USHL VS BCHL

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hockeypuck91
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USHL VS BCHL

Post by hockeypuck91 » Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:55 am

What do you think is the smarter way to go USHL or BCHL?

Blue&Gold

Post by Blue&Gold » Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:56 am

That's like asking which is better: New York Strip or Ribeye....

Gopher Blog
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Post by Gopher Blog » Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:40 pm

From past conversations I have had with some college coaches, the USHL is the best league if you have the opportunity.

The main criticisms of the BCHL that I have heard from college coaches is that the BCHL doesn't have the depth of talent that the USHL does (which is why you see inflated offensive numbers in the BCHL) and there is a greater focus on two way play in the USHL.

Ferguson22
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Post by Ferguson22 » Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:40 am

Team Canada East (OPJHL) 4 Team USA (USHL) 1
Team Canada West (BCHL) 4 Team USA (USHL) 1
Team Canada West (BCHL) 4 Team Canada East (OPJHL) 2

this years world junior classic in trail, bc proves that the top talent in canada is better than the ushl. and no major junior kids were on these teams either

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Post by Gopher Blog » Mon Jan 28, 2008 8:47 pm

Ferguson22 wrote:Team Canada East (OPJHL) 4 Team USA (USHL) 1
Team Canada West (BCHL) 4 Team USA (USHL) 1
Team Canada West (BCHL) 4 Team Canada East (OPJHL) 2

this years world junior classic in trail, bc proves that the top talent in canada is better than the ushl. and no major junior kids were on these teams either
Actually, the USA team only lost one game and it was to the Canada West team. It beat the Canada East team (3-2). But even going beyond that, your post proves how little you actually know about the true makeup of the rosters. Look at the rosters for the Canadian teams and you'll see what I mean.

Look at the roster for Team Canada West for instance: Team Canada West roster

What do you see? You see 10 players from the AJHL, 9 players from the BCHL, and a couple of players from a few other locales. In other words, they put together a team from MULTIPLE juniors leagues as opposed to just the one league like the USHL. It was NOT just the BCHL. :lol:

Besides, one game doesn't say much. We are talking about an overall league and what it provides. One game like this doesn't represent much. Especially when one team is made up of players from more than one league.

In any case, I will take the word of a handful of D1 college coaches that actually scout these leagues as being more informed. The talent at the top end is somewhat comparable between the USHL and BCHL but the depth isn't even close. The USHL is far better in that regard. Any college coach will tell you that.

Heck, I read comments from a few players that have played in both leagues and they said essentially the same thing. There is much more emphasis on two way play in the USHL and the upper end players in the USHL can't pile up points as easily because the depth in the league is better. 8)
Last edited by Gopher Blog on Mon Jan 28, 2008 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

George Blanda
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Post by George Blanda » Mon Jan 28, 2008 8:55 pm

Gopher Blog -

If you were Bob Motzko would you be upset that Jordy Christian chose the BCHL over the USHL?

In the games I saw him play he was a pretty one dimensional player and I think that the USHL would have helped him develop a better defensive game.
"they are LAME" -darkdemon on SJU hockey

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Post by Gopher Blog » Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:01 pm

George Blanda wrote:Gopher Blog -

If you were Bob Motzko would you be upset that Jordy Christian chose the BCHL over the USHL?

In the games I saw him play he was a pretty one dimensional player and I think that the USHL would have helped him develop a better defensive game.
Upset? I am sure he was supportive of it. But given Motzko came from the USHL ranks, I bet his preference would be to have a kid play in that league. He knows what each situation can provide and I am sure he would have liked to see the kid back with Sioux Falls (where he helped start their team).

Personally, I think it was a mistake for Christian to go up there. I think your take on him is pretty accurate and that is why I think he would have been better off in the USHL. It would have forced him to work harder on both ends and I believe it would have prepared him better for what he'll face in the WCHA.

I was surprised when he didn't go back to Sioux Falls but I heard his dad didn't like how he was used there in his short stint there last year. He was at their tryout this past summer but I had heard before the tryout that he was probably going to the BCHL. Obviously that ended up being true.

Stabbin31
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Post by Stabbin31 » Mon Feb 11, 2008 2:46 pm

From the people that I talk to and the games that I have seen, the USHL and BCJHL are pretty close as far as "talent". With the Top end talent coming out of the BCJ and the maybe a better 2 way player out of the USHL.

Both are great leagues, with different styles of play. I posed the question to an NHL scout at a game I was at. How close is the USHL to the CHL (W,O,Q)? He said that while the USHL has gotten a LOT better, they are still not that close. He even made mention about the World Jr A series and how the USHL didnt fair to well against non Major Jr A teams. His quote was "Well the USHL struggled with Jr A teams from Canada, and those leagues are NOT Major Junior".

So I said what about the USHL beating up on the Q teams. He just smirked and said, yeah have them play when the Q teams have their guys back from pro camps.

He did also mention that the USHL is a great league with a TON of talent. Great players and a great leagues, but not to the caliber of the CHL.

I have heard this same thing from a lot of people "in the know".

Let it be know that I am an American and I am a huge fan of American Jr Hockey. Just wanted to add my prospective.

Ryan
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Post by Ryan » Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:15 pm

I know it probably doesn't mean a whole lot, but the teams in the Jr. A challenge each had a few games prior to the tournament and had time to figure each other out a bit. USHL did not.

I think the BCHL is more on par with the USHL than the NAHL, though.

Some kids have the opportunity to play in the USHL and give it a go, but end up not being the main guy and not getting all the points, so they will opt to go to another league where they can be at the top.

Christian is sitting at 81 points in 59 games in the BCHL. He had 5 in 13 games for Sioux Falls. The next guy on his team has 43 points. He appears to be the marquee guy up in Prince George, whereas he wasn't in SF. It's tough to compete with guys like Nick Dineen, Jake Hansen, Corey Tropp, etc.

Maybe the move will give him more confidence on the offensive side as he goes to college. Time will tell.

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Post by flatontheice » Thu Oct 06, 2011 1:30 pm

Ryan wrote:I know it probably doesn't mean a whole lot, but the teams in the Jr. A challenge each had a few games prior to the tournament and had time to figure each other out a bit. USHL did not.

I think the BCHL is more on par with the USHL than the NAHL, though.

Some kids have the opportunity to play in the USHL and give it a go, but end up not being the main guy and not getting all the points, so they will opt to go to another league where they can be at the top.

Christian is sitting at 81 points in 59 games in the BCHL. He had 5 in 13 games for Sioux Falls. The next guy on his team has 43 points. He appears to be the marquee guy up in Prince George, whereas he wasn't in SF. It's tough to compete with guys like Nick Dineen, Jake Hansen, Corey Tropp, etc.

Maybe the move will give him more confidence on the offensive side as he goes to college. Time will tell.
Interesting debate from two years ago...what does everyone think now?

observer
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Post by observer » Fri Oct 07, 2011 12:09 pm

I see Steven Fogarty ended up in the BCHL, with Penticton, too. I think Chicago owned his USHL rights. Interesting choice. Different experience for sure.

youngblood08
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Post by youngblood08 » Fri Oct 07, 2011 7:08 pm

Didnt the NAHL go 12-2 versus some of the Canadian Jr teams? also Wenatchee Wild beat the Penticton team.

BBB
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Post by BBB » Fri Oct 07, 2011 8:18 pm

10 days into the BCHL season one of the reilly's matched his goal total from the USHL last season. Nuff said...He'll probably put up 40 this year and be all rookie in the WCHA next year.

youngblood08
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Post by youngblood08 » Sat Oct 08, 2011 7:22 pm

soft league. not physical. must not be as tough as USHL if he can put up those numbers that easy.

And I will take that rookie of the year in the wcha bet any day!!! Whats your line on it??

LetsPlayHockey22
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Post by LetsPlayHockey22 » Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:08 pm

IMO the BCHL is not as good as the USHL, I think that's obvious. If you look at the college commitment list in the USHL each team has over half of their players going to D1 schools. I also believe the BCHL is better than the NAHL though, in that both leagues send players to D1 schools but what we're seeing is more MN players opt for Canada to play (Lucia, Fogarty, Reilly's, Benik, etc.) USHL is in a league of their own above the rest.

youngblood08
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Post by youngblood08 » Thu Oct 13, 2011 2:24 pm

So 5 kids means more are heading to Canada? Just the Gopher kids and one ST Cloud recruit that couldnt make a USHL or NAHL roster. I guess it will be a couple of years to see if the Canada experiment works or not. There are way more MN kids in the USHL and NAHL. Seen as how they dont play against each other the debate will go on as to which is better.

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Post by MrBoDangles » Thu Oct 13, 2011 3:37 pm

youngblood08 wrote:So 5 kids means more are heading to Canada? Just the Gopher kids and one ST Cloud recruit that couldnt make a USHL or NAHL roster. I guess it will be a couple of years to see if the Canada experiment works or not. There are way more MN kids in the USHL and NAHL. Seen as how they dont play against each other the debate will go on as to which is better.
SCSU pipelines their players through Penticton.

Nearly 80% of Penticton's team is already commited.... Not saying that the league is better but you won't find that many current commits on a USHL team..

:idea:

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Post by mulefarm » Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:46 pm

MrBoDangles wrote:
youngblood08 wrote:So 5 kids means more are heading to Canada? Just the Gopher kids and one ST Cloud recruit that couldnt make a USHL or NAHL roster. I guess it will be a couple of years to see if the Canada experiment works or not. There are way more MN kids in the USHL and NAHL. Seen as how they dont play against each other the debate will go on as to which is better.
SCSU pipelines their players through Penticton.

Nearly 80% of Penticton's team is already commited.... Not saying that the league is better but you won't find that many current commits on a USHL team..
10 out of the 22 players are commited. I believe that is less than 50%. Haven't looked at USHL team commitments, but probably pretty close. Might be fun league to play in, but don't really see it as a step away from the WCHA. Most of the SCSU players will more than likely be 3-4 liners.

:idea:

57special
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Post by 57special » Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:21 pm

Penticton is a beautiful place with nice looking women. Prince George, not so much.

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Post by MrBoDangles » Tue Oct 18, 2011 3:11 pm

mulefarm wrote:
MrBoDangles wrote:
youngblood08 wrote:So 5 kids means more are heading to Canada? Just the Gopher kids and one ST Cloud recruit that couldnt make a USHL or NAHL roster. I guess it will be a couple of years to see if the Canada experiment works or not. There are way more MN kids in the USHL and NAHL. Seen as how they dont play against each other the debate will go on as to which is better.
SCSU pipelines their players through Penticton.

Nearly 80% of Penticton's team is already commited.... Not saying that the league is better but you won't find that many current commits on a USHL team..
10 out of the 22 players are commited. I believe that is less than 50%. Haven't looked at USHL team commitments, but probably pretty close. Might be fun league to play in, but don't really see it as a step away from the WCHA. Most of the SCSU players will more than likely be 3-4 liners.

:idea:
12 of the 15 that get any real playing time. 2 or 3 of the others are only sixteen YOlds.

Denver and North Dakota have had some of their better talent go through Penticton the last few years.

Is there a USHL team that currently has that many commited players?

youngblood08
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Post by youngblood08 » Wed Oct 19, 2011 12:49 pm

MrBoDangles wrote:
mulefarm wrote:
MrBoDangles wrote:
youngblood08 wrote:So 5 kids means more are heading to Canada? Just the Gopher kids and one ST Cloud recruit that couldnt make a USHL or NAHL roster. I guess it will be a couple of years to see if the Canada experiment works or not. There are way more MN kids in the USHL and NAHL. Seen as how they dont play against each other the debate will go on as to which is better.
SCSU pipelines their players through Penticton.

Nearly 80% of Penticton's team is already commited.... Not saying that the league is better but you won't find that many current commits on a USHL team..
10 out of the 22 players are commited. I believe that is less than 50%. Haven't looked at USHL team commitments, but probably pretty close. Might be fun league to play in, but don't really see it as a step away from the WCHA. Most of the SCSU players will more than likely be 3-4 liners.

:idea:
12 of the 15 that get any real playing time. 2 or 3 of the others are only sixteen YOlds.

Denver and North Dakota have had some of their better talent go through Penticton the last few years.

Is there a USHL team that currently has that many commited players?
I would problay not. USHL is a younger league, lets see how many at seasons end.

BBB
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Post by BBB » Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:10 pm

I just looked up muskegons commitments just because they are worst team in the ushl. They have 14 guys committed and 5 of their top 10 scorers are still undecided. So basically a team that doesn't have enough talent to hardly win a game in the ushl has their entire 3rd and 4th lines committed to go along with their 5th and 6th d.

observer
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Post by observer » Mon Oct 31, 2011 11:28 am

Here's what's a little confusing to me. The BCHL has 16 teams and approximately 320 skaters. The top team currently is the Penticton at 11-2. Penticton has 7 Minnesotans, 6 of which are in the top 7 scorers. Is Penticton the best team? Are the 6 Minnesotans their best players? Are the 6 Minnesotans among the top players in the League
(you'd guess yes based on the stats).

To me that means this league doesn't have many of the best Canadian players and they must all be in the other 10 Canadian Junior Leagues plus the three Major Junior Hockey Leagues (WHL 22 teams, QMJHL 17 teams and the OHL 20 teams to total over 1200 players combined).

I think the Minnesota players are all solid players but to be dominating their team's scoring as well as the League scoring seems unusual. Even the fact that the coach seems to have all the Minnesota boys skating together seems unusual to me or indicative they are the best or wouldn't the coach have mixed in some of the other players?

Is the BCHL one of the top 10 leagues (we're talking about 100+ teams) in Canada?

http://www.bchl.ca/leagues/stats_1team. ... entID=1413

Pens4
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Post by Pens4 » Sun Feb 12, 2012 12:48 am

BBB wrote:I just looked up muskegons commitments just because they are worst team in the ushl. They have 14 guys committed and 5 of their top 10 scorers are still undecided. So basically a team that doesn't have enough talent to hardly win a game in the ushl has their entire 3rd and 4th lines committed to go along with their 5th and 6th d.
When did committing to school start meaning something. Don't know the exact number of committments in USHL...but I'm pretty sure there are not that many roster spots open.

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Post by BBB » Mon Feb 13, 2012 8:22 pm

i am assuming most of these kids are getting 1/2 or more of their school paid for that are committing out of the USHL. There is competition for spots and its inevitable that some kids, regardless of where they played, won't stick but that is like every level of hockey. My guess is that a kid who can make a USHL team and perform in that league has a better shot of fitting in at a college than a kid who commits as a 16 yr old out of hs or even from the BCHL. The point someone made was that Penticton had all these guys committed and the USHL doesn't stack up.
I see all of our MN phenoms who headed west are all scoring 30 goals and 6 of the top 12 scorers in the BCHL are MN's who are all playing on the same team. Wow, for a league as good or better than the USHL, that mountain air sure brings out the best in our players. We should be sending them out there by the busloads. It looks like Penticton hasn't been in a close game in a few months and while it's nice to see our MN guys scoring a few points a game, I wonder if they will be prepared for the WCHA.

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