Content Note: There was a post on the MGoBoard back in November from people requesting posts about hockey basics for neophyte fans who are eager to understand the sport better. I have granted your wish, albeit months late due to the whirlwind content rush that is the season. Now, with more time in the summer, your wish has come true. There seemed to be two veins of requests: college hockey basics, and nerdier hockey strategy/Neck Sharpies-type content. This post will do my best to cover the former, while there will be a series of posts covering both hockey coaching terms and strategy in the coming days and weeks. The goal of these posts will be to help teach readers how to watch, consume, and evaluate hockey. 

How College Hockey Works

This piece looks less at terms universally related to all forms of ice hockey and instead looks at the NCAA specifically, and will attempt to explain some of the parlance that David, Brian, and I use in our college hockey related posts on MGoBlog that may be tough to grasp from an outsider. I'll do this in a question-and-answer format:

So who plays on a college hockey team?

Generally speaking (for men), players between the ages of 18-24 years old. The varying ages have to do with the different routes players take to end up in NCAA Hockey and certain types of teams will have differing median ages of players. In terms of eligibility, it's pretty standard in that players get four years, and redshirts are rare in hockey, similar to basketball. Scholarship situations are pretty opaque, with not much public information on who is receiving a full or partial scholarship and who is without one altogether. Officially there are 18 scholarships for each team and the average team has around 28 players, so there are definitely players who play with only a partial one or none altogether, but that information is rarely public. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: many more questions and answers]

Where do the players come from?

Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much. The players take many different routes to the NCAA, based on their talent level. The feeder leagues are the following: the USHL, the USNTDP, the BCHL/OJHL/AJHL, and HS/Prep. Where they don't come from is the OHL/QMJHL/WHL. This is a New Deal-worthy alphabet soup and so I'm going to bullet each league with a brief explainer:

• USHL (United States Hockey League): The top US junior league, the USHL is where Big Ten teams draw the majority of their talent. There are 14 teams spread across the Midwest and players can play there until age 21, which gives players the ability to log extra time before going to college. At what age players come to the NCAA from the USHL mostly depends on how good they are. Elite players like Owen Power and Brendan Brisson leave the USHL at age 18 to go into college. Other players (generally ones who don't attract NHL scouts) have to prove themselves and often come at an older age, 19, 20, and sometimes even 21. Performance in the USHL also determines where a player goes for college, as a breakout season in the USHL may mean a player flips from a smaller school to a better one. 

• USNTDP (US National Team Development Program): A derivative of the USHL is the USNTDP, which is a team that plays in the USHL for part of the season, but also scrimmages against college teams and shouldn't be placed in the same bucket as the broader USHL. Why? Its players are exclusively high-level pro prospects, hand-picked by USA Hockey to participate and play for the team. Many of the USNTDP players end up being one-and-done or two-and-done in college because they get drafted highly in the NHL Draft and have major pro aspirations. These are the blue chip, 5* type prospects (think Rashan Gary, Jabrill Peppers) if we were doing recruiting rankings like other sports. The USNTDP plays in Michigan (Plymouth, formerly Ann Arbor) and has been a feeder for UofM historically, producing Josh Norris, Quinn Hughes, Kyle Connor, Dylan Larkin, Jacob Trouba, and Zach Werenski, among others. On the last yer's team, Cam York, Johnny Beecher, Thomas Bordeleau, Jacob Truscott, and Matty Beniers were all USNTDP products. Michigan has the most talent in college hockey in part because they've done a great job at harvesting the fruits of the USNTDP.

• HS/Prep: If you've been wondering why "high schools" haven't come up already as a feeder for college hockey, it's because the US doesn't have much of an infrastructure.... in most states. If you're a good young hockey player in Indiana, most high schools in that state don't have teams. The logical option then, is to go to the juniors, which means the NAHL and the USHL. That's the route for most all prospects and certainly the elite ones. But if you happen to live in either New England, Minnesota, or occasionally Michigan, you may have the option of playing for your HS. It's certainly not the preferred path, because again, the conventions of the system strongly push you to enter junior hockey, where you're drafted to a team and you move to a new state and live with a host family. But some players in certain areas do stick at home and play for their high school, and some of those players make their way into the NCAA ranks. Minnesota is the state with the best HS hockey system and so a good number of kids who go to the Minnesota colleges do come from the HS/prep reservoir.

• BCHL/OHL/AJHL: So now we get to talk about Canada. Up to this point, I've been explaining different routes for American players (a small number of Canadians do move to the US and play in the USHL, but they're not high in number). But what about if you're Canadian? Well, Canada has a very established system called the CHL (Canadian Hockey League) which is kind of like the Mini-NHL, with three leagues covering the country's geography (Western (WHL), Ontario (OHL), Quebec/Maritimes (QMJHL)). Those three leagues have 20 franchises each and have their own TV deals, with a draft where 16 year olds are picked by the worst teams from the prior season, and those players then move to that city, live with a host family, attend school, and yes, get paid. That last note probably made your ears perk up a bit, and yeah: if you play in the CHL, you cannot play in the NCAA. Period. Playing in the CHL sacrifices your collegiate eligibility. For Canadians, the CHL has immense power and just about every major pro prospect chooses to play in the CHL. The USNTDP was created in part to stop American prospects from moving to Canada and going the CHL route. For the record, it's been quite successful at that. What happens, then, if you're a Canadian who isn't good enough to be drafted into the CHL, or, for whatever reason, you want to preserve your NCAA eligibility and play college hockey in the US (college hockey is very minor in Canada)? You play in the second tier juniors, which are also regional, a variety of leagues like the BCHL/OHL/AJHL. The best players in those leagues almost uniformly play American college hockey, because they missed their chance to play in the CHL and at that point their best option is to play NCAA and hope then to sign an undrafted free agent deal with an NHL team after college. A few second tier prospects in these leagues do get drafted, but they normally go in the late rounds. For example, Michigan's Eric Ciccolini played in the OJHL, was picked in the 7th round, and is now in the NCAA's. However, one of the most notable examples of a Canadian going this route, winding up in the NCAA, and being a high draft pick is on Michigan right now: Kent Johnson. It does happen, but not very often. 

Yes, that's a lot. I know your head is probably spinning. The long story short is that teams like Michigan, Boston College, Boston University, and Wisconsin draw heavily from the USHL, complimented by blue chippers from the USNTDP and a few toss-in guys from the BCHL/OJHL/AJHL. Their teams are generally young and feature a lot of 18-20 year olds with pro potential. Other teams like American International draw more players from the NAHL, which is the league below the USHL, or take older USHL products who don't have pro aspirations. That's why you can end up with teams like Michigan who have 10-12 drafted guys in their teens next to a team like AIC who had an average age of 23 last season and has few, if any, drafted guys. Simply put, they're drawing players from different player pools. 

Thomas Bordeleau is one of many NHL prospects playing college hockey [James Coller]

How much NHL talent is in NCAA hockey?

In one sentence, more than there used to be. In the late 90s when Michigan was winning its titles under Red, you'd have the occasional player or two from the NCAA ranks be drafted in the NHL first round, but the vast, vast majority of high draft picks either came from Europe or the CHL. That has changed in recent years, as the USA has produced more hockey talent than ever before and thanks to the USNTDP, has made an active effort to keep its players in the states via college hockey. Two decades ago, college hockey was an afterthought. Nowadays, the NCAA is a viable alternative to the CHL for North American players.  Families like Owen Power's have serious discussions about which route they want their children to go. The CHL still accounts for the majority of first round picks and most picks overall, because Canada still produces more talent than the US by a wide margin, but the gap has been closed a bit. Last season wasn't the NCAA's year, with only three first rounders to the CHL's 19, but from 2015-2019, the NCAA produced an average of 8 first rounders a year compared to 15 from the CHL and 8 from Europe, per numbers from The Hockey News.

Talent still isn't all that evenly distributed though. Some conferences have few drafted players, while others have lots. And even within conferences you see big gaps. For instance in the B1G, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have been loaded with pro talent, while MSU, OSU, and PSU are quite light on it, and Notre Dame is somewhere in the middle. But this doesn't lead to the massive gaps in parity you may expect if you consume college football or basketball. Due to the nature of hockey as a sport, there are ways to schematically get around having little talent (to be discussed in future pieces) and still hang with hyper-athletic teams. Also, those teams with little talent who do play well tend to lean heavily on size and experience, trotting out older and bigger players who look to challenge teams like Michigan physically, which has its advantages. Those schools are like Purdue basketball, grooming four year players to learn the system and compete, while teams like Michigan are akin to Duke or Kentucky, with better athletes but suffering the problems that come with high turnover when your best players are constantly bolting after one or two seasons. There are two routes to competing and both are valid. Some of the best teams, like reigning champion UMass or superpower Minnesota Duluth, blend skill and experience. 

How does recruiting work?

If you think college football or college basketball recruiting is inherently predatory in the way it forces children into decisions at young ages, let me tell you about college hockey. Most college hockey recruiting happens between the ages of 13 and 15, because of the different routes we talked about earlier. Since kids and parents have to decide what route their child is going before they hit 16 (when the CHL Draft happens), that opens them up to early recruitment. As soon as it's clear a player is planning to play college hockey, it's open season for programs to sweep in, and in many cases, colleges have already sauntered in before a broader decision is made. For instance, Owen Power committed to Michigan at age 15 in April of 2018, which means that recruitment was happening even before that age. That's pretty standard in the sport. It's also why it took until Mel's fourth season at Michigan for his recruits to start rolling in. When you recruit players when they're four years from college, it takes them a long time after that to actually wind up in your program. 

But that's not the case for every recruit. Though most recruits are going to initially commit at that age, for those who aren't like Power and don't have major NHL aspirations, the recruitment is a fluid process that just keeps going. Those players generally don't enter college at 18, so the recruitment window may be as many as six or seven years long. This is due to the fact that, ya know, kids age a lot and players will develop in different ways between the ages of 14 and 20. Some schools that initially garnered a commitment from a recruit may end up becoming less interested by the time that player is ready to enter the NCAA, which may cause a player to flip. The converse is also true: a player may end up being better than initially thought when they were an early teen, causing a power program to swoop in and pick them up. 

A number of schools, and Michigan is certainly one of them, recruit far more players than is necessary and end up either deferring some of the less talented ones, or letting them flip somewhere else after essentially processing them. For example, Patrick Guzzo of Ohio State was once a Michigan commit but after it was clear the Wolverines weren't going to have space for him, he looked elsewhere and flipped to a different school. It's quite common for a team like Michigan to tell some of their recruits that they may have to wait an extra year to enter the program, telling them to go back to the USHL for another year and then come to campus as a 20-year-old. Some players may not be interested in that, also causing them to flip. 

In short, college hockey recruiting is messy and convoluted. It's a continuous process that begins at grotesquely young ages, with some kids committing to a college before they've finished a year of high school. After that it's a constant stream of evaluations that may or may not result in that player going to the school they initially committed to. Players that have committed rarely know what year they'll be entering the program until it's ready to enroll and flips to other schools are common. There is little coverage of college hockey recruiting and resources to track it are scant. Rankings systems like 247 are not commonly used, with Neutral Zone being the most famous outlet but that's a paid site. As those who have consumed Michigan Hockey Summers in the past know, you really never know which recruits are coming in until the school announces the players who have been added to the team. It's exhausting, maddening, and wacky. 

How many teams are there? How many conferences?

College hockey has 61 teams in the present, split between six conferences. They are the B1G, Atlantic Hockey, NCHC, ECAC, Hockey East, and the CCHA. Again, I'll bullet them:

• Big Ten (7): This is Michigan's conference and is one of the stronger conferences. It's also one of the most talented conferences, with Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin recruiting lots of pro talent. The B1G can typically place 2-4 teams in the tourney, putting those three + Notre Dame into the tournament this past season. 
• Atlantic Hockey (10): The AHA is college hockey's worst conference, with 10 universities you probably have only heard of in passing and can't find on a map, like Mercyhurst, RIT, and Sacred Heart. The AHA normally puts just one team into the tourney (its autobid) and that team is normally team #16 on the national seed rank. This past season it put American Int'l into the tournament against #1 North Dakota and the poor Jackets got obliterated. This conference previously had 11 members but is down to 10 after Robert Morris folded its program. 
• NCHC (8): The NCHC is one of two conferences catering to western teams and is another strong one, probably the best in the country. Denver, Minnesota-Duluth, and North Dakota are the big three in the conference and those three are arguably three of the seven or so best programs in the country. The NCHC can also place 4ish teams into the tourney and had won four straight national titles prior to 2021. 
• CCHA (8): "Wait, what?" you may be asking yourself. Yes, like a zombie, the CCHA is back from the dead but it resembles its former self about as much as your author resembles Shaquille O'Neal. Which is to say, not at all. The conference has re-formed this summer for geographic reasons as a spin off from the old WHCA. Four former CCHA teams who then moved to the WCHA when the old CCHA died are back, but they were generally the bottom feeders of that conference, Ferris State, Lake State, Northern Michigan, and Bowling Green. Those four schools have combined for just 7 NCAA Tournament appearances this century. It's also adding Michigan Tech, which has been a solid program this decade thanks to the rebuild conducted by one Mel Pearson. The last three teams are St. Thomas, which is a new D1 program out of St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as Bemidji State, which is an okay program, and Minnesota State, which is fresh off a Frozen Four appearance and is generally a top 10 powerhouse. Since 2021-22 will be the first season of the CCHA, it's hard to say how good this conference will be, but I think it will be in the 1-3 tournament teams range. Not a power conference, but also not as bad as the AHA. 
• Hockey East (11): One of the two conferences catering primarily to northeastern teams, the Hockey East is a strong conference, featuring teams from the Boston area like BC, BU, and Northeastern, as well as Providence. These teams tend to recruit great talent as well and have big fan bases. The Hockey East is home to reigning champion UMass and 6 of the last 13 national championships. It is a terrific hockey conference and generally places ~4 teams in the tournament. 
• ECAC (12): This is the other northeast conference, which includes the 6 Ivy League schools, as well as Quinnipiac, Clarkson, Colgate, Union, RPI, and St. Lawrence. The ECAC is characterized by low scoring, extremely low event hockey games with older players who have less talent. The ECAC normally places around 3 teams in the tournament and accounts for two national titles in the last decade. 
• Independents* (5): This is a collection of programs that are either new, too far away to be part of a conference, or are on the verge of death, or some combination of those three. First there's Arizona State, who was an honorary member of the B1G last season. Though they didn't prove ready to compete full time at that level, Greg Powers has built a good program out in the desert that should only get better. They may stay independent due to the geographic concerns. Long Island, who played their first season last year, is also an independent and is a fledgling program. Then we have the three other members of the old WCHA, which officially folded last week. They are Alabama-Huntsville, Alaska-Anchorage, and Alaska-Fairbanks. Huntsville and Fairbanks are okay but are waiting for a conference. Huntsville is choosing not to play this season until they find a conference, while Fairbanks will play as an independent. Anchorage will not play until they fundraise enough money to save the program. COVID has hit many of these teams hard. I don't foresee any of the independents snaring a bid this upcoming season. 

So those are the conferences. Atlantic Hockey and the existing independents are bad, NCHC and Hockey East are elite, B1G and ECAC are generally very good, and the new CCHA should be solid. 

The Frozen Four is when the NCAA Hockey Tournament becomes exciting [Patrick Barron]

How does the NCAA Tournament work?

The NCAA Tourney is a 16 team tournament that operates much like the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. One difference is that in normal years, the field is picked by a computer system called PairWise Rank (PWR) without the input of a committee. Last year, due to the fact PWR was rendered irrelevant in a season without non-conference play, the field was picked by a committee. The autobids still exist, so the conference tournament champion of each league gets in for sure, and as mentioned above, the good conferences generally snap the at-large bids up. Once the field of 16 is set, the games are played in the same manner as the basketball tourney, with the first two on one weekend at one location. Those regional sites are in places that make no logical sense and Brian has ranted about for years, and for good reason. They are in bizarre locales without proximity to all the Midwestern schools. For example, this upcoming season's regional sites are Loveland, CO, Allentown, PA, Albany, NY, and Worcester, MA. Have fun driving from Michigan out there! Those regionals are also sparsely attended and there isn't much interest from local communities. 

After you get past the hellish regional, there's the Frozen Four, which is exactly the same as the Final Four, played in front of a big crowd in a respectable venue, generally an NHL stadium in a big city. This upcoming season, the Frozen Four will be in Boston, MA, and played at the Bruins' TD Garden. If Michigan makes another Frozen Four, I'd recommend going. It's a great atmosphere and the pinnacle of College Hockey. Overall, the NCAA Hockey Tournament is basically the answer to a thought experiment entitled "how can we make our sport's playoff as bad as possible?", not just because of the regionals, but also the nature of hockey: a single-elimination bracket means that one of the best teams rarely wins, because individual games are highly random. If you win an NCAA Hockey Tournament, it's mostly because you were good enough to get there and then you got lucky. It's a maddening set-up that can see your dream season evaporate in 60 cruel minutes in front of an empty ice rink in Podunk, USA. I hate having to care about it and have a rooting interest in it, but if the Hockey Gods' cosmic dice roll goes your way, celebrate it and enjoy it, because there is some fun in the non-sensical reality of the tourney. 

How is NCAA hockey different from the NHL? 

Last question, but an important one for someone who may have seen some NHL but not as much college hockey. As you may guess, the game is slower and lacks the high-skill playmaking and frenetic pace of the pro ranks. From a rules standpoint, there are a few differences here and there. For example, in the NCAA, if a goal is scored during a delayed penalty, the penalty is still served and not negated, like in the NHL. There's no trapezoid to limit goalie puck-handling (which makes trapping marginally easier), fighting is much more discouraged thanks to an automatic disqualification and suspension rule, all players must wear a face cage on their helmet in college, and hits to the head are also policed more stringently in the NCAA. Those are the main ones, and the harsh penalties for fighting and head contact make NCAA hockey a bit less violent stylistically, a fact that's been true all the way back to the 1940s when NCAA hockey got off the ground. Minor differences to the rinks are also present in college hockey in a way they aren't in the NHL. In the B1G alone, Notre Dame's stadium is unique for having benches on opposing sides of the ice, while Minnesota's is unique for using an Olympic-sized rink (which is bigger and wider). Those sorts of stadium quirks are not allowed at the NHL level, where everything is standardized.