Ohio State picked up two commitments from players in Ontario today. The first is Cornwall forward Ian Boots. He's a gritty player with very nice scoring ability.
The second player is one for the future. Forward Kelly Geoffrey of the Markham Midget Waxers also committed to the Buckeyes for the 2008 season. Geoffrey is pretty small, but also a talented playmaker. What's interesting is that Goeffrey is probably only the fourth best player on his midget team.
The other three players; Cody Hodgson, Michael del Zotto, and Steve Stamkos are considered to be three of the best players in Ontario for their age group. All three are expected to be very high picks in the OHL Draft this summer. Perhaps it's Canadian homerism, but I've seen Hodgson ranked ahead of US propsects like Phil McRae and A.J. Jenks. It's probably pretty unlikely that any of the three will ever end up playing college hockey, and probably rightfully so. They're probably better off going straight to the OHL than playing than spending two more years playing in a weaker junior league. One interesting caveat to this story is that Michigan recruiting guru Bob Miller hints at the fact that Hodgson may be interested in playing in the NCAA. That certainly would be interesting. If this were after the OHL draft, I'd write it off to a negotiating ploy to get a better deal with whichever team drafted him. Since it's before the draft, and toying with the NCAA would only hurt his draft stock, the story is a little more interesting to me, but I'd still be very surprised if he ever played college hockey.
Also, news of the players selected to the NTDP for next season is slowly starting to leak out. Chris Heisenberg has some of the players that agreed to play there up on his site. It had been reported that Jenks, Czarnik, Wohlberg, Florek, and Montpetit had all agreed to spots on the team before the tryout. Clemente was pretty much a lock to get one of the goal spots too. Mike Cichy and Joey Marciano are two guys that I had heard a lot of good things about and are listed on the team. I'll plead ignorance on Lorenz, Hegarty, Bogosian, and Corkum. Nick Pryor is also listed as being on the team. So go ahead anonymous Gopher fans. Start taking your shots at him now.
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6 comments:
how can michigan commit to hodgson? They have already over commited to 2008(forward) commits.
Technically you're right that they'll just be replacing Porter and Kolarik at forward, but with the way college hockey is right now, you can't project that far in the future.
It's probably likely that Andrew Cogliano's scholarship will be available by that time. It's been rumored that Zac MacVoy won't be staying at Michigan either. Brandon Naurato is another name that is rumored to be leaving, and he had at least a little bit of scholarship money.
Basically I think that if a player of Hodgson's caliber wanted to come to Michigan, Michigan would be able to find room for him. It's probably a good idea that they aren't basing their class around him though because I still think there's about a 1% chance of that happening.
What's wrong with Nick Pryor? He's a good player for WI to get an early verbal from. How did you manage to tie Gopher fans in that one??
Pryor has taken more than his fair share of shots here from Gopher fans who said he was the most overrated recruit ever after he chose to go to Wisconsin.
How can "Andrew Cogliano's scholarship will be available by 2008".
Does the NCAA not take the scholarship away if the player goes pro?
So if Michigan stays over booked for 2008, what happens then? What happens to the 2007 and 2008 verbal commits?
2007:
Rust
Caporusso
Palushaj
Pacioretty
2008:
Jenks
Czarnik
Wohlberg
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