Thoughts on the American Development Model (ADM)

[chk hrd 164]

I agree you need to start learning the correct skills as soon as you start and work on improving them for as long as you are playing. I can teach an older kid with skills a system but it's hard to teach an older kid skills.

[Jarick 5]

So most people think that there should be a focus on scholarship or assistance for younger players to get the maximum amount of players possible? And skills at an early age?

[Chadd 916]

So most people think that there should be a focus on scholarship or assistance for younger players to get the maximum amount of players possible? And skills at an early age?

I think schools should get out of the business of sports and they should be for solely for students. Obviously that isn't going to happen.

[DarkStar50 679]

That's backwards Chadd. Schools should get out of the business of learning and stick to being sports profit driven machines that serve professional sports with their next class of athletes. Sorry, I digress.

On the Jr hockey matter, every time I open up another Jr Hockey newspaper given to us in the shop, there are 3 new leagues with 12 teams in each league. I might be able to play Jr now if I wasn't so far over-age!

[iceNsteel 0]

Well unless you can get Hockey Canada to drop all junior hockey outside of the CHL or get the NCAA to ban any player that has played junior hockey you're only making the problem worse. If you wiped US Junior hockey off the map today all the DI coaches would just head North and raid the BCHL, AJHL, OPJHL, etc like half of them currently do. You would then be forcing players to go to another country to get a chance at a US college scholarship. US juniors is fine. It actually competes with the CHL and has bettered our Tier 1 Northern neighbors on occasion. The problem has been the massive influx of junior teams in horrible markets. The USHL works pefectly except in Chicago and Indy, why? Because they're big cities, there's no way to build a fan base, that's why teams like Lincoln and Omaha and Des Moines have done great. They're in isolated markets and they're a unique draw. The NAHL worked in its previous form because most of the teams had an entire youth system backing them. Outside of these two leagues it costs thousands to play junior hockey, when you should really only have to pay billet fees and maybe a grand for the season, instead you have teams like those in the EJHL that charge 7G's for the season on top of billets if you aren't a hometown kid. People see money in junior hockey except they don't understand the dirty economics of it and they don't care about the product they put on the ice, if mommy and daddy have a big enough bank account, there is a junior team for little johnny somewhere. Juniors has lost the aura it once had. It used to be a big deal to make ANY junior team, guys would go to the ends of the earth to play and now its just the next step. I had a friend from Fort Wayne, Indiana who ended up in Cold Lake, Alberta in the Northeast Alberta Jr. B league because he wanted to play that badly. Look up Cold Lake on a map and tell me if its a place you would WANT to go let alone spend 2 years playing there. The entire system would right itself if you wiped 50% of the junior teams off the map and if USAH would take a step back, give there heads a shake and stop f***ing s**t up.

There's an easy fix to that: scholarship rules that that only allow teams to have 2-3 foreign citizens on a team. USAH could also impose easy restrictions on who gets money they provide if they were to say, cut the NTDP program, and pump that 5 million bucks into college hockey. Team USA has beat team Canada in various hockey competitions over the years, it happens. That doesn't really change the fact that the CHL leagues are by far the premier junior hockey leagues. And that's great, that's how the Canadians want to do things. Of course, it's not real hard to sale hockey in Canada so they don't have the fan base issues. The USHL does okay by locating teams in the regions of the US were hockey is popular, and doing it in towns where they simply won't have any competition from any other sort of higher level entertainment sports team. It keeps the league going, but that doesn't do anything to grow the sport. College sports have an ability to bring hockey to people that aren't hockey people. It's a lot easier to use school spirit to get students and alumni (in addition to local fans of certain schools) out to see a hockey game than it is to sale junior hockey to Americans. For example, the last time I was at a WHL game in Seattle I was seated behind about ten 20 something girls that thought the T-birds were basically a semi-pro team and were quite disappointed to discover the team was largely comprised of teenagers. Americans just don't get junior hockey.

While I see where you are coming from on righting the junior system, history just isn't on your side. One of the fixtures of junior, and indeed semi-pro hockey, are the legions of "B leagues" that fold as fast as they upstart. Not to mention some of the less savory junior leagues that are little more than money making scams. I'm all for buyer beware, but enough of it and it starts to give the public a certain perception of junior hockey. NCAA hockey doesn't have any such reputation to shake. NCAA coaches might just have to learn to develop their talent, instead of picking it up out of juniors. I really don't think that's too much to ask to put a more American stamp of identity on American hockey.

I think schools should get out of the business of sports and they should be for solely for students. Obviously that isn't going to happen.

Sports programs make a lot of money for universities. Would you rather the students be saddled with making up those looses in their tuition payments?

[Chadd 916]

Sports programs make a lot of money for universities. Would you rather the students be saddled with making up those looses in their tuition payments?

Rarely does that money ever make it outside the athletic department. Even with the "good" schools.

[frankie56 0]

The NHL puts up much of the money for the NTDP. I'm sure it goes exactly where they want it to.

[iceNsteel 0]

Rarely does that money ever make it outside the athletic department. Even with the "good" schools.

While that's true to a large extent, the student athlete is a part of American college tradition. A lot of the money from profitable sporting programs helps student athletes in sports that don't get as much exposure to have a venue to compete at a high level. Opportunities that would not exist if those sports were forced into the club system where the athlete had to finance him/herself almost entirely out of pocket.

Schools also benefit by attracting athletes, and non-athletes, alike with sports programs. Of course, you'd have to consider how these programs interplay with the alumni associations, which do provide funding to the school at large. In the grand scheme of things that's a lot more positive than negative in having a couple hundred students, out of say 20k undergrads at a big school, that might not exactly be there for the education.

[Chadd 916]

While that's true to a large extent, the student athlete is a part of American college tradition.

I'm all for student athletes, I'm just against the ones that would have never gotten in if it wasn't for their athletic abilities and have no intention of going to class.

[DarkStar50 679]

They are part of the system. It's not their fault that is how it works.

[Chadd 916]

They are part of the system. It's not their fault that is how it works.

Football and basketball are the worst offenders. It's always funny to hear them talk about someone staying all four years as a negative come draft time.

[frankie56 0]

Only 1/3rd of NCAA d1 football and basketball players ever obtain their degree. Hockey is very high at 85% but that may change. Lacrosse ranks even higher.

[BarDownGinos 3]

Only 1/3rd of NCAA d1 football and basketball players ever obtain their degree. Hockey is very high at 85% but that may change. Lacrosse ranks even higher.

Of course Lacrosse ranks higher, there's not exactly a deep professional lacrosse system available.

[biff44 0]

Speaking only from my personal experiences with youth hockey the Squirt level tends to be were you see hockey associations starting to form travel rep teams. It winds up excluding a lot of kids

Yep, that pretty sums it up. USA hockey always had a program of identifying talent very early, and keeping tabs on those players "on the list" with invites to all the regional camps, etc. The obvious problem with that is that many players who are excellent when they are peewees, fall by the wayside by the time they are juniors. Many so-called "late bloomers" are seen skating in circles around them at various tryouts, but never seem to get the nod. The result, a very poor world junior performance.

This new development model seems to solidify those past misdeeds in a sea of hardened concrete!