008 birth year).  Each group was made up of 4 teams – typically 9 or 10 forwards, 6 D and 2 goalies.

Last year,  16 players from the 15’s groups were sent to national camp (8F, 5D, 3G); 8 players were selects for the 16/17s camp (5F, 3D, 0G) and 4 players picks to go straight to the U18s camp (2F, 2D, 0G).  There are no exact numbers provided for this year other than the guidance in the USA Hockey Guidebook.

Unlike last year, the games were two 30-minute run-time periods. Last year it was only 24 minutes per period, and it really made a difference in ice time. Last year, a player would typically only get 10 or 11 shifts per game, this year it felt like it was between 15 and 20. 

Quality of Play

In addition, I noticed a significantly higher level of play at the 16/17s level than last year at the 15’s age groups. This was likely due to a combination of factors.  Since at this age group is a combined-age tryout, only the top half of players from each age group made the camp, therefore raising the bar on the quality of player to be selected to the camp.  Also, with the players being a year or two older than the 15’s, the difference in development was pretty easy to see.  I should note that several alternates from the regional tryouts were added to rosters as some of the original selections did not come – so you could see a range in talent on just about every team. Finally, unlike what I saw with the 15’s, the shift length for players at the higher level was much more reasonable.  Rarely did I see 2 or 2.5 minute shifts. My general impression was that the overall level was pretty good with a few elite players, hockey in the Pacific District still has a long way to go to match the skill level I saw the previous weekend at a 3-on-3 Minnesota High School tournament.

Refs-In-Training

An interesting twist in this year’s event, is that in parallel to the players camp, it was also some kind of camp/evaluation for referees. Not sure if it was USA Hockey-specific or IIHF.  The good news, is that the refs took their job very seriously – and didn’t let many things go that you normally see in a summer showcase (e.g. offsides, icings etc.). Alternatively, there were several awkward moments, such as refs being out of position and running into players in the middle of plays, and being a little over-zealous with not permitting teams to make line changes before face-offs. There was one top player who got called for a penalty when the out-of-position ref caused her to lose the puck – and the player let the ref know she wasn’t pleased . I am all for better training of refs and helping them improve and certainly don’t expect perfection, but at this type of event, ref training shouldn’t be at the expense of the players who were there to try out.

Selection Process

I estimated there were between 20 and 25 coaches representing USA Hockey at the event – whether on-ice with the players or evaluating from their private viewing area. It seemed to be a similar mix to last year of DIII coaches, current NCAA players, Pacific district coaches and other USA Hockey representatives. From a parents perspective, it would be nice to know what some of the evaluation criteria are for each position. However, from all the experienced eyes on the players over the course of the four days, I am trusting that their selection process is reasonably objective and can truly figure out who the top players were to move on to the national camps.

A nice improvement from last year, was the fact that USA Hockey clearly declared the dates in which the results would be published, May 25th.  So there was no ambiguity and confusion about what the expectations are for the outcome of the selection camp. Even better, it is less than 2 weeks from the event, unlike last year when it was almost a month delay.

Categories
College Hockey Recruiting Development Camp Girls Hockey Women's College Hockey Women's Hockey

What I learned attending the USA Hockey 15s Girls Development Camp

Part III – College Recruiting

This is the third and final post focusing on the college recruiting process based my experience as a parent at the USA Hockey Girls Camp that took place in St Cloud Minnesota from July 10-15, 2021.

You can read the previous posts about the Schedule & Operational Details and USA Hockey Player Development

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what to write for this post.  I wanted to specifically discuss what happened at the USA Hockey 15’s camp in St. Cloud.  However, I have come to realize that it would be incomplete without providing additional context about the entire women’s college recruiting process.  As a result, for this post I am mostly just going to stick to the facts and data I collected.  Separately, I will soon publish a detailed post about what I have figured out so far about the end-to-end recruiting process to give the perspective needed for any individual event.

What became obvious quite quickly, is that coaches from all over the country were flocking to St Cloud to see the top 216 15-year old female players.  Kristin Wright stated at the opening parents meeting that 90% of schools would be at the Development Camp at some point during the week.  Based on all the logos I saw that number must have been pretty close.

Here are the schools I saw first-hand, but I am sure this is not a complete list:

• Bemidji State
• Boston College
• Boston University
• Brown
• Clarkson
• Cornell
• Franklin Pierce
• Harvard
• Holy Cross
• Lindenwood
• Mercyhurst
• Minnesota
• Minnesota State
• Northeastern
• Ohio State
• Princeton
• Providence
• Quinnipiac
• Rice
• RPI
• Sacred heart
• St Cloud
• St Lawrence
• St Thomas
• Vermont
• Union
• Wisconsin

At a basic level coaches had two objectives for attending the event:

  • Watching players already on their list and track their performance/development
  • Identify new players to add to their follow list

Since I was sitting in the stands with most of the coaches I had a few observations. Some coaches were very social and others kept to themselves.  Some showed up just the first couple of days, others just for the last 2 or 3 days. Unlike 16/17s camp which took place a couple of weeks earlier, coaches can’t talk to the 15’s parents – so there was almost engagement between coaches and parents. Schools that I did not see their logos seemed to have on-ice coaches represented at either the 16/17s camp or the U18 camp. Many coaches had printed rosters or iPads to identify players and take notes. But quite a few did not appear to have a method to take notes or remember players.  Each school seem to have a different scouting strategy/plan. Some schools had multiple coaches, while other only had one representative. As well, some scouts only watched games, while other watched all the public practices and scrimmages.

A couple of schools really stood out to me during the week

Brian Durocher Boston University

The first was Boston University head coach Brian Durocher who spent the first three days watching almost every practice and game. He would just stand on his own down along the glass quietly taking notes on a little piece of paper. And when there was a break on one rink he go watch players on the other rink.  He was very unassuming, but clearly using his many years of experience to evaluate players and take copious notes.

The other school that impressed, was the team of Ohio State coaches (at least four in total both on-ice and off-ice) who were making sure they watched all the girls on both rinks throughout the week. They typically sat in a group around head coach Nadine Muzerall and watched a lot of hockey together. As a Michigan grad it isn’t easy for me to say nice things about OSU, but clearly they have prioritized scouting and their recruiting process as a key to their success.

In my next post I will discuss what I have learned about different stages of the women’s college recruiting process. This will help answer many of the questions I have received about how much should a player be seen in the spring and summer at showcases and events compared to their regular season team.

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