Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Ladder Of Success
By: USA Hockey Magazine
Hockey is the ultimate game and when it comes to developing players to reach the top of their profession, the United States Hockey League and College Hockey, Inc., have formed a winning partnership that benefits elite American players.
More Americans are playing the game at the highest levels, thanks in large part to the current development system that continues to produce some of the game’s best young talent.
USA Hockey Magazine sat down with two of the most influential people in the American development system, Skip Prince, commissioner of the USHL, and Paul Kelly, head of College Hockey, Inc., to get their thoughts on the successes, challenges and total team effort needed to continue to produce some of the finest players in the game today.
What is the mission of your respective organizations?
Skip Prince: The United States Hockey League’s mission is to establish the best Junior hockey league in the world, which means that elite players recognize that the USHL is the place to start their career path to college and the National Hockey League with an equal emphasis on both.
Paul Kelly: We have several objectives at College Hockey, Inc. The first is to provide education and information to elite young players and their families about the benefits of playing college hockey, pursing an NCAA college hockey path as opposed to playing Major Junior hockey.
We can do many things that the college coaches cannot do directly. We can reach down and address younger kids and families that they are prohibited from speaking to because of NCAA rules.
Second, there’s a business component to help promote the college game, assist them with special events, marketing, Web sites, television and other new ideas.
Lastly, we talk with colleges and universities that may play club hockey that might consider stepping up to Division I, not unlike Penn State recently decided to do. That’s what we’re all about.
How do your organizations work together to create opportunities for American players?
Prince: Fundamentally, we’re doing a lot of the same things. We are one of the significant deliverers of players to the college ranks, but not the only one.
Our numbers show that 35 percent of the kids wearing a Div. I sweater are USHL alumni. That means that colleges have to find that other 65 percent, but we fundamentally believe that we are the path that gives you the best chance to play in college. If you play in the USHL you will get a commitment from a Div. I school. We’ve gotten to the point where we can say we’re that good, but we’ve always recognized that there are others out there who are providing that talent.
Kelly: From the college perspective, clearly, the National Team Development Program and the USHL are the No. 1 producers of Division I college players. Kids also come from the Minnesota high schools, elite prep schools and occasionally other public high schools and sometimes the British Columbia and Alberta Junior hockey leagues, but for the most part for American kids the preferred path would be to play in the USHL and then earn a scholarship to play at the Division I level, and hopefully if you’re good enough to go on and play in the National Hockey League.
What are your benchmarks for success and how do you feel you are reaching those goals?
Kelly: What will be the benchmarks for our success? Fewer elite American players leaving the country, keeping the top-end American kids playing and developing as hopefully future NHL stars in American college institutions.
It will take some time for us to see the results of our efforts. I think it will take two or even three years to really see it, but you will see it.
Prince: It’s only in the last year or so that the USHL took its player development and scouting in house and recognized the communication need that was out there. There was a sense that once Tier I hockey and the USHL were created that the elite players would simply find us, and they don’t.
I think within our league there was a sense of surprise that the level of sophistication at the player base is really just a question of who talks to them most often and most regularly. We weren’t out there enough. We had a reputation of being a good and growing league, but I don’t think the players recognized what we were doing, what colleges were doing and what the NHL role plays in all of that.
In a perfect world players would come find you and you’d be working simply on the quality of the on-ice play, but it’s not the way the world works.
What are the biggest challenges your organizations face, collectively and individually?
Kelly: There are a few things. One is the economics. To be successful and do the things that we have planned we need revenue and support for that. We are trying to accomplish a lot with fairly limited resources.
We work closely with the NHL and think there’s a great synergy between Division I college hockey and the NHL. With that said, over the last 10 years NHL teams have been pulling out college players before they’ve finished their time in school. We’re losing some players after one year, two years, or even three years. That does im-pact college programs, so we’re trying to find the right balance there.
We’re also the only sport where our coaches are recruiting players against a professional league, namely the Canadian Hockey League to the north. And since we’re all after that same elite group of talent, our coaches have a number of challenges in recruiting those kids who are being recruited by a well-financed professional league.
I think we’re making strides, and I’m optimistic over the next two or three years we’re going to see some real breakthroughs in terms of our abilities to keep our top kids and attract kids from elsewhere as well.
Prince: Our challenges are a version of the same answer. The American system is not an easy elevated pitch system to explain. The model doesn’t follow the high school to college to pro format that many other sports follow so introducing and explaining our format is hard.
Parents and young players have to stick handle through a myriad of different problems to play. It’s a facility driven sport. Once they’re there it’s clear how important it is to communicate and guide them through the system because on their own it’s very difficult for a parent and a player to be able to figure out how to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
Would you like to see a single development track for elite players, and is that even feasible?
Prince: I’m not sure that the USHL would want to replicate or replace prep hockey. What we’re doing is trying to set the standard that other versions of the system will have to sustain in order to provide the very best for the players.
We’re not going to replace Minnesota high school hockey, and as long as Minnesota high schools are producing players of the caliber that they are that’s great.
We don’t believe that it’s our place to effectively replace the other elements, but we do think we are standard setters though. Our strength is to grow where hockey isn’t being taught and developed at our level because if we’re not there these young men will go play another sport and we won’t see them have the opportunity to play hockey.
Kelly: Speaking as a former public high school hockey coach outside of Boston, not a lot of kids make it to the National Hockey League who start in public high schools, other than in Minnesota. There are exceptions to that and there are still families who believe in their kids playing public high school hockey.
There will always be a place for quality public high school hockey, quality prep school and some of the other Junior leagues to exist on the east coast and the west coast. We’re going to need those leagues because we want more kids coming into the sport and we want more options for those kids to play.
I think you do need a development track for the truly elite player, and I think we’ve established that now with the NTDP and the USHL. You need to pull the best of the best out of those different areas and bring them together so you can put together a group of kids that has the ability to compete internationally on behalf of the country and then go on to play in the NHL.
What is the relationship between the USHL and the National Team Development Program? It appears that your respective programs are competing for the same player while the NTDP teams play against USHL teams as part of the schedule. Is that a healthy thing?
Prince: One of the primary goals when I came to the league was to reintegrate the USHL and the NTDP. They’ve lived separate lives for a long time. The reintegration of the two programs continues.
We have a fundamentally different training methodology. We take the college model in terms of we have different ages competing together and hopefully growing through that. The NTDP has built itself on the single-aged model.
It’s a menu that some people choose one thing and some people choose another.
Why is it so important to keep elite American players playing in the United States?
Kelly: If we lose 100 skilled Americans every year to Junior programs outside the country, that diminishes the quality and the level of play across all of Division I hockey, and that’s harmful to the sport.
We’d like to keep all of those kids in country, but that’s not possible. There’s a freedom of movement there, and we respect that. There are some kids, who for a host of personal reasons, college hockey isn’t for them. It could be an academic issue. It could be an economic or a cultural issue.
We think too many kids foreclose their options early on; jumping at things that were promised to them by Junior teams outside the country that entice those kids to leave.
There’s a ripple effect in play here. We need to keep the best kids to keep college hockey strong, college hockey needs to stay strong because the NHL, frankly, needs quality players.
You’re seeing a reduction in the number of Russians and Europeans coming into the National Hockey League. Fifty percent of your players are coming from Canada, roughly 30 percent are coming from the United States, and that number will increase in the coming years. It will grow to 35 and maybe even 40 percent.
The NHL understands that it’s important that our college programs continue to attract the very best talent and continue to develop that talent.
Prince: Families want to watch their young player, male or female, come through the system. The asterisk to this is that if you’re good enough you’re going to get to a point where you’re going to have to leave to get better; that fundamentally is a negative in the whole development process. We continue to believe that we have substantially for all players the better system.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard an athlete express his regret for having gone to college on a scholarship and having the opportunity to play college hockey.
We have more Americans playing on NHL rosters than ever before. What are your organizations’ respective roles in helping to get those numbers up?
Kelly: Last year there were 268 guys who played NCAA hockey playing in the NHL. The NHL has roughly 720 players, so 268 players is a good number. If you go back 20 to 25 years I think we had maybe 25 players, so that number has increased tenfold.
It shows that our Junior programs and our colleges are doing a good job of developing players who can compete at that level. Some of the biggest stars in the NHL game today played college hockey. They came out of the NTDP, came out of the USHL, played college hockey and are not just players in the NHL ? they are the most recognizable, most productive players in the game.
It’s important for the NHL that we continue to produce players, and it’s important for the colleges that we continue to produce players. The more guys that go from college to the NHL the easier it is for those colleges to attract young talent, future NHL stars to follow that path to be developed.
How beneficial is it that 11 general managers in the NHL are either American or have ties to American college system?
Kelly: It’s important because they’ve lived it, they understand it, they recognize the benefits of it. Guys like Lou Lamoriello and Ray Shero and Brian Burke and Dean Lombardi and the list goes on, are real supporters of the college game.
We tell a lot of young kids that one of the benefits of the college track is that while you’re developing as a player you’re also receiving an education and a foundation for life. And if you want to stay in the game when your playing days are over in a management or an executive position, your chances of doing so are certainly enhanced if you have a college degree and you have that educational background.
These guys are living, breathing examples of the kind of career track that a young player can pursue if he decides to go to college.
How concerned are you that players are leaving college early to play in the NHL, especially those who are leaving in midseason?
Kelly: The midseason problem is a significant one because coaches are unable to fill that role when they lose the scholarship it’s impossible to get somebody to step in there. It’s an issue that needs to be avoided if possible.
However, there are instances and unique circumstances where sometimes it makes sense. There may be family reasons, there may be academic eligibility reasons, there may be reasons why the departure of a young man midseason makes sense not only for him but for the program. But for the most part we don’t want to see kids leaving midseason.
We hope that those kids who do leave early recognize the value of having a degree or a diploma and follow the path of a guy like Jack Johnson, who left Michigan after two years but has been faithfully going back to campus every summer to work on his degree and he is committed to getting his diploma in the next year or so. It’s a credit to him.
That’s the optimal thing. Because by the time you’re 36 or 40 years of age you’re not playing for an NHL team and you have a whole lot of life to live.
Prince: When the NHL makes a move the consequences move down through the college ranks to the top Junior leagues. When we make a move somewhere a Midget or Junior B team is feeling the same consequence. Fortunately those ramifications are being better understood because of the coherent relationship we’re trying to build from the bottom to the top.
How does the USHL work with other American Junior hockey leagues to keep this development system moving forward and providing additional opportunities for kids of all skill levels and ages to continue to improve and play the game?
Prince: We only have 375 positions, and we maintain affiliate lists of players who are competing at the Tier II and Tier III level. Only now are we looking to work with them to create standards that will reflect our standards.
We’ve reached out to the Tier II and Tier III affiliates at the Junior level, and we’ve also reached out to youth hockey. We’re working with the [USA?Hockey] Youth Council more than we ever have before. Wherever we go with our showcases we regularly let folks know that if you’re not USHL capable yet, and still think you can be then these are the places that you need to go.
Paul and I agree that when we came to the scene there were an awful lot of people who were on separate islands in the hockey world and building the bridges has been a challenge, but so far it’s been a very rewarding experience for us.