Let's start by taking a look at which countries produced the most of this year's NCAA Hockey players. Below is a break-down of which countries have produced this season's NCAA players and how many. Probably not much of a surprise that the United States and Canada lead the way by a wide margin, but it is nice to see the number of European countries on this list grow.
Also not surprising is that the big three hockey states in the United States (Minnesota, Michigan, and Massachusetts), as well as the larger provinces in Canada, continue to lead the way in terms of NCAA hockey players developed in North America.
However, there are new states that pop up on this list ever year (currently 41 of the 50 states in the US are represented), and there has been a surge in some non-traditional hockey states that makes me very excited about the future growth of college hockey in this country. Take a look at the chart showing the break-down by State\Province below and let me know what sticks out to you.
Like I said, no real surprises at the top, but to see states like Texas and Florida producing as much Division 1 talent as they are is great to see. And to see states like Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, etc... make the list and continue to make gains is a great sign for the future of college hockey.
I also thought it would be interesting to see which cities in the World were producing the most Division 1 hockey players. My guess before I compiled this data was that it would be from some of the bigger cities in Canada or the Northern United States, and I was right. I had a few people guess Toronto on Twitter, and they weren't too far off. The top Division 1 hockey producing city in the World is Calgary. In fact, the top 3 Division 1 hockey producing cities in the World are in Canada. Here is a look at the top 21 cities in the World in terms of how many current Division 1 NCAA hockey players they have produced.
Considering the size of those Canadian cities, and the popularity of the sport in Canada, it should surprise no one that they lead the way in players produced. What is kind of neat to see is Anchorage coming in at #4 and the relatively smaller Minneapolis suburbs of Edina, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie (49,000, 74,000, and 62,000 people respectively) come in near the top. In fact, 7 of the top 21 NCAA producing cities in the world are within the state of Minnesota. Pretty cool.
Even though this information gives us a pretty good understanding of where a majority of college hockey players come from, I didn't think it gave us the complete picture. I wanted to take things a step further and break it down by where a majority of the points in college hockey are coming from in relation to college hockey's demographics.
I started by looking at North America. I ranked each state and province by how many cumulative games played, goals, assists, and points players who originated from there have accumulated so far this season. I then narrowed the list down to just those states and provinces that have produced players who have accumulated an aggregate of at least 200 games played thus far this season. That gave me a list of 17 states and provinces.
Below are capsules of each state or province on this list that detail the cumulative number of games played, goals, assists, and points by players from that state or province so far this season. I also listed the Top 5 scoring players (so far this season) for the state or province in case you aren't familiar with the college hockey players from that area.
Some pretty interesting results. We'll get to those in a minute, but first let's take a look at the point break-down of players who have come from Europe. Again, I have provided some capsules below that detail the games played, goals, assists, and points for some of the top point getters in college hockey this season who came by way of European\Russia.
All I can say is, there are some pretty fantastic hockey players coming from all over the world to play college hockey, and we are extremely fortunate to have this talent to watch on a weekly basis. I'm not going to go too in-depth in my analysis of the data above as I have another segment planned that I am going to post later this week.
In that post I will break down the points\game for each state\province, as well as Europe, to get a better understanding of where all of the top point producers are coming from. I think we have a pretty good understanding now of where the majority of the points are coming from, but much of that is due to the sheer volume that states and provinces like Ontario, Minnesota, Michigan, etc... produce. I'd like to know is if some states\provinces\countries are doing better than others in producing the elite talent that plays in college hockey.
Yes, I list the pts\game for each state above, but keep in mind that those stats are for all players that come from those state\provinces\countries. I would like to take just the top X number of players from each and see what the points\game is when we look at an even number of a state\province\country's best players.
I am also going to touch on some things I noticed as far as school recruiting goes, as well as maybe look at a few other things that caught my eye.
Anyways, hope you found this information as interesting and insightful as I did. Was a lot of fun (and work) to put together. If there is any specific piece of demographic data that I didn't cover (or mention that I plan to cover) that you are interested, let me know and I will see what I can do.
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