Most users tell us it takes between 15 and 30 minutes to complete the basics of their profile. You can then come back and add more video and details whenever you like.
3. WHAT DO I NEED TO CREATE A PLAYER PROFILE?
Three images (profile picture, action shot and a cover photo)
Personal profile information (personal, academic and academic information
Add your team information (current and past)
Videos with highlights and games showing off your talents
Schedule – add recent and future games and events to let coaches know where to find you play
4. WHAT DO I DO NEXT
You can connect with players and coaches by sending them a link to your profile by email. Or you can also invite other coaches and players to connect by visiting their Champs App profile and tapping the “Connect” button. Here is the current list of NCAA Coaches with Champs App profiles.
A couple of weeks ago I attended my first USA Hockey National Championship. I was in both Dallas for the Girls Tier I round robin games and New Jersey for several Youth 15O games. Here are a few things I learned while I was there – mostly from my time in Dallas.
1. Accurate Seedings
For Girls Tier 1, 23 of the 24 Top 8 seeds qualified for the quarterfinals from 14U, 16U and 19U. Which shows how accurate and reliable the rankings that are used to decide the both the at-large invitations and seedings are. However, once in the playoff round, the lower ranked teams had a reasonable chance to win, with many of the higher seeds losing to lower seeds. On the Youth side, only 24 of the 32 teams made it to the quarters.
2. Scouts Everywhere
In both locations, I saw coaches scouting players at every round robin game. On the youth side, there were junior and college coaches in every corner and in the stands. For the girls,nearly every DI college and many DIII coaches were along the glass and in specially designated areas to watch all the 16U games and many 14U and 19U games.
While Nationals, clearly isn’t the only opportunity to be seen, it certainly helps. It is a big deal. So I now understand why making Nationals from highly-competitive districts is so important to winning their district if they won’t be one of the 3 at-large invitation teams.
I also saw several DIII coaches talking to eligible players who hadn’t committed yet after games.
3. Many Scouts Left After the Preliminary Divisional Games
I flew back to New Jersey from Dallas at the end of the round-robin play, and saw many coaches checking out of our hotel or pulling their carry-on bags on that Saturday. Clearly they were heading home after 3 days of non-stop games. Based on my previous conversations with coaches, if they are efficient in their scouting, they will have seen enough of all the players they were watching.
4. Networking Galore
I happened to be staying in a hotel where many other NCAA coaches were staying. I was able to view first-hand lots of talks happening between team coaches and college coaches in both the arena and the hotel lobby/bars. Once again, reinforcing the importance of being at Nationals for the recruiting process. I know of at least one eligible player who was contacted after Nationals based on their appearance at Nationals.
5. USA Hockey Scouts in Attendance
It was nice to see at least two USA Hockey representatives watching games and players. I am assuming it was in anticipation of the upcoming USA Hockey District camps taking in place in May and June to select player for the 15’s, 16/17s and 18’s Camps. This gives USA Hockey a bigger body of work to judge players rather and greater level of consistency across districts rather than just relying on the coaches who may only attend one or two District camps.
As a reminder, the research compiled all the roster information for players from current DI women’s hockey team websites and combined them with the latest public women’s college hockey commitment data to help determine where spots have been filled and which schools may still be looking for players to start in the 2023 and 2024 school years.
Keep in mind, due to Covid, players who started playing in 2018 or 2019 were given an extra year of eligibility. In addition, 12 schools (all the Ivys, most of NEWHA plus Union and RPI) did not play in 2020-21 – so their 2018 or 2019 players can still be on their rosters for another season or two.
Finally, many of these extra-year players have the option to either stop playing after their 4th year of playing, transfer & play one more year elsewhere or stay-and-play for a 5th year at their current school. This makes predicting which teams would be looking for freshmen goalies in 2023 and 2024 tough, since many schools might prefer an experienced transfer student. It is very possible that even the coaching staffs for these schools may not know for sure what their student-athletes will do.
Here is the analysis which tries to shed light on where defenders are committed and current players are getting to the end of their college careers (by year).
DI Womens Hockey DEfense By Grad Year & Class
The following (ugly looking) table shows the number of D by class year on their current roster and their anticipated graduation year. Then the currently publicly known number of D commits by start year is also provided.
Note: Gray teams did not play in 2020-21 and thus have players with an extra year of eligibility even though they are currently listed as a Jr or Sr.
Players that are designated as 0.5 F and 0.5D if they are listed as both positions on their team’s website.
If you are a 2023 or 2024 D, the above table may help guide you to certain teams that may still be looking for defenders.
A few observations and notes:
If there are ~340 D positions, then usually ~85 D should be recruited every year.
It looks like ~15 D spots have shifted from 2023/24 to 2025. So ~15 less spots will be available for 2023/24 grads combined (~155 spots)
Average D players on a team is ~8, but there are 4 teams with 10 or more D that will likely not replace 1 or 2 of those slots
It appears as though many of the 2023 Defense spots are already taken but there is likely still another ~15 spots available across a handful of schools.
If you are a 2024 grad, many spots still appear to be open. However, 2025 looks like it will have more openings than usual, so you could also consider taking a Post Grad year (~100 for 2025 vs ~70 for 2024).
This is the last post on creating recruiting videos and it focuses on where to upload your video to share with coaches.
There are two types of situations to share videos with coaches. The first, is directly one-to-one with a specific coach and the second is one-to-many.
Video Analytics
Ideally, in both situations your want to post the video in a manner where you can track some metrics about your video. This could include various attributes like who has watched you video, how many times the video has been watched. In addition, you might also be able to track location, how long users watched the video and where the user came from prior to watching your video (e.g. search, email, social media etc.)
YouTube
The easiest method to upload a video to share is using YouTube. A public YouTube video lets your video be found via search engines and within YouTube and you can easily track views and additional measurements about your video. You can also upload the same or personalized videos for specific coaches or schools separately to track viewership by team. In most situations, YouTube offers all of these hosting services for free.
Vimeo
Another similar service is Vimeo which offers both free and paid options depending on which capabilities you might want for hosting , tracking and possibly editing capabilities.
Social Media Platforms
Many student-athletes also use social media platforms, such as, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, to share their recruiting videos. This allows coaches to view the videos at their convenience and share them with other members of their coaching staff.
You can also store video files in a private folder in the cloud using Google Drive, Dropbox or Box and share links to those files with specific teams or individuals. Once again, using trackable links and privacy controls, you can control and specify who has access to you files and check if coaches have watched the videos.
Other Channels
It’s important to note that college coaches and recruiters may also use other resources to evaluate prospective student-athletes, such as game film, scouting services, and in-person evaluations. Therefore, it’s important for student-athletes to showcase their skills and abilities through multiple channels to increase their visibility to college coaches.
Team Website
One last category is the host the video on the same site where you publish you online hockey resume. It can be on your team site, using a recruiting service or on your Champs App profile page. Currently Champs App only allows YouTube video links, but in the future you will be able to store your videos directly on your profile page then share and track who has watched you videos.
Feel free to share your method of hosting your highlight videos – please send us your preferred method and we can add them to this post.
This post is not about creating professional hockey videos for teams or coaches. Nor is it intended to help with analytics or stat tracking like Hudl or Instat. Instead it is simply just to help players and parents make simple highlight videos college coaches want to see from potential recruits. As a result, we will only cover basic tools to help edit and produce these types of videos to the exclusion of fancy stat software packages used for more sophisticated needs.
There are dozens of premium hockey-specific video editing tools out there. This post does not cover in any of them. Feel free to do an online search if you want to find some of the top names in this category. Instead, we will only discuss the common general purpose video editing tools that are most popular and relatively simple to use.
There are also many, many service providers who will be happy to make professional looking videos for you for a fee. Nothing wrong with hiring someone to make your video, but with a little effort, you can save yourself a lot of money.
Candidly, I have used very basic tools to help edit video and create graphics. I’ve never paid for any additional software beyond what I already use either at home or at work. There are many parents (and definitely most players) who have better media-making skills than I do. But what matters is delivering presentable videos that meet the needs of coaches.
As for editing tools, there are many free programs and several movie editing tools which are relatively low cost. All of them are pretty easy to use once you’ve gone up the learning curve on your first couple of videos. . These software packages include iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe, Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Video Editor. And these days there are many browser-based video editing tools as well.
You can make your own graphics using common graphical editing and presentation tools like Keynote, Adobe, Powerpoint and Google Slides. There are also good, either free or very inexpensive graphical design offerings like Canva and stock image sites.
What to include in all your videos
An intro graphic which provides the basic information about the player. Ideally it includes most of the following:
Profile pic
Birthday
Height
Graduation Year
Current Team
Position
Jersey #
Current Coach
Contact Info (optional)
During each clip/scene use some type of graphic (e.g. circle, arrow etc.) to identify the player
Informational Graphics
Another common element I’ve seen in highlight video (not full games) is some type of on-screen graphic which communicates to the viewer what type of highlight they are about to see. It could be anything from a goal or assist, to a good defensive play or fancy pass. If there are specific critical attributes of a player’s game that you want to emphasize, explicitly calling them out on-screen beforehand can be helpful.
Should you include music?
That is a personal choice. Many coaches have told me they’d prefer not to listen to a soundtrack with the video, but they can always mute the sound of any video if they don’t want to hear it.
I am sure I am missing some additional editing tools and other methods of cutting video, so please feel free to send us your methods and we can add them to this post.
DI Women’s Hockey Commitment Rate by Months Prior to College
2023 Commits
2023 commits are tracking at about 18% less than the last two years (34 less commitments). Due to 5th year eligibility, red-shirting and grad transfers this is consistent with our recent analysis on forwards and goalies. It appears as though many of the 2023 Forward spots are already taken but there is likely still another 20-30 spots available across a handful of schools.
2024 Commits
The 2024 commits are slightly behind the 2023 commitment rate as of December, 2022 by about 12% (64 2024’s vs 73 2023’s).
The first couple of commits for 2025 have been announced. Both are for the forward position and are Canadian players who are 2006 birth years, but will only start in 2025.
In both the US and Canada, LiveBarn is the most popular hockey streaming service. What is great about LiveBarn is that you can easily download either 30 second clips or full games. While sometimes the quality isn’t great or the camera is sometimes not focused on the puck, in general it is one of the most consistent sources of footage that you can use.
The second most popular game streaming available is from HockeyTV. Depending on the event and/or rink, the service has a very good browsing capability to find specific games and navigating within games. The big drawback for HockeyTV is that you need to pay an extra fee to download specific games – which makes it expensive to use for editing full games. My trick is to just use my phone’s camera to record specific highlights from of the HockeyTV screen.
Additional Streaming Services
There are also other hockey streaming services available in specific regions or events. For example, in Minnesota there are rink-specific feeds that you can pay to watch games. And there is also the GameOn streaming service in Canada that is available for major events and specific rinks. Once again, the fees vary either by one-time access to events (e.g. tournament or showcase) or subscriptions.
Recoding Games Yourself (or by someone on your team)
At almost every rink, you will find at least one parent with either an iPad or video camera on a tripod recording or streaming a game. The quality is usually very good and as long as they camera person pays attention the entire game, there is usually some great footage.
In addition, I consistently see at least one parent along the glass takes out their phone every time their kid is on the ice and start the recording their shifts.
One more method is to use GoPro cameras. This is my personal favorite source of game footage as a supplement to LiveBarn. It is especially good for goalies. While you only need one camera and you can decide which end is more appropriate to record based on your player and period, I like to use two cameras at both ends of the rink behind the goalies. The only challenge with using GoPros is that it is a lot of work. Beyond shelling out ~$200 or more for a camera, memory card and necessary accessories to stick it to the glass, you also need to make sure you have enough power to last the entire game. This can be through charging the in-camera batteries or connecting an external battery pack. And remembering to charge the batteries and empty the memory cards before/after games is another chore. However, the payoff is that the quality of the video for offensive plays and goalie footage is about as good as it gets. I can’t tell you how many goalies (and their parents) have asked me to send them video of their end when they know that I recorded their game.
OTHER FOOTAGE SOURCES
Sometimes a game or a highlight is available from some third party that I have seen on social media or know about from our team chat.
Many games are live broadcast or posted to YouTube either by the opposing team or a tournament/showcase organizer (e.g. NAHA Winterhawks games and more). You may be able to find game footage just by doing a search on YouTube. If you have a premium YouTube subscription you can download videos with your account. There are also “free” websites to download YouTube videos, but since many of the sites are filled with suspicious ads and potential malware, I won’t link to any of them here. I would just suggest you use caution when using one of these services.
Similar to YouTube, many parents live stream games using their personal social media accounts. I have used footage from Faceboook Live and SeasonCast . You may not be able to download the full game video, but you can use your phone to capture short highlights.
Social Media
Every once in a while I will find a short highlight I want to use on Twitter or Instagram. Usually someone else posted a great play from an angle or a shot that is better than what I have on my footage, so I find a way to capture or download it.
One more trick I use is a screen recording software (sometimes I use Screencast – but you can also just use Zoom to record your screen) to capture and download video from a 3rd party source that is not available for easy download.
I am sure I am missing some additional sources of footage and other methods of capturing game video, so please feel free to send us your methods and we can add them to this post.
As a reminder, the research compiled all the roster information for players from current DI women’s hockey team websites and combined them with the latest public women’s college hockey commitment data to help determine where spots have been filled and which schools may still be looking for players to start in the 2023 and 2024 school years.
Keep in mind, due to Covid, players who started playing in 2018 or 2019 were given an extra year of eligibility. In addition, 12 schools (all the Ivys, most of NEWHA plus Union and RPI) did not play in 2020-21 – so their 2018 or 2019 players can still be on their rosters for another season or two.
Finally, many of these extra-year players have the option to either stop playing after their 4th year of playing, transfer & play one more year elsewhere or stay-and-play for a 5th year at their current school. This makes predicting which teams would be looking for freshmen goalies in 2023 and 2024 tough, since many schools might prefer an experienced transfer student. It is very possible that even the coaching staffs for these schools may not know for sure what their student-athletes will do.
Here is the analysis which tries to shed light on where forwards are committed and current players are getting to the end of their college careers (by year).
DI Womens Hockey FOWARDS By Grad Year & Class
The following (ugly looking) table shows the number of forwards by class year on their current roster and their anticipated graduation year. Then the currently publicly known number of forward commits by start year is also provided.
Note: Gray teams did not play in 2020-21 and thus have players with an extra year of eligibility even though they are currently listed as a Jr or Sr.
Players that are designated as 0.5 F and 0.5D if they are listed as both positions on their team’s website.
If you are a 2023 or 2024 forward, the above table may help guide you to certain teams that may still be looking for skaters.
A few observations and notes:
If there are ~600 F positions, then usually ~150 F should be recruited every year.
It looks like ~25 F spots have shifted from 2023/24 to 2025. So ~25 less spots will be available for 2023/24 grads combined (~275 spots)
The average number of F per team is 14 players. But there are 9 teams with 16 or more Fs (likely due to Covid) which means at least 1 or 2 of those players will not be replaced on those teams.
It appears as though many of the 2023 Forward spots are already taken but there is likely still another 20-30 spots available across a handful of schools.
If you are a 2024 grad, you might also consider taking a Post Grad year and plan to start in 2025 when it seems there will be a lot more openings (~175 for 2025 vs ~130 for 2024).
Having talked to almost 40 Division I women’s hockey coaches, this is the feedback I’ve received on different types of video compilations:
1. Highlight videos
There is nothing wrong with putting together clips of the best offensive and/or defensive plays a skater has made throughout the season. For goalies, it would be great saves from real games (not practice). While coaches know that whatever is in a highlight reel is not representative of how any player plays for a full game, highlight clips show off how you can play when you are at your best. Keep in mind that coaches only get snapshots of a player when they watch live or on video, and unless you are a superstar or they get lucky, it is unlikely coaches be watching those key highlight moments. Whatever the position of the player, make sure you have at least a 2-3 minute compilation of your best moments so coaches can see what you are capable of.
2. Full Shifts for an Entire Game
This is the most important type of video coaches who are serious about recruiting you want to see. Coaches want to watch you play a full game – ideally in the least amount of time possible. Cutting a single game down to just your shifts can allow a coach to watch you play a full game in less than 20 minutes which would normally take 60-90 minutes. This is a highly efficient use of a coach’s time instead of having to sit through whistles, ice cuts and trying to figure out when you will come out on the ice. Now, obviously coaches can’t see everything they want to see –like how you behave on the bench or how you handle mistakes after a whistle, but it certainly gets them a lot closer to knowing what kind of player you are.
The only other key point on this topic, is to make sure the game you choose is against a competitive, high quality opponent (check out My Hockey Rankings for how good the opponent is), since coaches don’t really want to watch a lopsided game. An exception would be if you are a goalie getting peppered with pucks by a much better team, and you stood on your head.
3. Compilation of Game-Specific Situations
This is a nice-to-have type of video to include in your profile. For every position there are key, fundamental game situations that each player encounters every game. Putting together a very focused highlight reel of just that one situation spanning several games, really helps coaches see how consistent you are with your game. A good example is a watching a defender go back to retrieve a puck in their end while being chased by an opposing forward – how often does the D use deception (a fake) before they touch the puck?
Here are some examples of game specific situation compilations you can put together for each position:
Forwards:
Offensive Zone entries
Power Play
Penalty Kill
Breakouts
Shots (e.g. wrist, slap, snap, one-timer)
Breakaways
Defense:
Defensive zone puck retrievals
1-on-1s
2-on-1s
Passing
Offensive production/shots
Goalies:
1-on-1s
2-on-1s
Penalty Kill
Penalty Shots/Shoot Outs
In the next post we will discuss how to compile all the different types of video footage you could use to create the above videos.
We receive a lot of questions and comments about the recent Goalie recruiting classes for DI women’s college hockey teams. Almost all of them related to how tough it is has been for 2023 and especially 2024 goalies to find DI opportunities.
Recently I compiled all the roster information for goalies from current DI women’s hockey team websites and combined them with the latest public women’s college hockey commitment data to try and makes sense of the what and why it seems so tough for goalies right now.
Due to Covid, players who started playing in 2018 or 2019 were given an extra year of eligibility. In addition, 12 schools (all the Ivys, most of NEWHA plus Union and RPI) did not play in 2020-21 – so their 2018 or 2019 players can still be on their rosters for another season or two.
Finally, many of these extra-year players have the option to either stop playing after their 4th year of playing, transfer & play one more year elsewhere or stay-and-play for a 5th year at their current school. This makes predicting which teams would be looking for freshmen goalies in 2023 and 2024 tough, since many schools might prefer an experienced transfer student. It is very possible that even the coaching staffs for these schools may not know for sure what their student-athletes will do.
Here is the analysis I compiled which tries to explain why goalie recruiting seems tighter than previous years and which teams could be looking for goalies (by year).
DI Womens Hockey Goalies By Grad Year & Class
The following (ugly looking) table shows the number of goalies by class year on their current roster and their anticipated graduation year. Then the currently publicly known number of goalie commits by start year is also provided.
Note: Gray teams did not play in 2020-21 and thus have players with an extra year of eligibility even though they are currently listed as a Jr or Sr.
If you are a 2023 or 2024 goalie, the above table may help guide you to certain teams that may still be looking for a goalie.
A few observations and notes:
In a “normal” year there should be about 33 freshman goalies per year (44 teams x 3 goalies per team / 4 years)
Several schools (e.g. Clarkson, Merrimack, Ohio State) already have four goalies on their roster – so they likely would want to get that number down to three – thus not replace all their current upper-class goalies one-for-one.
It appears as thought most of the 2023 Goalie spots are already taken (other than maybe a handful of spots that remain open).
I am no expert on NCAA eligibility, but I can imagine it is also possible that some current underclass goalies could also redshirt due to lack of playing time or injury, which could also reduce the number of goalies needed for 2024 (or even 2025 & 2026).
Depending on how many current senior (2023 or 2024) goalies stick around for the 2023-24 season, it is possible that only 10-15 goalie spots remain for the incoming class of 2024 – which is not very many.
If you are a 2024 grad, you might also consider taking a Post Grad year and plan to start in 2025 when it seems there will be a lot more openings.
