The US Born Players’ Path to the NHL

If you look at the trends of where NHL players are coming from, the US is getting more and more players in the league every year.  Our country is starting to continually medal at international competitions, have high round NHL draft picks, and at the highest levels of hockey America is consistently making big waves. 

However, I think a lot of people around hockey in the US are doing some soul searching as youth hockey continues to change into more of a business model, along with the NCAA passing legislation that allows major junior players to enroll and play US college hockey.  These are two things that could potentially threaten the momentum USA Hockey has built in developing players ascending to the highest levels of the game.

So I went and did a little project to dive deep into the American born NHL player.

I spent (way too much) time diving into the paths of all American players that played at least one game in the NHL during the 2023-2024 season.  I wanted to know everything – where they came from, what their path looked like in youth, junior, and college hockey, where or if they were drafted, and much more.

I’ve always been a big believer that everyone has a different path to high level hockey.  It’s a sentiment that’s shared by those at the highest levels of the game – but I wanted to see from the data, not just anecdotally, if that was the case.  

I came into this with a mindset that there will be certain trends from the data that will tell informative stories, but ultimately that there’s not one RIGHT WAY to make it that everyone needs to follow.  

So much of the communication around playing at the highest levels of hockey centers around HAVING TO do this or NEEDING TO do that to achieve the dream.  I always hated that because of the FOMO it creates and anecdotally I’ve seen kids make it from so many different types of paths and journeys.  Now, it was time to actually find out.

For this project I used a combination of eliteprospects.com, hockeydb.com, quanthockey.com, chatGPT, a few Google searches, my knowledge of the player pool as a former college coach, and a few conversations with people in the know to try and get to as close to 100% accuracy as I could.  With the information available, I was mostly able to gather figures from around 15-16 years old and above. 

Some players were tricky like Vincent Trocheck, who grew up in his early years in Pittsburgh but his first stats are playing for Little Caesars in Michigan when his family moved there.  Or Jake Sanderson who was born in Montana but his first stats are playing in Calgary in midget hockey.  All in all, there might be a few human or informational errors but I’m confident that the data will be as close to 100% accurate as possible.  

Alright, let’s dive in and learn about American Born hockey players in the NHL.  And to start, I’ll intro what trends and data I wanted to look at.

1. Date of Birth – Is there a “relative age effect” going on with our elite players? It’s a theory that was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell where the top players come from the earliest part of the year.  Why? Because in a birth-year model when you are picking teams, a player born in January is a full year older and more physically mature than a player born in December so kids born in the first months of the year get picked for the top teams at younger ages because of their physical ability.  And when you get picked on the top team at young ages, you get better coaching, and then it all snowballs from there.  Was there a trend here?

2. Age – In this section I wanted to see how old each of the players were in the NHL that year. People like to say that the path to the NHL is a marathon and not a sprint, does this hold true? 

3. Junior Hockey – Here I wanted to focus on a couple of things.  Number one, what junior leagues each player participated in. And number two, how many years of junior hockey did each player participate for. Vechs and I always say on our podcast that typically the biggest jump in hockey is from youth hockey to junior, not junior to college/pro or college to the NHL.  I wanted to see if the data backed that up. 

4. College Hockey – I wanted to see what programs and leagues our NHL players came from.  I also wanted to see how many years they played college hockey to see if that told a story.

5. The NHL Draft – I wanted to look at the numbers from the NHL draft and what round each player was selected in, or if they were even drafted at all.  

6. The AHL – How many of the players spent time in the AHL, and how much time did they spend marinating in the minor leagues?

7. Positions – Does the US do a better job at developing players at specific positions?

8. Where They Grew Up and the Youth Journey – Are there areas around the country that are doing a better job of developing players that go on to the NHL?  I wanted to get a snapshot of the later years of these players’ youth hockey journeys.  There isn’t really any reliable data before midget hockey, and even midget hockey can be a little spotty, but I did my best to again be as accurate as humanly possible.  

There were 288 players that got action in at least one NHL game in the 2023-2024 season.  Let’s dive in!

1. Date of Birth

Here is the breakdown of which month all of the players were born:

January – 38

February – 28

March – 25

April – 21

May – 30

June – 21

July – 32

August – 11

September – 18

October – 21

November – 21

December – 22

Is there a relative-age-effect in hockey? Is it more advantageous to be born at the beginning of the year than at the end of the year in our birth year model?

I think you could look at this and say yeah, it probably does a little bit.  But I wouldn’t say it’s a game changer.  The month with the most players is January by a pretty substantial amount.  But next is July.  Then May, March, and February which are in the first half of the year.  But then you have the last two months of the year next, followed by October being tied with April and June.

A former teammate that is hilarious asked his wife for a “first rounder”.  He wanted a baby born in January as he ascribed to the relative-age-effect mantra.  She begrudgingly agreed, they planned it out, and they actually made it work to have a child with a due date of early January.  

But…baby came early.  And they welcomed a little girl at the end of December.  Pretty funny karma, but at the end of the day, if their baby was looking to play in the NHL, they’d be OK.

2. Age

Here is the breakdown of how old each player was during the season:

19 years old – 5

20 years old – 2

21years old – 13

22 years old – 22

23 years old – 14

24 years old – 22

25 years old – 24

26 years old – 25

27 years old – 25

28 years old – 23

29 years old – 20

30 years old – 20

31 years old – 23

32 years old – 16

33 years old – 8

34 years old – 7

35 years old – 6

36 years old – 5

37 years old – 4

38 years old – 2

39 years old – 2

Looking at the numbers, that’s a nice little bell curve.  Only seven players made the league at 20 and under, and only two of those players played in more than three games (Luke Hughes and Logan Cooley who both played all 82 games). The other young guns were Lane Hutson, Frank Nazar, Cutter Gauthier, Gavin Brindley, and Jackson Blake who signed after their college seasons and got in a game or two.

On the older side of the life cycle, you had Joe Pavelski and Zach Parise at 39 and then Ryan Suter and Alex Goligoski at 38.  Two Wisconsin and two Minnesota boys making an impact at the highest ages, and all four who I played against growing up and in juniors.  The fact that they were still playing at that level with how my body feels right now at 39…all I can say is that’s a pretty incredible feat.

From ages 22-31, it’s pretty even by age with one outlier at 23 years old.  You get a pretty big drop off after 31-32, which can be a sign of the league wanting to go a little younger. With the salary cap, it makes sense as teams need good young players on cheap contracts.

When we get to our college hockey and AHL data, this bell curve will make a lot of sense as well.

3. Junior Hockey

There are a few things I wanted to really dive into as it related to junior hockey. We’ll talk about which junior leagues help produce the most American players and how many years each kid played junior hockey.

But even before that, do you even need to play junior hockey to get to the NHL? 

The answer to that is probably yes.  Of the 288 American players, only 36 of them did not play a full season of junior hockey.  That means roughly 87% of the players played at least one year in juniors.  I think that’s an important stat for parents as many aren’t educated on the junior landscape and how engrained it is in the high-level hockey development path.

Next, The NTDP is typically a hot topic when it comes to player development.  We actually did a Friday Faceoff podcast on the NTDP a while back.  Of the 288 American players in the NHL last year, 99 of them played at the NTDP for at least one year of their junior hockey journey.  That’s 34% or about one-third of the player pool.  How can we interpret that?

I think there are different ways to think about that.  On the plus side, wow 99 players over the span of 19 years.  Our oldest candidate is a 1985 birth year (Ryan Suter) all the way to the youngest at the 2004 birth year (Nazar, Gauthier, Cooley, and Hutson). That’s A LOT of players.  They’re clearly doing something right at the program in their development model there.

On the flip side, two-thirds of the American players in the NHL did NOT come from the NTDP.  The stress that many families feel their 14u and 15O year as it relates to the National Program is wild.  Parents, relax.  Yes it would be great if your son was able to play at the National Program.  But two-thirds of NHL players from USA didn’t.  And there are many out there making the argument that if a player isn’t one of the top players at the NTDP it’s actually best for them to play elsewhere and be the top guy.

In fact, 24 of the 99 kids that played at least a year at the NTDP played for another team in junior hockey as well.  20 of them went and played in the CHL and 4 played another year in the USHL.  Whether it was to get another experience elsewhere or maybe they needed another year of junior hockey in their development curve, one-fourth of NTDP players also played in another spot for junior hockey on top of their time wearing the red, white, and blue.

Next, let’s move to the CHL (major junior in Canada).  Now this number may change drastically in the future with college hockey opening up to the CHL, but it’s interesting to take a look nonetheless.  49 American players (17%) that spent time in the CHL made the NHL, with 30 of those players also playing a combination of US junior and Canadian major junior.  I honestly don’t want to dive into this one too deep because of the new college rule, so let’s keep moving.

The biggest feeder is the USHL.  Of the 288 players to go the NHL, 193 (67%) played in the USHL.  99 of those with the NTDP as mentioned earlier and then another 94 played on other teams in the league.  The USHL will have to do a great job promoting its league with the college/CHL rule in place, but this is a pretty good track record to start from.  

After the USHL, there’s a pretty steep drop off, and many of the Tier 2 junior leagues had players matriculate to the USHL after a season.  A variety of eastern junior leagues had 15 players make the NHL, and of those 15 players 7 went on to play in other leagues while 8 of them played solely in one league (5 in the old EJHL and 3 in the NCDC). The NAHL had 13 players (only 2 played solely in the league), and Tier 2 junior in Canada had 8 players (only 4 played solely in their league).

Now let’s take a look at how many years the players were in junior hockey.

None – 36

1 Year – 52

2 Years – 134

3 Years – 37

4 Years – 24

5 Years – 5

These are pretty telling stats.  200 of the 288 (69%) played multiple years of junior hockey.  Anecdotally, playing junior hockey for multiple years can be good for development. Having played four years of junior hockey myself, I would say that I needed every year of those four to be ready for college hockey.  Each year you gain new perspective, experience, maturity, and an understanding of who you are as a player.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint. 

As we talked about earlier, junior hockey is a major part of the fabric of getting to college or pro hockey.  Hopefully these stats shed light on that.

4. College Hockey

Now let’s dive into the American players and their college hockey journeys.  We’ll go through where they played, when they started, and how long they stayed.  And remember, this is not total players that have gone to the NHL from each league and school.  It’s American born players so it’s not totally representative of each school’s ability to recruit and develop NHL talent as it’s leaving out Canadians and Europeans.

First let’s start off with leagues:

Big 10 – 81

NCHC – 67

Hockey East – 65

ECAC – 26

WCHA – 7

Atlantic Hockey – 1

Both in numbers and in numbers per team, the Big 10 is matriculating the most American talent to the NHL.  Next are the NCHC and Hockey East, followed by the ECAC, and then you have the WCHA and Atlantic Hockey.  

Next, let’s look at which teams are sending the most American players to the NHL.

Minnesota – 25

Michigan – 24

Boston College – 18

Boston University – 16

Minnesota Duluth – 13

Notre Dame – 12

North Dakota, Wisconsin – 11

Miami (Ohio) – 10

Harvard, UMass, St. Cloud – 9

Denver, Northeastern – 8

Western Michigan – 7

Nebraska-Omaha – 6

Ohio St, UNH, Yale – 5

Providence, Michigan St – 4

Union, Michigan Tech, Brown, Mankato – 3

Cornell, Quinnipiac, Arizona St, UMass Lowell – 2

Bowling Green, Colgate, Colorado College, Dartmouth, Maine, Merrimack, Princeton, Sacred Heart, UConn – 1

Next, let’s look at the age of each player when they started their college career.  I used September 1 as the school start date to determine how old each player was when they started their freshman year.

17 years old – 19

18 years old – 125

19 years old – 71

20 years old – 27

21 years old – 2 

For all of the 17-year-olds, each player’s birthday is after September 1 so they turned 18 during the first few months of their freshman year.  Ryan Poehling with a January birthday was the only one who had a birthday prior to September 1, he was a young 17-year-old when he started at St. Cloud. 

These numbers show that 144 (59%) of the players started college hockey at 17-18 and 100 (41%) of the players started between 19-21.  While college hockey as a whole has gotten a lot older with the average age now of a freshman being just over 20 years old, the data of the players going from college to the NHL leaves a lot of room for the young freshman.  

With a split of around 60/40 of younger and older players, and with 100 players starting college 19 or older, college hockey can be a great path for the late developer.  Someone who potentially matures physically later or needs to play multiple years of junior hockey can come into their own in their early twenties playing Division One hockey with that bigger runway.  The players starting college earlier potentially are more physically mature and ready for the rigors of NCAA hockey.  And of the 144 players that started college at either 17 or 18, 78 (54%) of them played for the NTDP. 

Finally, let’s look at how many years each of the players spent playing college hockey.

1 year – 30

2 years – 63

3 years – 90

4 years – 58

This is another really interesting stat for college hockey.  Of the 241 American born players that played college hockey, 211 (88%) played multiple years and 148 (61%) played three or more years.  Stay in school, kids.

5. The NHL Draft

Here are the stats for which round each of the players were drafted.

Round 1 – 85

Round 2 – 50

Round 3 – 26

Round 4 – 23

Round 5 – 20

Round 6 – 17

Round 7 – 10

Undrafted – 57

The highest number of NHL players comes from your studs in the first round.  And then the highest number after that is actually the undrafted players (which makes sense based on volume).  It’s also interesting to see that in the Top 2 rounds there were 135 players drafted, and then in all rounds after that combined you only have 96 players drafted.  

There’s a sentiment out there that if you’re not drafted high, it’s probably better to not get drafted at all.  While it’s AWESOME to get drafted, the numbers show that may be a valid case.  You could argue that getting to choose the team that wants you being undrafted after you develop rather than having to fit into the organizational needs of the club that drafted you multiple years after you get drafted is better.

A few more cool stats from the draft:

– 54 players were drafted in the first round from the NTDP which is pretty great, but only TWO players made the NHL that went undrafted.  Not a great look for a non-stud with the NTDP.

– The top two states for players that got drafted in the first round were Minnesota (17) and Michigan (16).  We’ll get more in depth on where players came from that made the NHL later.

– Of the undrafted players, one stat popped out and that was from Minnesota too.  There were 12 undrafted players from Minnesota out of the 57 from the state that played in the NHL.  And of those players, 11 (92%) of them played all the way through their senior year of high school.  Man, if I am a late bloomer, I hope to God that I grew up in Minnesota.

6. The AHL

It’s very rare that players spend no time playing in the minors on their pro hockey journey.  You have a few studs that jump right in, but a vast majority of players “get cut”.  Here are the stats on the players and how much time they have spent in the AHL:

0-10 games – 61 (9 of which signed after their college season and only played a few NHL games that year)

10-50 games – 42 

51-100 games – 67 

101-150 games– 48 

150-200 games– 29 

201-300 games– 26 

301-400 games– 9 

401-500 games– 5 

500+ games – 1

Now obviously you have to think about age when it comes to these numbers as some players will be suiting up in many more games in the AHL in the future.  With this data coming from the 2023-2024 season, many played this year in the AHL.  But it’s really interesting to see the incredible depth of games that a huge number of NHL players will play in the minors.

I do a lot of team building and motivational speaking and one of the biggest life skills I talk about is resilience.  To make it to the NHL, you have to have resilience.  For some high-end players, sometimes getting sent down in pro hockey is the first time they’ve been cut in their lives.  There are a lot of high-level players that make excuses and can’t find a way to work themselves back up when that happens.  These stats here show that grittiness and a never quit attitude are staples of playing at the highest level of the sport. 

One more interesting stat is when you break down the average number of games down by position.  Here are the averages of games played in the AHL by position:

Forwards: 102

Defensemen: 84

Goalies: 120

The cliché talked about in hockey circles is that defensemen take longer to be ready and goalies take the longest.  These numbers don’t necessarily bear that out as forwards played an average of 102 games while defensemen were only at 84.  Goalies, on the other hand, based on the lack of sheer numbers on a team and the rigors of the position played the most minor league hockey which checks out. 

7. Positions

Here is the breakdown of American born players by position.

Forwards – 173

Defensemen – 95 

Goalies – 20

OK, I’m not a math major by any means but I’m going to try on the fly to do this right.  In the 2023-2024 season which we’re taking these stats from, here were the total  number of players at each position for the entire league.

Forwards – 600

Defensemen – 315

Goalies – 98

Now I’m going to divide how many American born players by the number of TOTAL players to get the percentage of players from each position that came from the US.

Forwards – 173 out of 600 (29%)

Defensemen – 95 out of 315 (30%)

Goalies – 20 out of 98 (20%)

Now we can look at the number of American players as a whole in the NHL.

Americans in the NHL – 288

Total players in the NHL – 1022

Percentage of total players in the NHL from the US – 28%

So here we go…

American % of Forwards – 29%

American % of Defensemen – 30%

American % of Goalies – 20%

American Total % of Players – 28%

We got some work to do in the US, goalies! 

Forwards and defensemen numbers are reflective of the total percentage, but goalies are down.  Again, not a math guy, and this may have to do with a smaller sample size.  But I do know that we are really struggling with the number of goalies in general at all ages in the US.  We are specializing way too early and not creating environments where kids want to choose to play the position.

It’s something we have to work on big time in the US.  I’ve been to a number of USA Hockey affiliate annual meetings as a speaker and a goalie shortage is a HUGE topic at all of them. It’s something I know the leadership at USA Hockey is working hard to try to fix.

8. Where Players Are From and the Youth Hockey Journey

So where did players grow up around the US on their path to the NHL and were there any commonalities or trends that were significant? 

For this section, I went by how USA Hockey divides up its districts with 12 spanning the country.  For each district, I’ll give a little background and provide some insight from what the data showed.

This one was the trickiest of the bunch as there are a number of players that moved during their youth hockey journey.  Particularly kids whose dads were involved in pro hockey or kids that grew up in non-traditional areas.  So with that, here are a few important tidbits I used to get the most accurate and representative numbers as possible.  

For kids that spent time living in multiple districts, if they spent three years or more in that district I counted them for both of the districts that helped develop them.  So for a Vincent Trocheck that grew up in Pittsburgh but moved to Detroit when he was 13 and played three years of hockey in Michigan, he was counted for both MidAm and Michigan.  Another note is I did not count players that switched districts by going to academies or prep schools in this breakdown.  For example, if a player moved from outside of Minnesota to attend Shattuck, that player was not counted in Minnesota’s number.  Preps and academies are recruited schools so I did not think it was appropriate to count those towards the district that the school is located.

Lastly, when looking at these numbers, we should take into consideration the age range of all these players.  Youth hockey looked a lot different 20 years ago when some of these guys were playing youth hockey, as opposed to what it is today.  

First let’s start with the raw data of where the players are from:

Atlantic (DE, Eastern PA, NJ) – 24

Central (NE, WI, IA, KS, MO, IL) – 37

Massachusetts – 30

Michigan – 47 

MidAm (IN, KY, OH, Western PA, WV) – 14 

Minnesota – 58 

New England (CT, ME, NH, RI, VT) – 18 

New York – 25 

Northern Plains (MT, ND, SD, WY) – 4 

Pacific (AK, CA, HI, NV, OR, WA) – 21 

Rocky Mountain (AZ, CO, ID, NM, TX, OK, UT) – 13 

Southeast (NC, SC, MD, VA, DC, AL, AR, GA, LA, MS, TN, FL) – 10 

Canada – 5 

Here are some thoughts on each of the regions:

Minnesota – Much has been talked about recently on how Minnesota is developing the most overall players AND the most that play at the highest levels of hockey.  I wrote about the community model a few weeks ago giving some more perspective on why I think this model is working.  Of the 58 NHL players from Minnesota, 53 played high school hockey, and the only ones that didn’t played at Shattuck.  Minnesota continues to absolutely crush it.

Michigan – There have been a ton of high-level hockey players coming out of Michigan over the years, and they continue to develop high level players being second most on this list.  But there were a few things that stood out as interesting. 

First off, there were more players from other areas that were recruited to play in Michigan as they got into bantam and midget hockey than any other state (outside of preps and academies).  Michigan has kind of been known for that, and their USA Hockey state governing body instituted residency rules in recent years to combat it.  

It was also wild to see how many kids club hopped and played for multiple different organizations on their journey.  The governing body instituted a rule at one point that if a coach left an organization, they could only take so many kids with them to their next organization.  You wonder if this overall number would be higher if more of the focus was on Michigan kids as a whole and not building all-star teams.  

Honeybaked led the way with 14 players, followed by Compuware (11), Victory Honda (8), Belle Tire (7), and Little Caesars (6).

Business interests or over-involved parents seem to affect Michigan maybe more than any other spot in the country.  However even with these challenges, Michigan still has developed the second most to any region in the country.

Massachusetts – Mass is going through a bit of an existential crisis right now, which the Boston Globe detailed in this series of articles on what’s going on with their hockey culture today.  In brief, there’s a real struggle between the different options kids have to play in the state.  Between the full season AAA club model, the town and high school model, or the prep model, families are stressing about which path is the right one for their kid and those town/club decisions are getting younger and younger seemingly every year.  

Of all the kids that came through Mass once they became midget age, 9 played town or catholic high school hockey, 7 played full season AAA, and 21 played prep school.   Some switched and played in multiple of these paths.   

There is a battle between town and club hockey that has taken a toll on Massachusetts’ ability to develop players.  A study of NHL players in 2003 vs. 2023 between Massachusetts and Minnesota bears that out. In 2003 there were 16 more NHL players from Massachusetts over Minnesota playing in the league.  But in 2023, there were 35 more players from Minnesota over Massachusetts playing in the league.  That’s a pretty staggering stat to say the least, with over a 50-player swing in just 20 years.  

As community rinks stayed publicly owned and the community model stayed the prominent path in Minnesota throughout this period, Massachusetts rinks began getting bought up and became profit driven centers with a result being more club, for-profit driven hockey.  With that, the game became less accessible, the talent pyramid shrunk earlier, and you’re seeing the effects big-picture of what happens when business interests replace what was once a community endeavor.

New York –  There’s basically a few regions within the state where a majority of the players came from – the New York City/Long Island area, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Northern New York .  Some players from around the NYC area also doubled into the Atlantic district with the proximity to New Jersey as well.  Long Island is the biggest producer from around this area with the likes of players like Adam Fox and Charlie McAvoy.  Syracuse has developed players like Alex Tuch and Joel Farrabee, Buffalo like Patrick Kane and Alex Iafallo, and Northern New York like Jordan Greenway and Zach Bogosian.

Central – All of the players from this region came from Chicago (16), St. Louis (10), and Wisconsin (10), with the exception of one player from Iowa (Cal Petersen).  And it’s interesting to see how different each of these regions were within the district.  From Chicago, 9 out of the 16 came from the Mission, and their NHL players as a whole mostly came from the AAA full season model.  From St. Louis, all kids played for the AAA Blues and over half played high school hockey as well during their AAA season.  And in Wisconsin, 7 out of 10 played high school hockey supplemented with Team Wisconsin or another form of AAA in their older youth hockey years.

Atlantic – All of the players from the Atlantic district came from New Jersey or Philadelphia, with many of the Northern NJ kids also doubling with New York as written earlier being in close proximity.  And again, it was wild to see how many of the kids played at least a year of high school hockey.  14 of the 24 players (63%) played at least one year of high school hockey in their area while then also playing AAA.  The New Jersey Rockets led the way in developing players in the New Jersey area and the old Team Comcast lead the way in the Philly area.

Pacific – If NHL production is the measuring stick, you probably can’t call California a non-traditional market anymore. There were 15 players with California ties that played in the NHL this year, mostly coming from Southern California.  And of these 15, I was expecting to see most of them leave home to play midget hockey elsewhere, but it actually was pretty split with only 6 of the 15 leaving before junior hockey. Other states represented were Washington (4), Oregon (Jacob MacDonald), and Alaska (Jeremy Swayman).

New England – The states represented here were Connecticut (9), followed by a few players from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine.  Most of the players in this region (11 out of 18) went to prep school out east and three chose to go to Shattuck.

MidAm – I was actually surprised to see so few players from MidAm in the NHL with Pittsburgh (6), Columbus (5), and Cleveland (2), three good hockey towns, all a part of the district.  With Columbus being a newer NHL town and the leadership they have with their youth club I think this will only grow.  The Pittsburgh players in the NHL are mostly on the older side, with four being 30+ and Logan Cooley as the lone young buck at 19. I have to think that with their leadership this number will grow in the future too.

Rocky Mountain – You have to start this district talking about Auston Matthews being the number one overall draft pick and an absolute superstar coming from Arizona.  You have to think that Matthews’ success paved the way for his current linemate in Toronto who is also an Arizona kid in Matthew Knies.  The Colorado Thunderbirds had a spree of kids from the 1994-1997 birth years with 6 players making the NHL, no small accomplishment.  And then in Texas, you had four players come through the system but all spent time in other regions as well.

Southeast – The southeast was represented by Florida (5) and the DC area (3), along with one from Alabama (Nic Dowd) and North Carolina (Kyle MacLean while his dad was coaching with the Hurricanes).  Selects Academy at South Kent in Connecticut did really well in DC and Florida as four of the 10 players from this district played prep school there.  While the numbers aren’t big as of now, with the success of the Lightning and Panthers recently there may be a bigger wave coming in the future.

Northern Plains – The Northern Plains only had 4 players from this district, 2 from North Dakota, one from South Dakota, and one Montana.  Jake Sanderson is the player from Montana but he moved up to Calgary as his dad (Geoff) who played a long time in the NHL is from Alberta.  The North Dakota players are from Minot (Mason Morelli) and Fargo (Tyler Kleven) and the South Dakota player is from Sioux Falls (Walker Duehr).

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I want to be as concise as humanly possible with my thoughts and reflections after digging in for this project.  I could probably talk for hours about what came up through the data along with what I’ve come to understand about our country’s whole landscape with the work that I do with youth organizations and governing bodies all over the US.

I’ll break it down into three different thoughts – and they all are centered around the fact that there are many different paths to high level hockey.

1. Where there’s a will, there’s a way

How bad do you want it? And how much are you willing to commit yourself to realizing your dream? 

I just laid out some perspective and information through this project that highlights the fact that there are many different paths to get there.  There are paths for the early developer and ones for the late developer – remember 57 players made the NHL that went undrafted and over 60% of college players that made it played 3 or 4 years of college).  

There’s a path whether you’re from Minnesota or Florida.  There’s a path if you’re a sure-fire player that goes right to the NHL or if you have to grind it out playing hundreds of games in the AHL.

Making it to the NHL is incredibly difficult no matter how much talent you’ve been blessed with.  At 5’4” it was my dream until the day I retired, and although I was a long shot to say the least and I didn’t achieve the dream – what I learned in the journey trying to get there made me the person I am today.  Having lofty dreams is good for the soul, and throwing myself fully and whole-heartedly into that dream taught me the hard lessons that make me successful today.

Even if it doesn’t work out totally like you dreamed, if you shoot for the moon eventually you’ll land upon the stars.

2. It’s all about people and environment

It’s always been my thought that you can achieve your dreams in this game, or at least reach your fullest potential, when you are in an environment where you are challenged, you are continuously growing your love for the game, and have consistently great coaching.  Is it easier to “make it” in some places over others?  Sure.  But at the end of the day when I look at this project, again, I see so many different paths to getting there. And that’s really awesome.  

Environment is everything.  So much talk and debate goes to which model of youth hockey is best.  But at the end of the day, there are great people who care in the professional model of youth hockey and also in the community model.  Just like there are crappy people who don’t care in both the professional and community models as well.  If you surround a kid with competent people who care about them as players and people, who challenge them to grow, I don’t care where you’re from or what model that area has, that kid is going to have a better shot at “making it” than someone who doesn’t have those people around them.

Create the right environments and you’ll get more people to choose the sport.  That’s why I think Minnesota is still and will continue to be the best at developing elite talent.  “As many as possible, for as long as possible, in the best environments possible” is an unofficial slogan that USA Hockey uses and that’s what the community model represents.  

The overall number of male youth hockey players continues to grow in Minnesota, while in the other traditional markets like Massachusetts, Detroit, and Chicago, with the more professional model, the numbers are declining.  

The more professional and business-centered the youth hockey environment becomes…

The more expensive it gets, the more pressure gets put on everyone involved, and the earlier the talent pyramid narrows. And when those become part of the environment, the less athletes and families will choose or continue to play the sport, leading to less potential elite players in the end.

So while I believe that the model is part of the equation, the truth is you can’t replicate the same model everywhere and it’s secondary to people and environment.  You can build a community atmosphere in a for-profit club, and you can have dissension and dysfunction in a town or community club just as well.

When it comes to the different youth hockey models, at the older levels of youth hockey you can argue forever about what’s more beneficial – full season AAA or some sort of non-academy split or combination with high school hockey.  Truth is, 140 of the 288 players from this project played at least one year of some sort of high school or split season hockey from 15-18 years old.  The other half didn’t and played only full-season AAA.

Whether it be the elite league and the high school season in Minnesota, split season prep hockey in New England and Massachusetts, before and after AAA and town hockey in Wisconsin or central New York, or combined AAA and high school hockey in St. Louis and New Jersey where kids are playing both – that’s almost half of the players that made the NHL that had some sort of combination of AAA and playing for your (non-academy) school for at least one year.  And again, the other half didn’t.

Community helps create high level players. Best-on-Best helps create high level players. But most importantly, environment and people create high level players.

3. Blaze Your Trail

There were 288 unique stories told of US born players making the NHL in the 2023-2024 season.  Some more similar than others, but each player had different high and low points, different timing, and different challenges they had to overcome on their journey. 

We would all love to grow up in the Hughes family where playing high level hockey is almost a rite of passage. But chances are if you’re a kid reading this, your path will be more like a Grant Hutton who played three years of junior hockey, four years of college hockey, and 218 games in the AHL.  Or a Sam Malinski who started in the NAHL, went undrafted, started at 20 and played four years of college, but then became a regular for the Colorado Avalanche.

Create your own path.  More than likely it’s going to be the long and hard one. But if you’ve been blessed with a little bit of talent, you surround yourself with the best people, you absolutely love the game, and you have an insatiable hunger to get better – you’re not only going to give yourself the best shot to achieve your dreams, but the person you’ll become along the journey is one you can look at the mirror at the end of the night and feel at peace with what you see. And whether you make it or not…you’ll be a success.