{"id":625,"date":"2026-05-18T12:06:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=625"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:06:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:06:47","slug":"boys-high-school-hockey-is-having-an-existential-crisis-it-starts-with-the-rinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=625","title":{"rendered":"Boys&#8217; high school hockey is \u2018having an existential crisis.\u2019 It starts with the rinks."},"content":{"rendered":"<article><div><p><span><span>S<\/span><\/span><span><span>ome of those in Massachusetts who coach, parent, and play hockey at the amateur level say something is broken in the way we develop players. At the grassroots level, they say, the sport has lost its way. <\/span><\/span><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=622\">Instinctive attacking play by Dor Turgeman, Luca Langoni have carried the Revolution back into contention<\/a><\/p><p><span>Clearly, the last 25 years, the ground here has shifted. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Gone are the simple days of playing town hockey, then for the local high school, then heading off to play in college. We are now the wild west of the east. <\/span><\/p><\/div><div><p><span>Private money has taken over the game, charging exorbitant prices for spots on exclusive teams with the promise of making it big. Families dump thousands of dollars into a sport where a bottleneck at the top \u2014 so few spots, so many players \u2014 has made playing in college a rare feat. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Taking a shoulder-to-chest hit in all of this is the MIAA, once the place where future pros developed. The club teams that grow our best players shrug, saying they\u2019re just serving parents and kids who want more, more, more. <\/span><\/p><div><div><div><span>Get Starting Point<\/span><\/div><div><span>A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/span><\/div><div><div><label>Enter Email<\/label><div><button>Sign Up<\/button><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><p><span>\u201cMassachusetts is having an existential crisis,\u201d said Topher Scott, a former Division 1 college coach who runs the consulting firm <u>Hockey Think Tank<\/u>, and says similar about his Chicagoland home. <\/span><\/p><p><span>On the outside, Massachusetts hockey is humming along. Most NHL teams have a player from this state. Team USA has no shortage of <u>hometown guys<\/u>. Our rinks feed rosters and coaching staffs at every level of the game. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Fans gripe about the Bruins, but they\u2019re a heavyweight franchise that <u>rakes in cash<\/u>. Hockey East games are a fun, frenetic watch, and often feature future NHL All-Stars. There\u2019s a good chance an SUV on your block has a large, smelly bag in it. <\/span><\/p><p><span>By any measure, the business of hockey is booming in the Commonwealth. Minnesota claims the State of Hockey title, but Massachusetts is a solid second. <\/span><\/p><p><span>So maybe it\u2019s the perfectionist streak in those who find fault with the way things are done in Massachusetts. Maybe it\u2019s an intergenerational misunderstanding. They could be right. <\/span><\/p><p><span>The last few months, the Globe had conversations with multiple NHL players, coaches, executives, player agents, high school players and coaches, local and state hockey administrators, and independent analysts. We found heaps of passion and exasperation about the landscape, and a dearth of ideas on how to change it. <\/span><\/p><p><span><i><b>Read more from this project:<\/b><\/i><i>MIAA boys\u2019 hockey has taken a hit, but playing for your community? \u2018You can\u2019t beat it.\u2019<\/i><i> | <\/i><i>Massachusetts is losing the battle of the \u2018State of Hockey\u2019 to Minnesota. What\u2019s working there?<\/i><\/span><\/p><div><div><h2>Rinks difficult to access<\/h2><\/div><\/div><p><span>The root of the current crisis, Scott suggested, is the rink itself. Amid handwringing about the <u>loss of outdoor hockey spaces<\/u>, indoor rinks have become inaccessible to a growing number of families. Low-cost, idle-time, freewheeling hockey is an activity of the past.<\/span><\/p><p><span>In other words, this is serious business.<\/span><\/p><p><span>The majority of the state\u2019s rinks were once municipally owned and operated. The <u>melting down of the MDC<\/u> \u2014 it was also known for fostering parks and political patronage \u2014 in 2003 put <u>dozens of Orr-era rinks up for sale<\/u>, or out of business. Private interests swooped in, gave some of them much-needed facelifts, and kept building more.<\/span><\/p><p><span>According to Hockey Think Tank\u2019s research, 80 of the 148 rinks in Massachusetts today are privately owned. <\/span><\/p><p><span>This state has some of the highest energy costs in the country. Rather than community centers, rinks have become revenue generators. No longer drained in the summer, operators have 12 months of ice slots to fill. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Massachusetts went from a handful of travel teams for all-stars to more than 60 clubs in \u201cAAA,\u201d the top youth hockey level. More travel teams meant more entrepreneurs masquerading as coaches, and more salesmanship. Words such as \u201celite\u201d and \u201cpremier\u201d became such common labels, they lost their meaning. <\/span><\/p><p><span>AAA hockey, Scott said, is \u201cno longer for the best players. It\u2019s for the best players who can afford it.\u201d <\/span><\/p><div><div><h2>Academies pop up<\/h2><\/div><\/div><p><span>Publicschool teams have long had to compete with private and prep schools for players, but with other options sprouting up everywhere, public school hockey lost out in the last quarter-century.<\/span><\/p><p><span>Seventy-eight cities and towns have dropped boys\u2019 hockey since 2001-02, according to MIAA records. Fifteen new co-op programs were created. In the last eight years, 240 fewer boys and 237 fewer girls signed up.<\/span><\/p><p><span>Hockey-based academies, <u>following the Canadian model<\/u>, began to offer students a way to spend as much time on the ice as they do in the classroom \u2014 <u>or taking online classes<\/u>. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people hounding these parents because these programs, and I\u2019ll specifically say juniors and the academies, these are entrepreneurs,\u201d said Falmouth High coach <u>Paul Moore<\/u>, USA Hockey\u2019s coach-in-chief for Massachusetts. \u201cThey\u2019re businesspeople. They need bodies. They\u2019re fighting for players. And they\u2019re going to go anywhere to find them because they need people to pay for their product.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span>Thus there are promises that 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds will be scouted at tournaments. Grade-schoolers who play 60 to 70 games or more a season might get 15 minutes of ice time in each one, and a handful of puck touches. Coaches say individual skill is greater, but hockey sense is in shorter supply. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cAll youth sports are out of control,\u201d said state Senator Barry Finegold (D-Andover), and \u201chockey is at the top of the list.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span>Parents are loath to buck the system because their kids will bear the brunt. Their spot will fast be filled. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cEvery single parent I talk to is stressed out about it,\u201d said Finegold, who aims this spring to hold a summit of the governing bodies of the state\u2019s most popular scholastic sports to try to fix the culture. \u201cThey want kids to just be kids. But they have the FOMO [fear of missing out].\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>Kevin Kavanagh, executive director of Massachusetts Hockey, says it is a societal issue. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cHas he looked at the [music] conservatories? They\u2019re out of control, too,\u201d Kavanagh said. \u201cWe want what\u2019s best for our kids, and that\u2019s a great outlook for a parent, but as a society we haven\u2019t figured out how to reel some of that in yet.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>The cost of travel hockey depends on the age, location, and level of the player. It\u2019s easy to spend $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or more on year-round travel hockey, given the ice time, equipment, travel, and fees. Nearly every NHLer from here (and all the other hockey-mad states save for Minnesota) trod that path. <\/span><\/p><p><span>All of this has left high school hockey, the kind where all roads lead to TD Garden and the state championship, with a blunted impact.<\/span><\/p><div><div><h2>Taking a different path<\/h2><\/div><\/div><p><span>The town pride, facing the rival down the road, showing up in an enemy barn as the visiting team? That magic still exists. Crowds have been buzzing at playoff games. It\u2019s just that dozens of the best players are missing. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Of the 39 players from Massachusetts under NHL contract as of late February, 21 did not play any MIAA hockey, instead going the prep school and\/or junior route. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Twelve played for MIAA schools as underclassmen before joining junior teams or the US National Team Development Program (NTDP). Four played only junior hockey while attending high school. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Colin Blackwell, of North Andover, was the most recent, and possibly the last, player to be drafted by an NHL team directly out of an MIAA school (St. John\u2019s Prep). San Jose drafted him in the seventh round (194th overall) in 2011, weeks before he enrolled at Harvard. <\/span><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=617\">Seven contracts the Bruins might try to unload this offseason<\/a><\/p><p><span>\u201cI definitely think I took the nontraditional route,\u201d Blackwell, a ninth-year pro now with the Stars, told the Globe after being drafted. \u201cI didn\u2019t have to leave for a prep school or for juniors.\u201d <\/span><\/p><div><div><div><noscript>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-medium_large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"table visualization\" class=\"wp-image-624\" height=\"714\" src=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/48c09baa9ecc78e36e7f90ea304ebffe-768x714.jpg\" width=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/48c09baa9ecc78e36e7f90ea304ebffe-768x714.jpg 768w, https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/48c09baa9ecc78e36e7f90ea304ebffe-300x279.jpg 300w, https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/48c09baa9ecc78e36e7f90ea304ebffe.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/noscript><\/div><\/div><\/div><p><span>But even he played travel hockey through age 16. Nearly everyone who makes the league does similar. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Another outlier, of sorts, is Teddy Stiga, Team USA\u2019s golden goal-scorer at the World Junior Championship. He is an 18-year-old Boston College freshman from Sudbury. <\/span><\/p><p><span>He started skating at the Valley Sports Arena in Concord. While attending the Fenn School, he played for Assabet, the Minuteman Flames and the Middlesex Islanders (13U), Boston Junior Eagles (14U, 16U), and then a prep school (Belmont Hill). He left for the US National Team Development Program as a junior, played two years there (and earned a second-round draft pick by Nashville in 2024), and joined BC this fall.  <\/span><\/p><p><span>His story might sound familiar to those who follow the game closely, but it is unusual in terms of hisage. Most Division 1 freshmen men\u2019s hockey players are two years older than Stiga, and have two to three years of junior experience, typically in the United States Hockey League (tier 1, the top level of American juniors) or North American Hockey League (tier 2). <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cIn my era, you went from high school as an 18-year-old kid right to college,\u201d said Moore, who played at UMass Dartmouth from 1981-85. \u201cThose days are over. They want you 20 turning 21, or 21 turning 22, as a freshman in college.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span>It is also nearly a requirement for Division 1 recruits to have played AAA club hockey. Some are worth the investment. Others are not. <\/span><\/p><p><span>In 1977, the Metropolitan Boston Hockey League debuted as an all-star league for the best high school players. Games were on Sundays and did not conflict with scholastic sports. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Today there are more than 60 AAA programs in Massachusetts, beginning at Squirt (9-10), Peewee (11-12), Bantam (13-14), 15U, 16U, 18U, and junior (ages 16-20). Outside of school hours, rinks are rocking. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cThe growth of the game is awesome,\u201d said Moore. \u201cYou\u2019ve got academy and junior teams popping up everywhere, and then you\u2019ve got the prep schools. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of hockey going on, which isn\u2019t a bad thing. But it\u2019s taking its toll on high school hockey, for sure.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>The MIAA was the path for a couple of Hall of Famers (Acton-Boxborough\u2019s Tom Barrasso and Randolph\u2019s Rod Langway; Jeremy Roenick went to Thayer Academy), and dozens of future NHLers and Division 1 standouts. Now? There are so few spots, and so many players, that a Division 3 or college club spot is the likely path for the best MIAA players. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cForget Division 1,\u201d said Moore. \u201cWe know the percentages and we know the odds. For him to play Division 3 hockey, he has to play a minimum of three years of junior hockey.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>And that comes at a cost \u2014 one that\u2019s greater than ever. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cBlue-collar parents are getting pushed out of our sport,\u201d Moore said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to combat that. I know what we do in Falmouth.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>The town owns and operates its own rink. It runs a boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 club program to help pay the bills, but town hockey and school hockey is the focus. Ice rates are relatively affordable. <\/span><\/p><p><span>The MIAA, executive director Bob Baldwin said, is about serving \u201cthe 92 or 93 percent of athletes who play their last game before college.\u201d High school hockey is about sportsmanship and camaraderie, not climbing the ladder toward a pro career. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cWe\u2019re proud as heck of those who make it to the next level, and hopefully they\u2019re doing it through one of our schools,\u201d Baldwin said. \u201cBut it\u2019s about maintaining programming that teaches the big picture, and the big picture is not that elite-elite player. The big picture is can a group of individuals come together to make it as far and as high as they can? And when you do, when you watch that, it\u2019s a really beautiful thing to watch.\u201d<\/span><\/p><div><div><h2>Is it all too much?<\/h2><\/div><\/div><p><span><u>Tim Lovell<\/u> said he wouldn\u2019t have traded his experience at Norwood High for the world. He gets warm fuzzies about spaghetti dinners, wearing his jersey to school on game days, the buzz of a rivalry game. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Lovell, 50, went undrafted after scoring a bunch at Maine and captaining UMass, and played seven pro seasons \u2014 one with the Providence Bruins. He has had quite a second career. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Some 20 years after he began giving walk-on hockey lessons at municipal rinks, <u>Lovell Arena<\/u> in Rockland has three ice sheets, seating for 1,500, a 375-seat restaurant, four bowling lanes, two golf simulators, a pro shop, and a live video feed.<\/span><\/p><p><span>Next door is a 40,000-square-foot, $30 million prep school with four girls\u2019 teams and three boys\u2019 teams. From August to May, Lovell Academy students skate morning and afternoon, and work out in the gym afterward. The elite teams travel the continent to play games. The training is demanding, and in volume \u201cprobably quadruple to five times,\u201d the school\u2019s founder said, of what is done in a traditional prep school program. <\/span><\/p><p><span>Is it all too much? <\/span><\/p><p><span>Scott likened it to letting kids dine on pure sugar. <\/span><\/p><p><span>That kind of lifestyle was apparently <u>good enough for Connor McDavid<\/u>, and it\u2019s not hard to find kids who want to follow his path. He\u2019d have plenty to do at a facility Lovell referred to as \u201cCandyland.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cIf the athlete loves what they\u2019re doing,\u201d Lovell said, \u201cthen the answer is no. I love when people [say], \u2018Oh, he\u2019s doing too much. He can\u2019t play two games in a day,\u2019 where, back in the day, you played your game in the morning, and then you were on the pond for like, eight hours.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span>Lovell said he\u2019s not changing the world. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cThat world\u2019s been here,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s what people want.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>He said about 2,000 kids on 120 youth teams sign up annually. And while he\u2019s making no promises, Lovell is selling the dream. <\/span><\/p><p><span>His coaches have NHL, minor pro, and major college experience, and with that, \u201cthey have the contacts and stuff like that at the higher levels,\u201d he said. \u201cThey can make a phone call and say, \u2018Hey, this kid\u2019s pretty good.\u2019 \u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>His most devoted pupil might be Senators forward Adam Gaudette. An eighth-year pro who has a career-high 16 goals, he learned \u201ca lot of skills, edge work, puckhandling, and skating\u201d from Lovell starting at age 7. <\/span><\/p><p><span>The Gaudettes moved from Taunton to Braintree so he could be closer to Lovell, and so he could attend Thayer Academy and play for former NHL star Tony Amonte. To fund three boys\u2019 rise to college hockey, Tara Gaudette helped Lovell in the office, while Doug Gaudette, a lieutenant with the Taunton Fire Department, did plumbing work for Lovell on the side. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cHe\u2019s still going over and fixing their toilets, and doing work on their Cape houses,\u201d Adam said, \u201cWe were fortunate. It was kind of like a give-and-take thing. The people they were close with, they didn\u2019t care about the money. They cared about us. We helped them when we could and they helped us when they could.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span>It wasn\u2019t a town name on his jersey, but he loved the crest. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cI was always with the same coaches, same group of guys,\u201d Gaudette said. \u201cWe were playing together since we were 5 years old. <\/span><\/p><p><span>\u201cI still see it now with the young guys in the Lovell program, they were all just little ones and I was coaching them when I was 18 years old in the summer, and now they\u2019re U15, U16 still playing together. It\u2019s great. I\u2019m still tight with those guys today. Some are still playing and some have moved on. It\u2019s something we\u2019ll have to connect us forever.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p><span>Some of them know it now, but all hockey lovers and lifers learn this eventually: All roads in this game lead to beer league. <\/span><\/p><p><span><i><b>Read more from this project:<\/b><\/i><i>MIAA boys\u2019 hockey has taken a hit, but playing for your community? \u2018You can\u2019t beat it.\u2019<\/i><i> | <\/i><i>Massachusetts is losing the battle of the \u2018State of Hockey\u2019 to Minnesota. What\u2019s working there?<\/i><\/span><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=615\">They\u2019re both Marines, 40-somethings, and waging generational fights. So why aren\u2019t Seth Moulton and Graham Platner allies?<\/a><\/p><p><\/p><\/div><\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The MIAA was once where future pros developed. Now, prep schools and club programs have shifted the balance of talent. \u201cMassachusetts is having an existential crisis,\u201d one expert said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Boys&#039; high school hockey is \u2018having an existential crisis.\u2019 It starts with the rinks. - Boston Relocation Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=625\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Boys&#039; high school hockey is \u2018having an existential crisis.\u2019 It starts with the rinks. - Boston Relocation Insider\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The MIAA was once where future pros developed. 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