Ranking the most important aspects of recruiting in high school, academy, and junior hockey

The offseason is here in terms of the game being played on the ice, but for high school hockey coaches, scouts, and managers, now is the time to shine. Recruiting in the spring is relatively low-stress when compared with the pressure of the just-finished playoff run (hopefully), but that stress increases as we inch towards the summer months.

I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to quantify the amount of recruiting in which I’ve been involved the past few years. I wanted to create a ranking with your help, good reader, of the important elements when it comes to recruiting, and now that I look back on it…

Yeesh.

I started recruiting for an expansion Junior A franchise in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League in the fall of 2021. I was coaching a high school hockey team at the same time, so it was busy, but rewarding. With my assistant at the time, we estimated over 100 zoom meetings and thrice that many phone calls right up to puck drop on the team’s first game a year later.

It sounds daunting, but I remember only eagerness and excitement at the time. Those early days also serve as a jumping off point for the rankings.

Here’s how we’ll do this.

I’m going to collect the steps I believe are important, and then with your help, we’ll rank them based on reader response. Easy, right?

Get Started Early

The early days of recruiting didn’t seem frantic, which conflicts with me complaining about a million phone and zoom calls above. But it’s true. I had an excellent head scout (which we’ll get to later) who identified players, and once we arranged a time to meet, my focus was entirely on the player and the fit with our program. We didn’t start meetings until January of 2022, but the foundation was laid before that, and we just started chipping away. If we waited too long to start making calls, the summer of 2022 would have been so chaotic that I likely would have simply melted away (which I nearly did anyways!), so I’m glad we left as much time as possible. Still didn’t seem like enough.

Get Help

We all need help. This brings me back to my head scout. Being a general manager of a junior hockey team isn’t that dissimilar from coaching high school hockey. You have to build the team, and the coaching comes later. From time to time I was accused of not asking for help, which made no sense until I realized much later (yesterday) I was only accused of that by people whose help I did not seek. The truth of the matter is that without help identifying players who could be a potential fit, I would have been lost in the wilderness. Gather as much information as you can, talk to anyone who might be a potential fit, and then circle back to people you trust to learn what you didn’t learn when speaking with the player.

Get Your Presentation Organized

I believe it’s important to realize that you’re being recruited as well. High school hockey players may or may not show up on a video call with their parents, so ask yourself - would you change what you’re showing if you knew the parents were coming? Mom and Dad want to know about a lot more than what forecheck you’re planning on running. Once the call is up and running you’ll feel a lot better knowing you’ve got some excellent material to share. Before all that, though, you’ve got one significant hurdle: these are teenagers. Be ready for wild swings in personality, mood, and response. Some kids are quiet, some are loud, and it’s all ok! The vibe is what matters - what aspects of your program are important to them? Are they happy to contribute to a team or do they want to be counted on with big minutes? You can’t rush these calls. Some take 20 minutes and the player is ready to sign on the dotted line, some take an hour and it takes a great deal of effort to lock them down.

Know When to Walk Away

Sometimes it’s just not a fit. We all want the best players, but the good news is that there are a lot of good players out there, and in the end the best team wins, not the best individual. If a player is asking for a guarantee - a scholarship, power play time, ice time - just ask for a guarantee of 50 goals in return. Everybody wins! Or just move on. Focus the majority of your energy on the good bets. I’m not saying you should give up - save some energy for the long shots, but don’t forget everybody else in the process. For me, nothing is more important

Know When & How to Stay On It

Most players won’t commit the first time you talk to them. Hopefully you’ve got a good cell phone plan, because most kids have zero concept of the 9-5. This step is admittedly subjective, but I believe flexibility in the offseason is a big key. If a player needs time to talk to their people, obviously you need to be supportive of that. I don’t believe constant hassling works, but at some point you need an answer, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I had a player last season who took his time but eventually committed in the middle of the summer, and he was a big fish, had a fabulous season. It was worth the wait. You might have another player ready to commit to a spot, and that’s where you have to find the balance between knowing when to walk away and knowing when to stick with it. It’s not simple, but it could make the difference between landing a commitment or seeing them in enemy colours!

Go Back to the Source

If you’re planning on having a lot of conversations, then it’s key to keep your perspective fresh. Keep notes on each player, and return to the video or live showings if possible. When I recruited out of the Western Hockey League with the UBC Thunderbirds, head coach Sven Butenschon and I spent hours watching potential recruits, and then we’d get to mix in live viewings with the Vancouver Giants, Everett Silvertips, and Seattle Thunderbirds. We put on a lot of miles, but we also got to watch potential future prospects in the process.

And yeah, there were a lot of long shots in those days. Come to think of it, one of them tended the twine for the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Come to think of it, there were a lot of long shots, but the thing I’m most proud of is that the players who did end up committing, they felt like the long shots. We put as much energy as we could into every connection, and that made all the difference.

Ok, let’s rank these. I’m going to hold off on my own rankings because I want to learn from the community here. Drop your rankings in the comments or on social and we’ll circle back in a couple weeks!