College Hockey Inc.
HWAA: Our State-By-State MVPs

photo

USA Hockey's fifth Hockey Weekend Across America is Feb. 17-19, and is designed to celebrate the sport and provide opportunities for people who haven't been exposed to it.

Events include "Wear Your Favorite Hockey Jersey Day" on Friday and nationwide opportunities on Saturday to try hockey for free. For more information, visit hockeyweekendacrossamerica.com.

NBC will present "Hockey Day in America" on Sunday, featuring three NHL games and special features about the sport at various levels around the country, including looks at the USA Hockey National Team Development Program and the Warroad-Roseau Minnesota high school hockey rivalry.

In the spirit of celebrating hockey across all corners of the U.S., we thought we'd take a look at the top contributors in Division I men's hockey from each state this year. In all, 40 states plus the District of Columbia are represented on Division I rosters, from Minnesota (173 players) to Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah (1 each).

State-By-State MVPs

As you can imagine, picking the one "best" player from some of these states was a huge challenge. We based the decisions on this year's performance and gave an edge to those players whose teams have played well.

More noteworthy than the individual selections is the variety of states represented among the top players. You could easily make an "All-America" team that included Michigan (Shawn Hunwick), Maine (Brian Dumoulin), Connecticut (Drew MacKenzie), Minnesota (Jack Connolly), Texas (Austin Smith) and California (Matt White). A half dozen other states, like Colorado (Drew Shore) and New York (Mark Zengerle) would have good arguments to be included.

Without further ado, our selections: