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The Star Trib's Dean Spiros had an interesting article about players leaving early. There's some interesting quotes in there about possible rule changes.

Minnesota coach Don Lucia advocates a mid-July signing deadline for college players in the NHL. That's not a terrible idea since it would give time to teams that lose a player to get another player enrolled into school.

The other rule change that was mentioned is one I hate. It was proposed that any player that joins a college team wouldn't be able to sign a pro contract for two years. That move would hurt college hockey a lot more than it would help. A lot of top talent would end up just skipping college hockey instead of being forced to stay in college for two seasons. I'd rather watch kids like Cam Fowler, and Matt Duchene, and Kenny Ryan play at least one year of college hockey as opposed to just hearing about them in the OHL.

DJ Powers writes a feature on Dion Knelsen. It sounds like it was a nice recruiting job by the Alaska staff to get this kid away from the WHL.

Late January is also NCAA prospect update time at Hockey's Future. You can read prospect updates for New Jersey, New York Islanders, St. Louis, Boston, and Montreal

Elliot Olshansky posts his Hobey Watch ballot.

INCH's Hobey Tracker. I thought I was all cool because I put out some emails so I could write an article about Mike Santorelli since nobody else had, but wasn't able to get it done and now I'm way behind the curve. Such is life.

Dave Hakstol and Don Lucia were both reportedly at tonight's Roseau HS-Moorhead HS game. Moorhead won again quite easily and after winning both meetings, should be the big favorite heading into the Section 8AA tournament.

The Blake School took on Shattuck-St. Mary's tonight and lost 9-0, and Blake only reportedly had 6 shots on goal. Shattuck will face a much stiffer high school test on Saturday when they take on Holy Angels.

Brad Schlossman has an interesting take on what this weekend's series between Minnesota and North Dakota could have looked like. Apparently Brady Murray made a nice choice by moving on, since he would have been a third-liner at North Dakota this year.

Former St. Cloud State Husky Joe Motzko scored his first NHL goal on January 16th for Columbus.(via the St. Cloud Times' Kevin Allenspach)

The USHL is doing something new where they profile individual colleges. Here's a profile of Ohio State. What I found interesting was that they failed to mention the whole "Literacy Optional" thing at OSU. They did mention that it's a myth that students will face crowded classrooms, especially if they sign up for classes with a lot of football players in it. They also included this:

Buildings on campus believed to be haunted are: Bricker, Drackett, Hopkins, Orton and Pomerene Halls.

Are they trying to recruit hockey players or the Ghost Busters?

Vermont's contains zero mentions of the word 'syrup'. I find that shocking.

Here's an article on prospects Bjorn Krupp and Michael Latta.

Here's an article on prospects Kyle Palmieri and Brett Cook. I've seen Palmieri play and was very impressed, but it sounds like he wants to stay in the east.

I should give USHL Central Scouting credit for at least being aggressive in trying to steer kids towards the USHL/NCAA route for development.

DU recruit Tyler Bozak has run away with the BCHL scoring race with 97 points so far this season. Second place is Michigan Tech recruit Casey Pierro-Zabotel with 78 points.