USA Hockey Magazine talks parity in college hockey

Submitted by justingoblue on

Full disclaimer: the source (a magazine geared towards youth hockey) isn't catering to hardcore college hockey fans. Still, it's a quick read with some interesting numbers and a couple quotes, including Yale HC Keith Allain's take on winning without being able to recruit at a top level that won't be in this OP.

This was pretty surprising to me:

In the past seven years, there have been 28 spots up for grabs in the Frozen Four and 20 different programs have filled them.

College Hockey, Inc's executive director Mike Snee weighed in on parity from a 20,000 foot level:

The number of young people in the U.S. that play hockey has more than doubled in the past 25 years, while the number of schools offering D-I Men’s hockey has grown only slightly in that time, so the player pool is being spread out over more programs.

A lot of these numbers illustrate Michigan's recent troubles, although other blue bloods are doing just fine. A growing American hockey population makes the sport less Michigan-centric, but hopefully M can mitigate that with the USNTDP playing school in Ann Arbor and playing hockey in Plymouth.

ThadMattasagoblin

July 23rd, 2015 at 6:33 PM ^

We need Mel Pearson like we needed Harbaugh. I don't want to hire some random coach and go into the wilderness like Michigan football did for 7 years. Use that Nike money to get our hockey harbaugh.

gwkrlghl

July 23rd, 2015 at 9:38 PM ^

Aside from the obvious advantages of Michigan's program vs. Tech's, Mel and his family lived in Ann Arbor for basically the same amount of time as he's spent in Houghton.

Do we think it took 20 years for Tech to realize Mel could be the coach? Mel sure seems to like Ann Arbor

Plus Tech is basically the only Michigan school who will still play Michigan non-conference. I'm sure that has everything to do with Mel

ThadMattasagoblin

July 23rd, 2015 at 10:20 PM ^

Even if he didn't really want to move back, Michigan could double what he makes at Tech easily and we recruit better players and are a bigger name. Michigan is 1st in hockey national championships and 2nd in all time wins. Then again he may want to stay at his alma mater and I'm just like an NFL fan during the Harbaugh process.

gwkrlghl

July 23rd, 2015 at 8:35 PM ^

As stupid as the last 3 years have been, we've been within sniffing distance of the tournament all 3 seasons. The equivalent of Lloyd Carr going 7-5/8-4 with great teams - real frustrating, but not awful.

The wildnerness is getting the wrong guy and becoming actually bad. Like following the path MSU has gone. Given basketball's success, it won't take a great deal for Yost to be abandoned if the wheels start to fall off for real

kurpit

July 23rd, 2015 at 9:51 PM ^

There are 59 D1 teams. 16 get into the tournament. That's 27% so a comparable would be finishing ranked in the top 34 for football (27% of the total 128 football teams). There was one year in Carr's tenure that they didn't finished in the top 25. Michigan hockey has basically been playing the equivalent of Carr's worst year for the last 3 years.

gwkrlghl

July 23rd, 2015 at 7:06 PM ^

Yale, Quinnipiac, Providence, etc. all making big time noise.

Michigan's problems are all our own. We've had the talent to win the title in every year for the last 25-30, the last 3 are no exception. I hope Mel is behind the bench next year

WCHBlog

July 23rd, 2015 at 7:35 PM ^

It mostly has to do with their stupid playoff system. It's not like Providence was any good last year; they weren't in the top 25% of college hockey at the end of the regular season. But it's a one-and-done format and about 75-80% of the games are decided by the team that scores first. The postseason has way more to do with who gets a few lucky bounces than how good a team is.

justingoblue

July 23rd, 2015 at 8:44 PM ^

That's why seeing the tournament numbers and Frozen Four numbers were more surprising to me than having "new" programs winning titles.

Yale winning a title is probably a historical outlier, but moving to an era where 56% of all graduating seniors played in at least one tournament could suggest more structural change than a few lucky bounces can account for. I don't know what that number has been in the past, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a significant increase from the eighties and ninties.

gwkrlghl

July 24th, 2015 at 6:40 AM ^

basketball games are normally 50+ points so teams are scoring constantly and the flukiness of various plays tends to even itself out

hockey normally sees less than 5-6 goals total so a random puck bounce makes an enormous difference and that's why playing a series makes a lot more sense for hockey than basketball

Playing The Field

July 24th, 2015 at 10:58 AM ^

I've been thinking about this for a while and almost emailed Brian at one point after one of his hockey related blogs. 

A simple theory as to why there is so much parity in college hockey to me is becuase all the national brand schools seem to recruit young blue chip prospects. A lot of these kids are getting offered at 16/17 years old becuase they are the most talented kids at their age group. So naturally the big national brand schools are targeting these kids becuase they have the cache and resources to get them. Meanwhile the less known schools are taking older kids out of Juniors who may have been overlooked by the big name schools when they were 16/17 years old.

With the blue chip prospects two things happen: either they are as good as advertised and only stay one or two years, or by the time they get to college they aren't as good as once thought and just become average college players. Either way the majority of the big national branded schools are playing with a much younger team while the lesser branded schools are getting kids at 19/20 years old as freshmen and staying all four years. The talent gap between the 18 year old blue chip and the older freshman is not that great of a difference and with the older freshmen typically staying all four years their overall strength and experience by the time they are seniors is the difference in winning. Hence why you are seeing teams like Union, Ferris, Providence, Umass Lowell, Quinipiac....ect having success.

My theory is that the Michigan's and other big name schools have to decide what's more important, winning or moving guys on to the NHL. To me it's an easy decision, winning should be their priority. Why not take the recruiting approach of these lesser know schools, the big name schools would win almost every recruiting battle. But as it is now, the big name schools are not recruiting the same kids as the lesser named schools.

alnike

July 24th, 2015 at 12:11 PM ^

A few things that have obviously impacted Michigan recently.

-Goaltending - not sure how to quantify this weakness relative to team defensive play.  Since tiny Hunwick graduated, goalie play has declined.  The 2012-13 team (Trouba's year) had lots of issues with goalie play and leadership, that was not a quality tournament type team as it was only a matter of time before all of these players who are recruited as 15/16 year olds did not develop and play dropped off.

 

The 2013-14 team should have made the tournament as a 3 or 4 seed, but gagged repeatedly against Penn State.  This team had several quality non-conference wins, a lot of close one-goal wins early in the season and decent goalie play from Nagelvoort.

The 2014-15 team had its offensive strengths and some underachieving players and did not play well enough to be a tournament team. 

College hockey, for the past 5 years or so, has lost about 30 players each summer to the NHL (OHL too) contracts and the top end of the talent pool is not deep enough to sustain high end competition.   College hockey no longer attracts the top Canadian talents like it did in the 1990's/2000's with players like Comrie, Heatley, Tambellini, Cammalleri and Toews. 

With more players turning pro and early recruits showing variability in their development, some of the WCHA/ECAC schools take the approach to sit back and grab the late developers at 20 and each year you get a couple 23-25 year old senior laden teams who have a turn in the cycle to make an impact. 

While some early recruits have panned out, this trend started about 10 years ago and guys like David Wohlberg, Robbie Czarnik and many others did not show much progression in their careers.