Monday, April 14, 2008

Helpful Links

Here are a couple helpful links that may be educational for some players and parents.

The NCAA has released their college hockey promotional web site called playcollegehockey.com.

There's also a new blog with a ton of information called Navigating Junior Hockey.

16 comments:

Matt said...

Why no mention of Division III on the site? What about all the ads about going pro in something other than your sport? Maybe they should start a site called KeepPlayingCollegeHockey.com to address all the players leaving early for the NHL? Very disappointing.

Chris said...

My understanding was that the purpose of the site was to inform younger players of their options in terms of high-level hockey before they throw away their college eligibility by signing with a major junior team.

So far as I know, Divsion III doesn't have any of those issues of competing with major junior teams.

Anonymous said...

Wow. They are going to the Turow school of fact finding.

"Of the 213 players drafted in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft, 75 of the draft picks played college or in the leagues that feed college hockey i.e.; USHL, U.S. high school, tier II Canadian junior leagues etc. A virtual tie with 78 players selected from all three Canadian Major Junior leagues combined in that same draft."

"Professional Hockey: As stated in "The Facts", a hockey player taking the college hockey route to the NHL is just as likely to be selected in the NHL draft as a player in Canadian major junior."

There are approx 58 CHL teams. That is well over one player per team.

How many teams are in the sample below? Approx 500.

Odds aren't the same.

"75 of the draft picks played college or in the leagues that feed college hockey i.e.; USHL, U.S. high school, tier II Canadian junior leagues etc."

Also, why not use 2007 Numbers. 96 CHL players drafted, 35 from Europe, which leaves only 76 for the NCAA...etc.

Or 2005 where the numbers are 108 / 72 in favour of the CHL.

Anonymous said...

Who authors the "Navigating Junior Hockey Blog"? Good stuff. Ask them to post an article about "how to pay for Midget Major" if you don't get picked up by the USHL, NTDP, or NAHL in your age 16-17 year. That would be really helpful, to (seriously- not being sarcastic).

Anonymous said...

80% Grad rate?? Come on, that goes against the numbers that the NCAA publishes.

Anonymous said...

GRADUATION SUCCESS RATE
These figures were obtained from each institution. The graduation success rate (GSR) adds to the first-time
freshmen, those students who entered mid-year, as well as student-athletes who transferred into an institution. In
addition, the GSR will subtract students from the entering cohort those who are considered allowable exclusions
(those who either die or become permanently disabled, those who leave the school to join the armed forces, foreign
services or attend a church mission), as well as those who would have been academically eligible to compete had
they returned to your institution.


SO IF A PLAYER LEAVES SCHOOL(TURNS PRO) IS STILL IS FIGURED INTO THE GRAD RATE, IF HE COULD HAVE CONTINUED WITH HIS STUDIES.

Playing a little hard and fast with the numbers maybe?

Anonymous said...

The NCAA should feel ashamed. As an NCAA alum even I will say that this new website is terribly misguided in its use of homemade facts.

Anonymous said...

If you ever wanted to be misguided you should look at all the bs progranda the CHL has published the last five years. I could care less one league or another but the CHL still wins the award on skewing the facts.

Anonymous said...

What I find terribly amusing (well I find a lot about the NCAA downright funny) is how the college hockey proponents just gush over the fact that they play so few games and have such a high practice to game ratio when all of college hockey's maid feeder play twice as many games as they do!

I once mentioned this to some D-1 recruiters and they literally tripped over themselves trying to paint Junior hockey as a business that exploits players for profit (they were talking about the USHL here!) but when I calmly retorted back about the NTDP, who never makes a lick of money and plays 70-80 games in a season, the recruiters were speechless.

The reality is that more and more high end American players are seriously starting to consider the CHL route and this has the NCAA very very worried. Putting out cheap websites such as this will not help their cause any......no matter though becasue I've heard from even D-1 coaches that CHL players will become elligible within the next two seasons.....funny how are pal Chris never digs into that story though!

Anonymous said...

Ironic that Kyle Okposo (among others) skates across the top banner on the "Play college hockey" website

Anonymous said...

Can you provide any examples of the CHL skewing facts?

For example, the GSR, as the previous poster indicated, does not count a player who leaves to play pro as a 'fail', so long as he was eligible to continue on in school.

"The GSR also allows institutions to subtract student-athletes who leave their institutions prior to graduation as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained."

Do you think the NCAA is using the exact same formula when the come up with this 20% CHL rate??

Also, I still get a kick out of the comparison of NCAA graduation rates to CHL graduation rates.

NCAA players are already in University. Nice of them to inform us that people who are in University have a higher graduation rate than those who aren't.

I have no problem with them pushing their product. For the most part it is a good product. That being said, why do they feel they have to a) bash the opposition b) skew numbers to come to conclusions that just aren't true.

The fact is that over the past three years 282 players have been drafted to the NHL from the CHL, and 223 from the NCAA.

Is the NCAA being honest with kids, by citing the one close year, to tell them their chances are just as good by not playing in the CHL?

Have you have seen Turow's study, which came to those 80/20 numbers that the NCAA seems happy to use?

Any College or University would be thoroughly embarassed at the thoroughness, data collection, and assumptions.

Anonymous said...

The website is registered to Joe Bertagna.

Anyone know what his degree from Harvard was in?

Anonymous said...

Last year Bruce McLeod noted in his end of the year Conference Call that Hockey Canada was going to be explicitly encouraging its players to remain in Canada and not play in the US College system. He noted that NCAA would look for ways to continue getting high end hockey talent. This website is certainly one of the things that came out of that.

Not saying its the answer, but its why it is here.

The numbers are actually about as close as indicated. Cannot find the blog link but there was an in depth article on this last year by a Canadian author and major junior hockey was only about 5 or so percentage points ahead with respect to percentages of a roster put into the NHL.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous @ 8:21

"funny how are pal Chris never digs into that story though!"

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/9504/motivator6956986cz9.jpg

A college education is a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Who gives a crap?? This stuff is a marketing tool. Nothing more. It should be read and taken with a grain of salt. There's a lot of BS out there in cyberspace. Everyone skews the facts, whether it's the NCAA or CHL. There are a lot of jackasses out there printing misleading information.

Hockey players, like any other consumer, need to do their due diligence before making a choice. If they belive everything they read on the web they are too dumb for college anyway.

Anonymous said...

"Last year Bruce McLeod noted in his end of the year Conference Call that Hockey Canada was going to be explicitly encouraging its players to remain in Canada and not play in the US College system."

It did. About three years ago, the director of hockey canada actually changed the rules to deter Canadiens from playing in the U.S. This was in fear that they were going to lose more top Canadiens like Toews, Turris, Zajac, Bradford, etc. to the U.S.