Fantasy Hockey: USCHO Team Breakdown

Fantasy Hockey: USCHO talent breakdown. Over the last few years, USCHO has increased in number of players in the NHL and the overall talent being produced.

Amidst a conversation with some fellow hockey fans the question has arisen a few times: which college produces the most and best NHL talent. For years my response had automatically been: Boston College and Boston University. Well, here is my attempt to confirm or repudiate that notion.

The methodology: Below is a pull of all current USCHO players in the NHL and their totals form 2014-present. It takes the average number of NHL players from a given school, their total number of games played as well as the total goals, assists and points. What I found really surprised me. If a player had fewer than 5 points in a given year he would not be included on these lists. If a player is not playing anymore, he is not included on these lists.

Outliers: Minnesota State, Ohio State, Ferris State, Rennssalaer, Union and St. Cloud State will stand out if they have one or two above average players as there is nothing else to regress it to a mean (or if they do have others they have played fewer than 5 games so they don't move the needle). the breakout of those players.:

Minnesota State: David Backes, Casey Nelson (0 games played), Tyler Pitlick (0 games played)

Ohio State: Ryan Kesler, Ryan Dzingel, Zac Dalpe (0 games played), Max McCormick (0 games played)

Ferris State: Chris Kunitz

Rensselaer: Brandon Pirri, Mike Zalewski

Union -€” Daniel Carr, Josh Jooris, Shayne Gostibehere

St. Cloud State -€” Matt Cullen, Nic Dowd (0 games played)

Take aways: It's not that this list necessarily surprised me, the fact that among the power house schools North Dakota and Minnesota stand at the top isn't a revelation. It did surprise me to see Boston University and Notre Dame so far down the list.

Personally, I think two schools are going to see a bump over the next two years: Michigan and Harvard. Michigan has Zach Werenski and Kyle Connor in this year as rookies, Zach has 11 points in 8 games and Kyle had a slow start (currently on IR) but should be excellent down the stretch. In addition to the rookies, Dylan Larkin and Max Pacioretti should continue to show strong production as they develop further (or just continue their existing production). Harvard has Jimmy Vesey who I've wrote ad nauseam but they also have Alex Killorn who has been playing excellent lately and should continue above average production, especially as that second line of Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson and him find a fresh breathe of air after a down year in 2015-2016.

I think two schools are on the decline: Minnesota doesn't have a lot of huge talent to carry the torch in the near future. Thomas Vanek, Phil Kessel, Kyle Okposo and Erik Johnson all continue to get older and will see production decrease.

Denver was one of the reasons I wrote this article as they don't seem to have any great talent coming through as of late and I think as such we will see a decline in their status as well. Joe Colborne is having a great start for the Avalanche which I'm curious to see if it's a flash in the pan or a trend to continue, shy of that I don't see it