Recently, I was chatting with my colleague Patrick Donnelly about the sheer talent in New England girls prep hockey. It felt like in every one of his stories, there was a high number of college commits.
The big reason for that is that there is no junior hockey for girls. There's no U.S. National Team Development Program. On the girls side, you do your time at your prep school or academy, graduate and then move on to college hockey.
That is far from the case with the boys, which got me thinking.
What if junior hockey and the NTDP didn't exist? What if all players in New England boys prep hockey stayed and graduated? Which teams would be most improved? What kind of talent would be sticking around?
I can't stress this enough — this is purely a hypothetical. It's supposed to be fun. It's not meant to put down boys prep hockey in any way. It's Jan. 23, and we're in the dog days of the season. The Elite 8 and postseason chases will heat up shortly, and things will get pretty serious. So for now, let's have some fun and enter an alternate reality.
Last January, I did a similar, but more far-fetched exercise with Massachusetts high school hockey — what if every kid stayed and played for their hometown?
There are a couple of ground rules before we explore this.
- Postgrads don't count. I'm not going to count seniors last year as postgrads this year. We would be here all day.
- Players who went from one prep school to another don't count. These are just players who left prep before graduating.
- This is only for the players who are eligible now. Will Smith (Lexington, Mass.) staying at St. Sebastian's is a fun thought, but he's far from eligible to be a senior in high school.
I could do this in alphabetical order, but it would be no fun. Instead, I'm going to rank the teams that would undergo the biggest improvements.
Let's dive in.
