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Player Development

Changes Made To Our Program For New Players!

The Atlantic District Player Development Program is pleased to announce that we will be hosting a FREE TRYOUT for all Atlantic District players born in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996 who have not participated in our program before and are interested in participating in USA HOCKEY National Player Development Camps (formerly known as ‘Select Festivals’).  1997 players who would like to try out can do so for free as well, but on June 19 & 20 (times listed below).

The FREE TRYOUT will take place at Loucks Ice Arena on the campus of Lawrenceville School, on Sunday April 25, 2010. At the tryout, players will participate in a 1.5-2.0 hour skills evaluation session which will be professionally run by our Player Development Staff.   All Players are asked to arrive 45 minutes prior to their session and no pre-registration is necessary.

All players in attendance will be looking to earn a position at the ATLANTIC DISTRICT TRYOUT FESTIVAL (our main tryout camp) which will be held at IceLine Quad Rinks in West Chester, PA -- May 14-16, 2010. Players who are selected from the free open tryout will be placed on a team at the Main Tryout Camp with players who have previously participated in the Player Development Program (at the National or Regional level) during 2008 or 2009.  The Atlantic District Tryout Festival will be for players born in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996 only.

For the Main Tryout Camp, we will be forming FOUR TEAMS at the 1996 & 1995 level, including 10 forwards, 6 defenseman & 2 goaltenders.  Similarly, at the 1994 & 1993 level, we will be forming TWO EQUAL TEAMS of 12F, 6D & 2G.  Depending on the birth-year, an approximate minimum of 15 players and a maximum of 30 players will be selected from the open tryout to participate in the main tryout camp.

The FREE OPEN TRYOUT schedule for all who are new is as follows:

Sunday – April 25, 2010 @ Loucks Ice Center, Lawrenceville School

(1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 Birth-years only)

·     1996 Birth-year (14s):   9:00-11:00am

·     1995 Birth-year (15s):  11:15-1:15pm

·     1994 Birth-year (16s):   2:00-3:30pm

·     1993 Birth-year (17s):   4:00-5:30pm

1997 Birth-year will try out on the following at the Loucks Ice Center, Lawrenceville School

Saturday - June 19, 2010    10:00 AM Tryout 1 (all players & goalies)

Saturday - June 19, 2010     4:00 PM  Tryout 2 (all players & goalies)

Sunday - June 20, 2010     9:00 AM (Goalie Session Only)

Sunday - June 20, 2010     12:30 PM  Tryout 3 (all players & goalies)                                         

For more information please email Vice President of Player Development, John Riley @ jdriley@optonline.net

Changes Made To Our Program For Returning Players!

We have exciting news to announce!!!  After considerable discussion amongst our staff we have decided to change the evaluation format for the Atlantic District Player Development Program and will now be hosting a “Tryout Festival Camp” during the weekend of May 14-16, 2010.  This “Tryout Festival Camp” will be held at IceLine, in West Chester, PA.

Historically, as most of you know, we have held skill evaluation sessions for ages 14-17 during this weekend.  The sessions, which also included, a physical testing session and a goaltender evaluation, culminated with an organized final scrimmage on Sunday afternoon. This year, we have made some dramatic changes and will now offer each player the opportunity to participate in one professionally run practice and three regulation games. Each team will be coached by NCAA, Junior, or NE Prep School Coaches. (See full list of coaches and evaluators below) and each game will be officiated by a three man crew.

Additionally, for the first time ever we will be offering a FREE OPEN TRYOUT for all players registered in the Atlantic District.  That tryout will take place at Lawrenceville School on April 25, 2010 (see below for times). All past participants of the program from the 2008 and 2009 seasons, you are excused from the ‘open tryout’ and  are being officially offered a spot at the “Tryout Festival Camp”.

At the 1996 &1995 birth years we will be dividing all invited returning players and players chosen from the open tryout into FOUR EQUAL TEAMS of 17 members (10 F, 6D, 2G).  The number of players chosen from the open tryout will obviously be dictated by the volume of returning players who register prior to the REGISTRATION DEADLINE OF APRIL 1, 2010.    At the 1994 & 1993 birth years we will be dividing all invited returning players and players chosen from the open tryout into TWO EQUAL TEAMS of 20 members (12F, 6D, 2G).  The two teams will practice together Friday night and then square off twice on Saturday.  On Sunday, the top 1994 team will battle the top 1993 team and the second teams will likewise do battle.

The goal of the “Tryout Festival” is to provide all players in the Atlantic District with the most well rounded, fairest venue possible which will afford our staff the opportunity to select the MOST QUALIFIED PLAYERS at each birth years to send to the NATIONAL FESTIVALS. 

Atlantic District Player Development allotment for 2010 USA HOCKEY NATIONAL FESTIVALS is as follows:

·         1993: 1G, 4D, 6F

·         1994: 2G, 5D, 8F

·         1995: 2G, 6D, 10F

·         1996: 2G, 6D, 10F

 We are very excited about the new format and believe that it will be an exciting, reasonably priced, competitive weekend for all participants. 

The cost for the Tryout Festival $150.00, which includes: 

·         1 practice & 3 games (two 22 minute halves – 3 man officiating system)

·         Physical testing at Summit Sports Training Center

·         USA HOCKEY numbered game sweater and matching socks

·         Atlantic District Player Development Program T-Shirt

·         Choice to keep gear in IceLine locker room for entire weekend

·         College/Pro Coaches-Scouts behind bench and working as evaluators

What do you need to do?

We are currently setting up a new pre-registration program online.  As mentioned above, as a returning players from the 2008 and/or 2009 season, once the online pre-registration is set up, all you will need to do to secure your place in the Tryout Festival will be to register online at www.atlantic-district.org under the player development section.

Please note:  if you choose not to pre-register, you are welcome to attend the open tryout and will have the opportunity to be chosen from Lawrenceville to attend the main camp.  Certainly, we feel the pre-registration is easier, but that is certainly your decision!

Once you register you will receive a confirmation email securing your spot in the festival and then you will be sent a follow up email in early May which will inform you of your team and schedule.  For planning purposes, you can assume that you will have a practice Friday night, May 14 between 5-8pm.  On Saturday you will have two games (morning and afternoon) and then one game on Sunday.  There will also be a special goaltender evaluation, for all goalies at all birth-years, on Sunday morning.  Physical testing for all players will be spread out over the course of the weekend venue (except for the 1993s for whom there is no testing).

Please be aware that your acceptance of our invite comes with an expectation of attendance at all games and practice.  Certainly there are always personal and/or extenuating circumstances which may prohibit 100% compliance, but those situations will be dealt with on an individual basis by Vice President of Player Development, John Riley.

Committed Staff Coaches/Evaluators for 2010 Atlantic District Tryout Festival:

·         Patrick Burke – Philadelphia Flyers, Scout

          Steve Greeley – LA Kings, Scout

·         Mike Doneghy – Chicago Blackhawks, Scout

·         John Riley – Philadelphia Flyers, Scout

·         Rick Bennett – Union College, Associate Head Coach

·         Ben Barr – Union College, Assistant Coach

·         Bill Riga – Quinnipiac University, Assistant Coach

·         Keith Fisher – Princeton University, Assistant Coach

·         Matt Greason – US Under 17 Team, Assistant Coach

·         Albie O’Connell – Northeastern University, Assistant Coach

·         John Rose – Dartmouth College, Assistant Coach

·         Peter Ward – US National Team,   Associate Director of Player Personal

·         Jim Hunt –  Atlantic- NY – Potomac Valley District ADM Director

·         Toby Harris – NJ Hitmen, Head Coach

·         Matt Dennehy – NH Monarchs EJHL, Assistant Coach

·         Chris Baudo – Gunnery Prep, Head Coach

·         Rich McKenna – Wesleyan University, Assistant Coach

·         Dale Reinhart – Holy Cross, Assistant Coach

·         Jeff Matthews – Northwood School, Head Coach

2010 Summer Team Camp Dates and Cost

All Lawrenceville Camps include lodging, ice time, food, trainer, jerseys, socks, etc.

Select 17 (1993 birth year) $495.00

June 18-20           Lawrenceville Overnight Camp

June 30 - July 1    Lawrenceville Overnight Camp

July 7-13              Rochester, NY    USA Hockey Festival Team Camp ($125 USA Hockey fee and transportation separate)

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Select 16  (1994 birth year) $495.00   

June 18-20           Lawrenceville Overnight camp

June 24-30           Rochester, NY    USA Hockey Festival Team Camp ($125 USA Hockey fee and transportation separate)

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Select 15  (1995 birth year) $495.00

June 5-6               Lawrenceville Overnight camp

June 28-30            Lawrenceville Overnight camp

July 15-21             Rochester, NY    USA Hockey Festival Team Camp ($125 USA Hockey fee and transportation separate)

July 29- Aug 1        Kent State Tournament for District Team (tournament/lodging/one way bus transportation fee of $430 separate)

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Select 14  (1996 birth year) $495.00  

June 5-6               Lawrenceville Overnight camp

June 28-30            Lawrenceville Overnight camp

July 8-14               Rochester, NY    USA Hockey Festival Team Camp ($125 USA Hockey fee and transportation separate)

July 22-25             Kent State Tournament for District Team (tournament/lodging/one way bus transportation fee of $430 separate)

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Select 13  (1997 birth year) $925.00 (Lawrenceville camps, Kent State Camp/tournament/lodging/one way bus transportation included)

June 29-July 1       Lawrenceville Overnight camp

July 24-25             Lawrenceville Overnight camp

August 4-8            Kent State Camp and Tournament

Players who choose the OHL over college hockey scholarships really getting best of both worlds?

KITCHENER — Pop quiz for Ontario Hockey League education czar Joe Birch.

How many current OHL players are full-time university or college students?

“Very, very few,” said Birch, a former Kitchener Ranger who ranks No. 94 on the Hockey News honour roll of the 100 most influential men in the business of pucks and pencils.

Can you name one? No answer.

Guelph’s Tim Priamo and London’s Scott Aarssen are past examples he cited of true OHL student-athletes.

The Rangers have no full-time college or university students.

Team education consultant Dave Tennant says such a course-load would be too strenuous given the demands of a 68-game OHL season. The scheduling of classes around games would be impossible.

Let’s get educated on how post-secondary education works in the OHL.

Get out your notebooks, class.

The numbers scrawled on the blackboard by the league sound impressive. For the 2009-10 academic year, the OHL proclaimed last month it has awarded 355 “scholarships” to current and past players.

That’s 164 “scholarships” to players currently in the league. Add in 191 “scholarships” to players who’ve blown through the 20-team major junior loop in a five-year span ending last season.

Sounds like an A-plus for the OHL, right? Surely, as Birch proudly proclaims, a player can get the same education and hockey experience in the OHL as kid at school full-time on a hockey scholarship in a U.S. college.

After all, that’s what this is all about.

It’s about the recruitment war to lure the best Canadian and American players into the OHL by convincing them they can get the “best of both worlds” in major junior – a hockey-heavy lifestyle now and a top-shelf education afterwards.

Once a kid plays a single OHL game, his U.S. college eligibility is busted since the NCAA considers the OHL a pro loop where players get paid, sign contracts and have agents.

Let’s dig deeper into the OHL-provided numbers. Remember, class, there are no dumb questions.

So what does the OHL consider a scholarship when it comes to a current player? Let’s look over the league-provided list of 164 recipients.

Well, Rangers goalie Mavric Parks takes a health course twice a week at Conestoga College.

Nothing wrong with that.Very commendable. But a “scholarship”? You decide.

The OHL pays for tuition, books, compulsory fees, etc. It also claims credit for providing room-and-board, which it has always done for players anyway.

There’s ex-Ranger Josh Unice at the University of Windsor.

Oh, wait a minute. He went home to Ohio after the Windsor Spitfires ditched him while he was injured. Nice. Did we mention Unice tore up a full-ride scholarship to Bowling Green of Ohio to come to the OHL? He did.

Now, his agent says Unice is at the University of Western Ontario.

There are nine players from six different teams listed as Athabasca University students. That is an online school. No classrooms. They take online courses.

So do eight players from Brampton, Sarnia and Owen Sound who “attend” the University of Guelph, via their computers. Is that the equivalent of living on campus at the University of Michigan and going to class?

Don’t forget Guelph Storm benchwarmer Vadim Guskov. He’s on the list as a University of Moscow student. That’s online, of course. There are more examples but you get the idea.

Let’s look at defenceman Nick Crawford. He is listed as a student at Northwood University in Saginaw, Michigan on the OHL list, released on Nov. 24. On Nov. 9, he got traded from Saginaw to Barrie.

Birch said Crawford had met all his educational obligations to Northwood at the time of the trade. That’s a pretty short semester.

How about Niagara College student Jay Gilbert? He left the Niagara IceDogs a few weeks ago and demanded a trade that is still pending.

Used to be that OHL players who broke their contracts – left the team without permission – lost all the education funds owing to them. Led to a nasty squabble in Kingston over school money owed to a kid named Brodie Todd.

Not so any longer, said Birch. Gilbert still has his package. “What a player has earned, a player is entitled to,” Birch said.

Perhaps, but section 12.1 of the standard player agreement, could certainly be read differently. It says the club may terminate the contract for a variety of reasons, including refusal to provide services, and lose all benefits.

Question time again. How does an OHL educational package work?

Basically, here’s the deal. Sounds very sweet. An OHL player is entitled to one year of post-OHL, post-secondary education cash for each year he is in the league.

Play a year, get one year. Play four, get four.

That includes tuition, textbooks and compulsory fees. Top picks, and a limited number of others, also get room and board covered. It can be used at any recognized university or college in the world.

Of course, there are catches. If you sign an NHL, AHL or European pro contract, you lose your education package.

You can keep it if you play in a lower North American pro loop. However, there’s another catch. You only have 18 months to access it after leaving the OHL. Otherwise, it disappears.

Then, there’s the “domicile” rule. That determines the dollar value of your package per year. The OHL takes the tuition fees at the college or university closest to a player’s home.

That’s what you get. In the case of a local kid like Waterloo’s Matt Smith, it’s a little tricky. Smith, a third-string goalie for the Rangers who didn’t play one OHL second in 2007-08, lives close to both the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.

Which tuition value does he get? “The higher of the two,” Birch said.

Not a big deal, Birch added. Laurier is currently about $5,700. Waterloo is about 5,900.

Smith’s father Clive said the Rangers gave him an average of the two at the time his contract was signed.

Matt, a first year English student at the University of Guelph, gets $4,500 towards his schooling this year. “Pretty good chunk,” Smith said after an exam on Wednesday.

His full tuition is about $5,700. He must pay to live in residence. After this year, he’s on his own to pay for the rest of his schooling.

He dressed one year in the OHL, he gets one year worth of money. Most important, he dressed after Jan. 10 in his lone OHL season.

You see, if you don’t play on or beyond that date, your education package is slashed in half for that year.

That’s another catch. You see, OHL teams are very concerned about what the education war with the colleges is costing them. Rangers chief operating officer Steve Bienkowski said so at last June’s annual general meeting.

The OHL says it spent $1.8-million on post-secondary education last year, $1.2-million on past players and $600,000 on current players. Birch said that will increase for this season.

The Rangers expect to spend $72,000 on post-secondary classes for current and past players this year. Based on their commitments, they could spend as much as $775,000 between now and 2014.

Of course, they won’t spend anywhere near that. That’s because fewer than half of OHL players will ever “access” any of the education money the OHL promises them. Maybe not even half of half of them.

Now, here’s the BIG question: What percentage of OHL players access their school package payouts after they leave the league? Birch claims 49 per cent based on a study of overage 20-year-old players, limited to three per team.

The OHL says 24 overagers from last season signed pro deals while 30 tapped into their OHL school packages.

But what about the rest of the kids who never made it the overage year?

You know, the kids who play and leave before becoming 20-year-old victory-lappers like Mike Liambas playing against 16-year-olds like Ben Fanelli?

Birch doesn’t think it’s fair to look at those numbers even though he lists those guys in his 191 past players now receiving some OHL money towards post-secondary schooling.

He even counts ex-Ranger Chris Gravelding, who left the league after 2004-05, and is accessing his money at the University of Maine.

So, let’s look at a four-year cycle. Twenty-five players per roster for 20 teams. That’s 500 players.

Now add in an average turnover of seven players per team each year for three years. That’s 420 players. We’re up to 920 players.

Now add in the players who disappear quickly. The Mike Chmielewskis, Chris Brysons, Charles Lavignes etc. Lavigne, a one-year Rangers backup in net, is on the OHL list for St. Thomas University.

Say, two guys per team each year over four years. That’s 160 guys.

Make the grand total 1,080 players, of which 191 are tapping into their OHL education packages after leaving.

That’s a payout rate of 18 per cent.

Birch doesn’t agree with that method of analyzing out the numbers. But he was not prepared with his own numbers on a four-year cycle, other than the 191 in school with OHL money.

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Birch said. “That would mean that, on the 25-man roster, myself and three others would be post-secondary educated.”

Right. And we haven’t even got to the matter of whether they graduate from college or not.

This is just showing up and tapping into the money.

There’s another catch. If students take a break from full-time status once they start school on their OHL package, they lose it. Says so in the players’ contract.

So, where are the rest of the estimated 900 kids who’ve passed through the OHL? A few are NHL regulars. Many are in the minors or in Europe. All we know is the rest aren’t accessing OHL money for post-secondary education.

Meanwhile, American kids are being sold like never before on coming north to the OHL to pursue a pro contract, while getting all the benefits of a college-style education.

Cam Fowler left a $50,000 a year scholarship at Notre Dame to join the Windsor Spitfires. A recent Windsor Star article suggested Fowler – whose parents live in Northville, Michigan – could attend Notre Dame on the Spitfires’ dime.

The “domicile rule,” if applied, could cap Fowler’s annual OHL education fund at about $18,000 based on the top rates at the closet colleges to the family home. That includes Wayne State and Eastern Michigan.

But, according to Birch, the rule doesn’t appear to apply to Fowler. “Cam could have received a full-ride from the Windsor Spitfires, no different than he received a full-ride from Notre Dame,” Birch said.

Worth $50,000, if he accesses it? “Yes,” Birch said.

Didn’t realize it could go that high. Thought it was tied to tuition at the school closes to his parents’ house.

“Are you being naďve here?” Birch said.

Guess so.

Of course, the OHL and the Spits need not worry. Fowler is a terrific player and will surely sign an NHL or AHL deal. He likely will never go to college. The OHL is banking on it.

jhicks@therecord.com

 

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