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out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

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used2lurk

New member
Lets pretend that Covid-19 does not impact the upcoming season (wishful thinking I know).

There are schools that have amazing classes of women graduating and those that are not graduating as much. Looking at teams and conferences who is poised for significant moves up or down for the 2020/2021 season? I am more familiar with the 2024 class than others and from a Minnesota point of view but have some limited knowledge of many current schools and their roster composition.

When I look at the HS class of 2020 I can say that I think that Quinnipiac is getting a really nice group of forwards from MN versus years past. Mobley (MN Ms Hockey), Stiegauf, & Urban at F and Samoskevich at D (SSM/CT) looks like a nice group of incoming kids to me. Looking like they are graduating their 2nd leading point scorer and strong D but look to be better next year.

The superpowers (MN/WI/BC/etc) always have great classes coming in but also seem to be graduating (or losing to transfer) some significance every year.

What do you know about your favorite teams and who is getting under/over rated talent coming in and heading out. What say you?!?!?
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

D2D said:
According to this site, and assuming they play in the upcoming season, the Gophers have the No. 1 recruiting class coming in.

https://www.neutralzone.net/womens/college-recruiting-class-rankings/
Click to expand...
... and they follow that up with PSU, Q, UNH, and UW for their top five. The rest of that top 10 is Cornell, Harvard, BU, Brown (!!!!!), and Providence. Of teams that were in the tournament that wasn't, they have Princeton down at #31 and OSU at #25.
 
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Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

Be careful when looking at the raw rankings for recruiting. They use size of the class in part to calculate. The more recruits you have, the ‘better’ the ranking. Brown has 11(!) recruits coming in, assuming they all made it in. I guess they are going for a total re-build. I think the average star rating is more representative. In that regard Brown does have two 4 stars and a 3.75, followed by a pretty big drop after that (3.0 – 3.25) so pretty strong though by historical standards.

By average star rating, Wisconsin is first, followed by Minnesota, Penn State, Quinnipiac, Colgate. All average above 4 stars. Everyone else is below.
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

People don’t really put a lot of credence in NZ, do they?
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

As stated above, they are the only game in town for women’s hockey recruiting and they do seem to pretty much get it right. They seem to focus on Minnesota hockey, along with east coast prep school and eastern Canada, so a few fall through the cracks. They miss completely on international players. Nobody is perfect, even Rivals and 247Sports for football and mens/womens basketball. Not sure how much weight coaches put on it but some schools do. Colgate had a big thing about how they had the #1 recruiting class. https://gocolgateraiders.com/news/2...ey-welcomes-nations-top-recruiting-class.aspx
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

LongGame said:
People don’t really put a lot of credence in NZ, do they?
Click to expand...

Compared to who else doing anything with women's hockey recruiting? I'll take NZ over nothing at all. I don't know anything about them, or how long they've been at it, but as long as they're not overtly biased somehow, or totally off the mark, what's not to appreciate?
 
Cornholio said:
As stated above, they are the only game in town for women’s hockey recruiting and they do seem to pretty much get it right. They seem to focus on Minnesota hockey, along with east coast prep school and eastern Canada, so a few fall through the cracks. They miss completely on international players. Nobody is perfect, even Rivals and 247Sports for football and mens/womens basketball. Not sure how much weight coaches put on it but some schools do. Colgate had a big thing about how they had the #1 recruiting class. https://gocolgateraiders.com/news/2...ey-welcomes-nations-top-recruiting-class.aspx
Click to expand...

Colgate’s freshman class ended doing pretty well. Whether or not it did the best is debatable but it certainly is in the convo. So that gives some credence to NZ.
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

They also at least try to drive some discussion and excitement around women’s hockey, especially at the youth levels going into college. It brings some publicity. Kind of like the Ice Garden at SB Nation but more geared to youth players. Their write-ups on individual players is fairly telling and accurate. They also started to put more info out for free. Had a nice “40 for 4” summary of players over the last 4 years in Minnesota as well as some free articles on NCAA commits (one going to Bemidji, one going to Colgate, one to LIU and an article on the sisters who flipped from Yale to RPI). They also do some D3 stories so not just all about the ‘top’ players.
 
ZedLeppelin said:
Compared to who else doing anything with women's hockey recruiting? I'll take NZ over nothing at all. I don't know anything about them, or how long they've been at it, but as long as they're not overtly biased somehow, or totally off the mark, what's not to appreciate?
Click to expand...

Well, it’s just one person’s opinion (or one “scout’s” opinion) of one game or one tourney (and sometimes they even mix up the players and goalies)
If someone happens to have a really strong performance or a really poor performance and NZ happens to be at that game then that’s the sample size. They don’t have enough scouts to be at every age group at every big tournament - but they seem to watch the same players/teams again & again. And their class “rankings” are biased- no one can deny that. College coaches can make their own decisions when it comes to recruits. NZ is more for parents & players.
 
Sieve1 said:
Well, it’s just one person’s opinion (or one “scout’s” opinion) of one game or one tourney (and sometimes they even mix up the players and goalies)
If someone happens to have a really strong performance or a really poor performance and NZ happens to be at that game then that’s the sample size. They don’t have enough scouts to be at every age group at every big tournament - but they seem to watch the same players/teams again & again. And their class “rankings” are biased- no one can deny that. College coaches can make their own decisions when it comes to recruits. NZ is more for parents & players.
Click to expand...

Just match the rankings to the results. See how they did.
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

No different than any other sport's recuriting sites. A Rival's 4.0 star football recruit commits to Bama, he is suddenly a 4.25 star recruit. He commits to Vanderbilt, he is dropped to 3.75 stars. Goes with the territory. Does NZ get it perfect, heck no, and do they miss on players or miss on the ranking, heck yes, but at least it is there. Still, like what Rivals or 247sports tries to do, is to get the fan bases of the schools excited (or not...) for who is coming in. You can argue that most of the fans of women's hockey are the players and parents of current, former, future players anyhow but that is a different discussion!
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

Cornholio said:
Be careful when looking at the raw rankings for recruiting. They use size of the class in part to calculate. The more recruits you have, the ‘better’ the ranking. Brown has 11(!) recruits coming in, assuming they all made it in. I guess they are going for a total re-build. I think the average star rating is more representative. In that regard Brown does have two 4 stars and a 3.75, followed by a pretty big drop after that (3.0 – 3.25) so pretty strong though by historical standards.

By average star rating, Wisconsin is first, followed by Minnesota, Penn State, Quinnipiac, Colgate. All average above 4 stars. Everyone else is below.
Click to expand...

Any recruiting analysis that takes into account the size of the class is a joke. It's all about quality. There's no way UW does not have the number one class based on Webster, Wheeler and O'Brien.
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

BC will probably be up slightly to be tournament bubble this year but their big move will be the 2021-2022 season
 
Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

i have paid for Neutral Zone for a month a couple of times over the last 2+ years. Maybe I will pay up for a month to take a final look at the rankings for the incoming classes. I love that NZ has content about girls hockey but think that a significant part of their rankings > content is way off. I am most familiar with MN hockey thru my experience with my kid over the last several seasons. I have seen a ton of HS Elite League games plus even more HS games. I tend to only see games with primarily top 10-15 programs in the state during the HS season.

Generally speaking kids from the greater TC metro area that are on higher level HSEL teams are the higher end kids. Winny will take anyone in HSEL that is a high end player even if they do not train with her outside the HS season. There are a few kids that do not do HSEL that are high end but it is few in the metro (including girls that play soccer in the fall and lacrosse/track in the spring). There is definitely a correlation between skills and kids that are rostered on the 3 HSEL teams that have been colors in the past. Newer names this past season but the old Black/White/Red/Royal/Grey/etc over the other names.

Some of the "rankings" are from older tournaments/games where kids are dominating inferior competition and then have challenges performing at a high level against higher end kids. Another decent way of sort of ranking/rating kids when they are playing is thru USA/MN hockey. 54's and to National camps as a MN rep is another way of separating kids than HSEL. The level of player that makes 54 & Natty camp FROM Minnesota is much higher than kids from other parts of the country due to regions allotments of players.

I am thankful for any girls/womens hockey content outside of this board...
 
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Re: out with the old (class of 2020) and in with the new (class of 2024)

Princeton graduated a bunch of talent this year. Top 2 D (Thompson & Wallin), 2nd leading scorer (Bullock), and #1 Goalie (Neatby). That is significant...when you add the NZ lower rated incoming class of 2024 (I only know 1 of the kids) that adds up to a pretty significant change from last season to next.
 
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