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Tag: women's hockey

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College Hockey Recruiting Girl's Showcase Girls Hockey hockey USA Hockey Nationals Women's College Hockey

Recruiting Insights from the 2023 Tradition NIT Girls Hockey Tournament: Coaches, Coaches, Coaches!

This past weekend I was in Minnesota for the fabulous 2023 Tradition NIT Girls Hockey Tournament organized by Winny Brodt Brown. In total, there were 93 teams participating for the 16U and 19U age groups.  Almost every top US club team was in attendance plus many of the top western Canadian girl’s teams.

Over the course of the 3-day event, I had multiple conversations with several DI & DIII coaches and I thought I would share my observations as they relate to the recruiting process:

1. Competition Matters for Getting Seen

As heard many times on the Champs App podcast, coaches want to see players playing at the highest level, against top players to properly evaluate them.  With as many as 8 games going on simultaneously across the two rink locations, coaches can’t watch every game. Many times I would see a coach watch 2 overlapping games by switching back and forth during ice cuts.  Thus coaches need to be selective in which games they scout. Coaches were mostly watching games with the largest number of  talented players.  Thus, it appeared as though games with the highest ranking teams got the highest DI coach attendance.  However, it did seem that DIII and ACHA coaches were more flexible in watching lower ranked teams. But if you want to play DI hockey, my sense is that you want to put yourself in the best position to be seen. This would imply playing on a team that plays against the other top teams in the country. The reality is that if your team is ranked in 30’s and below on MyHockeyRankings, then you probably won’t get noticed as much, even if you are a DI caliber player.

2. Connections Help

I saw this firsthand this weekend.  If you can get a positive reference to a college coach through an advisor, current or former coach, friend or some other trusted hockey-related relationship, it can make a difference in getting scouted.  It won’t get you an offer, but it can certainly get a coach from a specific school to come watch you play and start the process.

3. Lines Not Dots

I had a great conversation with a coach from a Top 5 DI school and asked why they scouted at so many events. In reality, given their school’s reputation, they could just focus on the handful of top players at the US or Canadian national camps and simply cherry pick those players.  But the coach revealed to me that they watch the elite-of-the-elite players over the course of several years and track their development and progression over an extended period of time. This way they can see what the player’s trajectory looks like and if it continues to trend in a positive direction. The coach and I discussed a specific player and how the coaches have been monitoring how the hockey IQ of that player has been improving over the previous 2 years. Thus coaches at high-end teams look for the trendlines of players – not just the individual play at a single event.

4. Experience Matters in Evaluating Players

It was fun talking to several coaches and hearing their “off-the-record” thoughts about certain players. The folks I talked to ranged from longtime head coaches to junior assistant coaches to a former DI coach.  What I gleaned across all the convos was the more experience you had coaching,  the less amount of time it took to get a pretty accurate assessment of a player.  I was surprised how accurately the seasoned coaches figured out a player’s strengths and weaknesses. While for some of the junior coaches it sounded like they needed to watch more games to get a good sense for a player.

5. Lots of Coaches

For this year, the NCAA approved DI teams to have three assistant coaches (instead of just two).  As a result, almost every (non-NEWHA) DI team had a least one coach present for the entire weekend while their school played regular season conference games “back home” on Friday and Saturday.  Several coaches clearly also got on planes or in a car right after their games were done on Saturday and headed to Blaine, MN.  On Sunday morning, 7 of the 8 head coaches from the WCHA teams were in attendance, with all eight schools having multiple assistant coaches there as well.

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College Hockey Recruiting Girl's Showcase Women's College Hockey Women's Hockey

Which Girls Showcases Should I Attend in 2022?

I’ve been asked a few times recently about which showcases to attend in 2022. While I am not the expert on all showcases and which ones to attend, here are a variety of thoughts I have on the subject:

Showcases are just one type of event to be included in your college recruiting strategy.  Other events such as spring/summer tournaments (e.g. Beantown Classic) , USA Hockey selects process (districts & nationals) and college-sponsored camps are some others. Here is the current list we’ve compiled on our 2022 Girls Hockey Event Calendar.

2022 Girls Hockey Showcases

What’s your why?

Therefore, the first question I would ask is “What are your goals for attending the showcase?”. If you are just going to an event for fun, to get ice time or play with friends – then it really shouldn’t matter which showcase you attend. If you are using these events for development purposes, then as long as the player is receiving reasonable time of on ice-development with college-level coaches, then the specific event is less important. However, if you are going specifically to be seen by college coaches, how does it fit in with the women’s college hockey recruiting process that schools follow when engaging with prospective recruits?

Womens College Hockey Recruiting Process

As with many recruiting questions, the answer to which showcases to attend is…“it depends”. Specifically, as was told to me very early in this process, each player’s journey is a unique one, so it all relates to their specific situation.

Here are the three key questions I would use to develop a point-of-view…

1. Where are you in the recruiting process?

Are you before or after the rising junior (i.e. just finished sophomore year of high school) June 15th deadline when you can talk to coaches directly? If before, then your goal is really just to get on the radar of college coaches – basically get your name added to their tracking list. If after, would coaches at the event help your relationship or improve your visibility with them?

Girls Hockey Showcase

2. How good is your player?

Based on what you know and the feedback you’ve received from you player’s coaches, how does the player compare to their peers?  Are they one of the best for their age in the country (e.g. attended one of the USA Hockey National Camps or play on a highly rated team)?  Have they been the best player on most of the teams they’ve played on? Are they likely to have to decide between a lower ranked DI team vs a highly ranked DIII school? Or are they just an average player on an average team? Being realistic on where the player might fit into the DI/DIII range of teams would be helpful.

3. Which schools does the player have the most interested in?

Assuming those schools are a real possibility of tracking the player, then those events would be at the top of the list.  If you haven’t narrowed down any schools and don’t have a preference yet, then do some research into which hockey programs and academic majors/departments overlap for the player’s interests. Also, location, school size and financial means are additional factors to consider.

Focus, focus, focus

If you are eligible (or close enough) to talk directly with coaches, then being very focused on your shortlist of targeted schools is key. I would recommend 3-5 schools on that list. The better the player, the more targeted you can be with the schools you believe you have a realistic chance of the college reciprocating the interest. 

Most coaches state that they use showcases to help put players on their radar and to start tracking them. The typical evaluation by coaches takes place during the regular season with their fall/winter teams.  Thus, many college coaches have told me they don’t need to see a player more than once or twice at showcases. Watching them 5 or 6 times over the spring/summer becomes redundant since the player rarely shows significant development in such a short period of time. However, not all coaches/schools attend every event – so it is tempting to go to at least 3 or 4 showcases/tournaments to cover all your bases.

Which coaches will be attending?

Given the above, which tournaments have the schools attending their events which best line-up with target teams? For example, the OHD Camp in Nashville has very different coaches from the PIP Boston Showcase. Finding the right match of events and coaches can be a little tricky.

Smaller can be better

From my experience last summer, for a player who is not allowed to officially talk to schools yet, the best showcases were the smaller ones (with 6 or less teams of players – ~100 attendees or so). This way  the player can have meaningful on-ice and on-the-bench conversations with coaches and to create direct relationships with them.  Some showcases have dozens of teams other just a handful.

Finally, this summer, for my daughter, we are prioritizing school-specific camps and the USA Hockey selects camp process over showcases and tournaments. Her unique journey has her focusing on her development this summer as she prepares to attend a hockey academy this fall.  Since she will be “seen” quite a bit next year during the “regular season”, she can narrow her target this spring/summer on a small number of schools.

DIII Recruiting

One last thought…you will almost always see DIII coaches at most of these events. Usually from schools that are a reasonable distance from the event site (due to travel costs). Once again, depending on your situation, location matters for DIII recruiting at showcases.

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Women's College Hockey Women's Hockey

Why stop at 11?

Close the Gap Womens College Ice Hockey

Note: I wrote the first draft of this post before the NCAA announced they would expand the number of teams for the Women’s Ice hockey tournament from eight to eleven in either 2022 or 2023.  While I applaud the NCAA for the decision and understand why they would increase the % of teams that qualify to match the men’s side at 27% of teams qualify, my thoughts below still stand. I also want to emphasize that I realize it is operationally complicated and expensive to have more teams qualify, but that should not stop the initiative to find creative ways to make this a win-win for the NCAA and women’s ice hockey.

Last weekend I was asked by one of the DI women’s college hockey teams to share the Close the Gap graphic on our social media accounts.  However, when it comes to this kind of stuff, I like to be educated on the topic. I had just skimmed through the Kaplan Hecker & Fink report the night before and rather than just re-post what everyone else has done, I thought I would share my 2 cents on the topic. These opinions are based on what I’ve learned over the last year about women’s college hockey, but also my 20+ years working with startups and high growth products.

Let me explain, one of things I have seen firsthand over the last year in-person and via USA Hockey and Hockey Canada data is that Women’s Hockey is a fast growing sport and is very similar to a startup. And startups should not be treated the same way from a business perspective as a highly profitable large corporation.  With this as background, let me share 5 opinions on the matter. I put the simple hockey recommendation first and the business ones later, since they are a little more complicated to explain.

1. Why not 14 or 16 teams?

Let’s start with the fact that I don’t really understand how teams are selected for the women’s NCAA ice hockey playoffs. However, what I do know is that last year it didn’t seem like the actual Top 8 pairwise teams in the country were the ones who were selected for the tournament. Specifically, definitely Minnesota and probably Clarkson should have been there.

As much as 11 or 12 sounds like a good number, why couldn’t it be 14 or 16 teams tha.t qualify for the NCAA playoffs?  From my analysis, there is only a small standard deviation between teams that are ranked from about 7-16. Specifically, the expected goal differential between any of those teams would likely be about 1.2. In other words, about 80% of the games between these teams would on-average be determine by only 1-goal – which should make for some pretty exciting games.

I don’t want to go through all the possible ways to make it work, but having 2-4 regional play-in games would seem to promote excitement and engagement. This would be in addition to 6-8 teams getting ‘byes’ straight to the “quarter finals”.  These extra play-in games would not dilute the process and give teams a chance to feel what it’s like to be in the NCAA tournament. I don’t think Women’s College Ice Hockey should just look for parity with the Men’s programs – instead. they should do what’s right for their own sport – and 14 or 16 seems like the right number to me. (By the way, I think the same logic could easily apply to the men’s side of things as well).

2. Women’s College Hockey could be a Star

In business there is a famous slide called the BCG Matrix which describes where a business stands relative to other businesses on two dimensions:  growth and relative market share. In the case of the NCAA, market share would be total college sports revenue. In business terms, football and men’s basketball are Cash Cows – generate tons of $, but are low growth sports.  However, Women’s Ice Hockey while not yet a big money-maker, is high growth.  They would be in the top right quadrant and currently be considered a ‘?’ as a business. In many large corporations, small businesses that are Question Marks can be underfunded and de-prioritized as the Cash Cows get all the resources and attention to keep shareholders happy (sound familiar?). However, this can be short-term thinking because the future may actually be in one of the small ideas that grow to dwarfing the incumbent businesses. All you need to do is to think of how the iPod started out as a teeny business for Apple relative to their Mac business, but then it became the dominant product leading to the iPhone and iPad.  For the NCAA, the future might be in one of these women’s sports – especially women’s ice hockey. This leads into my next point…

3. Dollar Spent Per Student Athlete should be higher for Women’s Ice Hockey than Men’s Ice Hockey

This seems counter-intuitive but hear me out.  Women’s College Ice Hockey should be treated like a startup.  And startups over-invest during their early years to grow their products and brands until they hit scale.  All you have to do is look at how Amazon lost money for years until they achieved scale in their core business.  Keep reading below for the business rationale for investing in startups.

Now, this does not mean just throwing money at the sport. I think one of the best recommendations in the KHF Report is to find ways to combine both the Mens and Women’s National Championship events together. This way you can spread the fixed costs over a larger base, and even better, you can use bundling to promote both sports (e.g. sell ticket packs for both sports).  Many companies and events (like the Olympics) use bundling as a way to help underfunded offerings get more distribution and customers.

4. Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the NCAA designed a perfect system to achieve the results they produced – which was significantly under-funding certain women’s sports relative to the higher revenue generating male equivalent sports.  When you read the Phase II report, many of their recommendations focus on changing the mindset, processes and people who make the key decisions about these sports. It was quite evident that there has been no incentive for the NCAA to prioritize gender-equity allocation of resources, investments and  media attention. Since there was no incentive, their only goal appears to have been “profit maximization” and that what was rewarded.  However, NCAA is not just about making money, they are about promoting sports and student-athletes across all their sports – not just the ones that currently make the most money. In this case, introduce the sport to fans who already have an interest in men’s hockey.

5. Women’s Ice Hockey should have its own vision for where it wants to go by developing a “Grow the Game” Playbook

Women’s Ice Hockey shouldn’t depend on the NCAA to figure out the secret sauce for building a large, loyal fanbase. They need to take ownership for the success of their own sport themselves.

I have learned over the past year is that there is a wide range of marketing and social media savviness across the DI women’s college hockey programs.  I am also assuming this translates into local marketing for their teams and building their fanbase – as seen by a wide range in attendance at regular season and playoff games (and obviously Covid has had a big impact in this stuff recently).  But there should be some type of committee created (if there isn’t one already) that brings together some of the best practices from the most successful programs for selling the sport and putting on big women’s hockey events.  These programs know their customers better than anyone else and should be leading the charge on what works and what doesn’t with this customer segment. With additional funding and proven, creative ideas the sport can really be taken to a new level.

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

Defining the College Athlete Recruiting Process

Womens College Hockey Recruiting Process

In previous posts I have discussed attending showcases and camps which are scouted by college coaches.  One of the key aspects of participating in these events is to recognize how they fit in to the end-to-end college recruiting process. Except for the rare exceptional player, attending any single event likely contributes only a fraction of the information involved in getting an offer from a school. As discussed many times before, each student-athletes recruiting journey is unique. However, this post serves as a general framework on defining the college athlete recruiting process. In addition, it attempts to provide context on tracking the process. Hopefully this information helps players and parents set reasonable expectations for what should happen depending on which stage of their journey they are in.

Awareness

How do coaches find and track potential student-athlete recruits? Here is a non-exhaustive list of sources for schools to add names to their recruiting database.

  • Top program rosters (e.g. hockey academy, prep school, top AAA club)
  • USA Nationals
  • USA Hockey national camp
  • In-season tournaments
  • Spring/summer showcases
  • College summer camps
  • Inbound email from player
  • Team website interest form
  • Coach referral

Research

How do teams scout and collect player information?  How are players evaluated and rated?

Once a player is on a team’s radar, then they are researching the player to see if they might be a fit for their program. Here are the some of their primary sources of data gathering.

  • Watch livestream games (e.g. LiveBarn, HockeyTV)
  • Watch games in-person
  • Coach references (current, past, opposing team)
  • College summer camps
  • Public available data (social media, Elite Prospects, team/league websites, MyHockeyRankings)

Consideration

How do teams rank players and narrow their list for potential offers?

Assuming a players skill level meets a certain standard to be considered for a potential offer from the research phase, then additional information is also collected to be used in the decision-making process.

  • Past interactions (camps, showcases etc.)
  • Phone/Zoom/In-person conversations (interviews)
  • Virtual visits
  • Unofficial visits
  • Official visits

Prior to starting Champs App, my last company focused on the employee recruiting process. In particular, the interviewing stage for large companies.  What is remarkably similar between job recruiting and college athlete recruiting is that that “hiring” organization wants to have as many “qualified” potential candidates in their recruiting pipeline before they make an offer. This gives them the school/company best opportunity to make an offer to the “best fit” candidate while realizing that the candidate, or student-athlete in this case, also has options and may choose to go somewhere else. Striking the balance between keeping potential recruits interested without any promise of an offer is a challenge that depends on creating a trusting relationship between both parties.

Offer

How do prospective student-athletes and school align their respective needs/interests with positional openings?

  • Number of openings;  openings by position
  • Offer creation/discussion/negotiation:
    • Start year
    • Financial aid / scholarships (if available)
    • Expectations (role, depth chart)
  • Academic considerations

When it comes to the Offer stage of the college recruiting process, there are still many questions I have about how a final decision is made. In upcoming podcasts with college coaches, I will be asking the following questions.

  • Do you make offers to players, with an assumption that not all of them will accepts (i.e. expect a yield rate)? Or do you only make offers with a specific opening in mind, then go down the list when a player does not accept an offer?
  • What attributes are negotiable in an offer from a school?
  • Are conditional offers made which are dependent on academic requirements?

When I get the answers to these questions I will write up my findings in a follow-up post.

Categories
Girls Hockey Parents Women's College Hockey Women's Hockey

What are the pros and cons of girls playing boys hockey?

girls playing boys hockey

As part of Jocelyn and Monique Lamoureux’s book release, they did a ton of promotion including several podcasts. On one them they Jocelyn Lamoureux mentioned her masters thesis “Should Girls Play Hockey With Boys? Perspectives From The USA Women’s Olympic Hockey Team“. For the past several years I have heard many points of view on girls playing boys hockey with some consistent recommendations (mostly “play with the boys as long as you can”). But this was the first time I heard of actual research on the subject. By soliciting data directly from US National Team players, Lamoureux was able to codify the tradeoffs and benefits from choosing to play with boys for a significant portion of their time in youth hockey.

Lamoureux’s conclusion was pretty unanimous: “Out of 15 players, 15 of them recommended that girl’s play with boys, but one player said yes and no depending on what the goals were of the individual playing.”  This doesn’t mean that playing girls-only hockey won’t get you to the national team, it just discusses how playing with the boys helped those that did play with boys. What the research doesn’t cover is if the path to the U.S. National Team is possible from only playing with girls. Thus, if a female player wants to make the national team, they would likely need to ensure that they are still developing the same sets of skills that Lamoureux’s research concluded was key to player success achieved through playing boys hockey.

Based on the research, some additional information I have collected from podcast interviews and my parental experience, here are some thoughts on the key factors for girls playing boys hockey:

Skill Development:  

By playing with boys, girls are likely to develop better key priority hockey skills via several contributing factors:

  • Ice time
  • Level of competition
    • There is some research which shows that during practice boys compete harder and for a longer period of time
    • Playing boys hockey provides more options for a female player to find a team whose skill level is at the right level for the player
  • Coaching
    • In my conversations with former female players, coaches and club directors, the consensus is that “on average” top boys club teams tend to have better coaching in minor hockey. While this is certainly changing and improving on a region-by-region basis, girls coaching is not yet at parity with the boys especially at the early age groups.
girls playing boys hockey

Safety of the Player:

USA Hockey recommends that girls should stop playing with boys when, due to size or speed, the player would be at risk of injury due to full-contact checking.  Not all girls are big enough or have the confidence to play with boys once the boys have hit puberty.  Each player must decide for themselves how long they are comfortable playing with boys from a safety perspective.

Social Development and Team Culture:

From my experience, there is no doubt that the social dynamics for a girl playing with boys is very different than on an all-girls team.  However, the culture on each boy’s team is different and the experience can be both positive and negative from a social development perspective. It really depends on the leadership of the coaching staff and the personalities of the players in the locker room. 

During my conversation with female college coaches who played with boys growing up, they consistently said that the boys on their team treated them pretty well. However, verbal taunts and occasionally “getting run at” by players on the other team was pretty common. So, a female player should be prepared and comfortable with those risks.

College Recruiting:

As noted in a previous post, it is rare for a female player to play college hockey while only playing on boys club or high school teams (other than at national development camps).  So clearly from a recruiting perspective, there is a significant benefit to being scouted by college teams. Coaches rarely attend boys events to watch a single female player.  The advice I have heard from several college coaches is a hybrid, where a female player can play on a boys team as their primary winter season team and either play girls during spring/summer tournaments or, if permitted, double roster on a girls team during the regular season (e.g. play girls AAA and boys high school).

Playing with boys helps, but it is a personal decision

In conclusion, playing on a boy’s team during key developmental minor hockey years appears to provide all the right ingredients for girls to reach their full potential as a hockey player. Depending on where you live, playing with boys could help develop their skills and knowledge of the game more than just playing on the local girl’s team. However, this does not in any way discount that girls can likely achieve the same level of development and success by finding substitute methods of achieving these same skills and knowledge by growing up playing with girls only.

Categories
Girls Hockey Minor Hockey Women's College Hockey Women's Hockey Youth Hockey

Comparing U.S. and Canadian Female Hockey Participation

US Canada Womens Faceoff

I was doing some research over the holidays to understand the state of women’s hockey in North America and found a few interesting insights between the U.S. and Canadian female hockey participation and coaching at the university level.  Here they are:

Overall Female Participation

1. Total hockey participation is about 8% more in Canada over the U.S., but female participation in Canada is 21% more than in the U.S.

Male to Female Participation

2. The ratio of Male to Female hockey players in the U.S. is ~6:1. In other words, female hockey players only make up 15% of all players in the U.S. While in Canada the ratio is ~5:1 while female players represent 17% of all players in Canada.

Under 18 Girls in Canada vs U.S.A.

3. While female hockey players in both the U.S. and Canada grew by a little more than 2% in 2019-20 (compared to male player which had declines in both countries), there are still about 25% more female players under 18 in Canada compared to the U.S.

Female U.S. Division I Women’s Hockey Coaches

4. Only 33% of U.S. Division I women’s hockey coaches are female, while 67% of their assistant/associate coaches are female

Female Canadian U Sports Women’s Hockey Coaches

5. 46% of U Sports Head Coaches in Canada are women while 54% of their Assistant/Associates Coaches are female.

Here is my interpretation of the data:

  1. The U.S. still has some work to do to catch up to Canada on female participation in the sport. “Girls Give Hockey a Try” is a phenomenal start, but I think there is even more that can be done.
  2. I suspect it will take a major change in one of the countries development programs before one will be the dominant hockey power. Due to density issues in the States with less players distributed in more metropolitan areas than Canada, it would take a significant commitment/investment to build a sizeable lead over Canada.
  3. I was expecting to see more female head coaches in both Canada and the U.S.. However, given the male to female ratio of participation in both countries, the male coaching advantage in women’s college hockey is not a complete surprise. I would suspect that these numbers will flip to favor female head coaches over the coming years as they are given more opportunity and the recent generation of women players move into and up the coaching ranks.

Sources: USA Hockey 2019-20 Registration Report, Hockey Canada 2019-20 Annual Report and Champs App analysis.

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