As I watched the 2023 Mass. Hockey Festival in May, I was struck with a question that continued popping into my head.
How many of these players actually go on to play college hockey?
The event, held at New England Sports Center and Lovell Arena, was full of college coaches at Division 1 and Division 3 levels. If you were blindfolded around one of the games and told to walk in a particular direction, you would've bumped into a college coach within 10 seconds.
Over the last two weeks, I took a deep dive into all of the players who participated in the Final 40/All-Star Games at the festival since 2013, as well as the national camp selections. That included the 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 birth years.
The 2005s and 2006s are way too early in the college process to add to the data and the 2007s and 2008s haven't even started.
That doesn't mean these stats don't matter for them and future birth years. The last seven birth years give us a good idea of the number of college hockey recruits that will come from the next seven.
