As the clock hit 0:00, jubilant players wearing the red, white and blue of Mount Saint Charles surged toward their goaltender to celebrate a championship. It’s a familiar scene in New England, reminiscent of the 26 straight Rhode Island state crowns Mount Saint Charles won under late coach Bill Belisle.
Only this wasn’t the Rhode Island Interscholastic League playoffs. This was a USA Hockey Tier 1 18-under national championship won by Mount Saint Charles’ academy team in Rochester, Mich., as the nation’s best full-season Midget squad.
Welcome to the new and ever-more-crowded world of elite boys hockey in New England.
Where once prep schools were the undisputed top producers of area talent to the NCAA and pro hockey ranks, academies — essentially hockey factories that offer schooling and housing along with full-season hockey development — like Mount Saint Charles, South Kent Selects and other burgeoning programs are taking bigger shares of the player pools.
Academy hockey: 'It’s all-encompassing'
For decades, the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) has been the premier local proving ground. Those who had dreams of skating for a Hockey East team or in the NHL would test themselves there.
Academy hockey first became popular over a quarter-century ago in Minnesota at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, which is now one of the most dominant teams in the country. New England prep school hockey is still an elite training ground for players from around North America, but it faces a challenge now from a growing number of local academies who just might force the prep schools — since they are all recruiting the same athletes — to adapt to newer models.
A hockey academy plunges a player who might otherwise be in a more traditional high school or prep school into an immersive hockey environment. They do more skating and skills work, more off-ice conditioning with a longer, more challenging schedule that runs from fall through spring. And they develop with the same roster of players throughout the year. Factor in academics and top-end facilities, and it’s a combination that has flourished around the country. Now it has taken root in New England.
Devin Rask and Matt Plante are the program directors of the academy teams at Mount St. Charles in Woonsocket, R.I., and before that they ran Connecticut Selects Academy at South Kent School in Kent, Conn. A decade ago, they walked away from more stable positions in college and junior hockey to get the South Kent academy off the ground.
“The more you thought about it, the more you realized this could work there,” Plante said. “We had a lot of good players and kids from non-traditional markets back then. At the time, they were dealing with a lot of commutes, a lot of missed school, teachers not understanding why they were missing school because of their hockey commitments. They’re dealing with only getting on the ice two to three times per week. Now, they could come to a place where they live at school, the rink is down the hill, they can walk to everything, and they get everything they need six or even seven days a week. It’s all-encompassing.”
The all-in-one approach offered by Mount St. Charles and South Kent can be even more attractive because those academies are attached to traditional schools. Players have an easier time balancing academics and hockey development. South Kent and Mount St. Charles travel more — sometimes across the country — than NEPSAC schools. So administrators streamline their courses, schedules and school requirements to fit the players’ needs. Players and parents are not left to negotiate absences or missed assignments with teachers as they would in a more traditional public or private school environment.
A typical non-game day at an academy could involve early morning on-ice skills work and off-ice conditioning, then attend classes. Back to practice in the early afternoon before returning to the classroom and study halls in the evening, with proper nutrition and meals scheduled throughout. Also, having the players live, practice and develop together for an entire year has helped make the academy model so appealing for some.
Plante said the buy-in from Mount St. Charles to the all-in academy model was a key factor for him. “We figured out pretty quickly how committed the school was on their end,” Plante said, “and that’s what blew us away — their commitment to work together to provide the resources we needed.”
When Plante and Rask moved to Mount St. Charles, South Kent installed as its director of hockey operations Jamie Russell, a former Division 1 college coach at Michigan Tech with almost three decades of experience coaching.
“I really love the aspect of developing players the way we do at South Kent,” Russell said. “The team practices, the skills sessions, we have a full-time strength and conditioning coach.”
More academies are coming. Boston Hockey Academy partnered with Cambridge, Mass.-based Matignon High School, a once-dominant high school hockey power, to establish its program. Lovell Academy is building a 117,000-square foot arena with three NHL-regulation ice sheets in Rockland, Mass., that will be on a campus with academic and living/support spaces.
So NEPSAC has a competitor, and it seems clear it should find innovative ways to mitigate talent drain. That’s especially true if you listen to how Russell describes his program.
“I really see our role at South Kent as, we’re a prep school,” he said. “To me, we’re preparing kids for life after South Kent. Obviously, athletically and on the ice, but also in the classroom and as a person.”
Prep school model faces increasing challenges
If academy hockey is new and shiny in New England, prep school hockey is the old reliable.
NEPSAC schools offer high-level academics, top-notch facilities in most cases and the track record as a primary feeder to the NCAA Division 1 and Division 3 schools, the Ivy League and the professional ranks. So even if the prep school path is threatened by academy hockey, it will continue to work well for many players not only because of its tradition but also its record of achievement as an incubator of elite hockey talent.
“Players have a lot more options now than they did five, 10, 20 years ago,” said Dave Ries, head coach at Brooks School. “What I think we provide is a structured environment that more closely mirrors college hockey than almost anything out there. We’ve been creative with ways that we can allow our players to develop while not sacrificing and missing school and missing social events and things like that.
“A lot of schools have put their ice in earlier than they used to, which allows their kids to skate on campus during the fall around their other commitments. Obviously, the facilities we offer are second to none, and I think the biggest thing for the prep schools is — in season, our travel is so minimal compared to the other options. Almost every night, our kids are sleeping in their own beds. They are very rarely missing classes because of athletic commitments. That allows our kids to get a great education while also pursuing their athletics at a very high level.”
But with more options available, prep schools can no longer emphasize academics as much to convince high-end hockey talent to commit. There has to be more priority on hockey, and most experts agree that keeping teams together to live, train and compete together against top-level competition is the best way for a prospect to develop a chance to reach the highest levels of the sport. That matters a great deal more to players and parents, especially with a proven, if highly exclusive, model for this in place with the U.S. National Team Development Program.
Academies also have a head start on recruiting elite players before prep schools. At one point a top prospect like James Hagens of Hauppauge, N.Y., who won’t turn 16 until November, would have been a lock for a top NEPSAC team. But he spent the last several years with the Mount St. Charles academy and will now head to the U.S. NTDP.
Prep schools can’t offer as many games as full-season Midget teams, which can play 70 games or more per year. NEPSAC schools top out at about 30-40 games during a season that runs roughly from Thanksgiving to the beginning of March. So prep schools started allowing players to compete on split-season teams in the fall and spring — while full-season teams are also playing.
A challenge for prep coaches, however, is getting the most out of players who are scattered across myriad split-season rosters. Schedules often overlap between split-season teams and the start of team events for the NEPSAC season.
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These friction points could lead to prep schools following South Kent’s lead by adopting academy models of their own. As other elite hockey development options arise, the prep schools must seek innovative solutions.
One idea is for prep schools to commission their own quasi-varsity split-season teams that would compete in fall league play and allow players to develop together across more of the calendar. NEPSAC rules would prevent its head coaches from leading those teams, but prep schools could add a secondary staff. This past season, for example, Cushing Academy fielded the Central Mass. Penguins fall team, which consisted of most of their varsity team but was not coached by Cushing’s Paul Pearl.
There could be an effort to create a unified fall league with similar prep-heavy rosters that would still offer a competitive schedule and even meet the qualifications for the USA Hockey national-bound championship track, as the split-season fall teams do.
More competition for top talent
University of Maine head coach Ben Barr was a member of Shattuck-St.Mary’s first USA Hockey national championship team in 1999. The success of that team led to players who would have been Minnesota high school superstars — like Zach Parise and A.J. Thelen — opting instead to play for Shattuck-St.Mary’s. Word spread, and elite imports like Sidney Crosby, Erik Haula and Nathan MacKinnon cemented Shattuck’s reputation as a national hockey power.
That’s the model the New England prep schools now must guard against.
“The teams that are together and have the best developmental models are the ones that are winning every year,” Barr said. “I think there’s definitely a recognition that high-level players want to go where they know they will keep getting better. More and more places are doing that well, and with that kind of success, they’ll continue to bring in quality players.”
High-end talent expects to compete in an environment where hockey is the main focus, and where they can measure themselves against other high-end talent. Plante and Mount St. Charles offer that, competing in a cross-continent league against fellow premier academies like Shattuck-St. Mary’s.
“Plus, given our geographic location, we can play the top split-season from all over New England because of the proximity and relationships there, too,” Plante said. “I felt our schedule this year was a gauntlet and every weekend was a grind. That really serves you well when you get to a tournament like the nationals at the end of the year.”
That gauntlet described by Plante has effectively been thrown. Full-season Midget hockey is here to stay. The race is on for top talent, and New England prep schools will have more and more competition for it. What started a generation ago at Shattuck-St. Mary’s now threatens to disrupt what has long been a quintessential part of the New England hockey landscape.
