“Why’d you wanna play college hockey?” “Because I love to play hockey, I wanna go to the NHL just like everybody does.”
Every hockey fan has seen Miracle, and knows this famous exchange between the characters of Ralph Cox and Jack O’Callahan. The path to the National Hockey League through college hockey is well-documented and goes back decades. As the game continues to grow every season, changes to Canadian Hockey League player eligibility have paved the way for the NCAA to become the predominant and most-successful pathway to the game’s biggest stage. Every player grows up dreaming of playing in hockey professionally, hopefully making it all the way to the NHL. Naturally, players from America, Canada, and abroad will weigh many options when deciding where to play their college hockey, but one factor that will be considered perhaps most heavily of all will be “how can this school help me accomplish my goal to play professional hockey, and hopefully make the NHL.”
The path to the NHL is not the same for everyone. Obviously, right? But statistics show just how different things can be based on when a player is drafted, if drafted at all. Via The Hockey Writers, a first-round pick, for example, has an 88.8% chance of playing an NHL game. Second round picks? 68% chance. Even third round picks are on the right side of a coin flip, at 52.5%. Once you cross into the fourth round or later, the odds drop steeply to make the NHL.
| Round Drafted | % Chance of 1+ NHL Game |
| 1 | 88.9% |
| 2 | 68.0% |
| 3 | 52.5% |
| 4 | 41.7% |
| 5 | 33.4% |
| 6 | 30.6% |
| 7 | 25.4% |
The Hockey Writers article doesn’t cover undrafted free agents (UDFAs), whose path to the NHL is even steeper. I was unable to find a good statistical analysis or number to put on the odds of a UDFA playing in the NHL, but considering the odds of 7th rounders and factoring in the fact that over 220 new players are drafted annually, UDFAs have far and away the hardest path to seeing their NHL debut.
Which brings us to the purpose of this article and this research: which college programs are the best at putting these unlikely NHLers into The Show? Does a higher success rate of getting these types of players to the NHL indicate a more successful developmental model at these schools, compared to schools that tend to recruit higher-drafted players that already start with higher odds of cracking an NHL lineup? That can be left up to interpretation. But we looked at the data of how many program alumni played 1+ NHL games over the last 10 years, and there were some noticeable trends and differences between programs that tend to recruit earlier-drafted players and those that tend to recruit later-drafted players and have more UDFAs on their collegiate rosters.
In the following charts, we broke down our data collection into multiple columns: total NHL alumni (1+ games) in the last 10 years (2015-2025); how many of those alumni were taken in “early rounds”, defined as rounds 1-3; how many were taken in the “late rounds”, defined as rounds 4-7; how many were UDFAs; what percentage of those total NHL alumni were either late round or UDFA players; and how many of those total alumni debuted in the last five years (2020-2025), which could point to greater, and more acutely relevant, recent success at developing these types of players.
So, what can we learn from this data? Well, we see a few things right off the bat: the teams that we expect to get a lot of early round picks do lead the way with NHL alumni. Michigan, Boston University, Boston College, Minnesota, and North Dakota pace the country in NHL alumni the last 10 years but also lead the way in “early round” players over the same time span. So these players naturally have a leg up in making it to the NHL. That also aligns with the reality of college hockey: these blue blood schools have always and likely will always attract those highly-drafted players, and that will likely continue now with CHL eligibility.
But that does not mean that their model is perfect for all player types. Simply look beyond round 3: fourteen schools have put double-digit players into the NHL out of the “late round + UDFA” pool in the last ten years, and only two (North Dakota, Minnesota) had similar results out of both their early and late round players. Does this mean that the other schools cater to the high-round picks for one reason or another and neglect players who don’t fall into that pool? Is it more about development opportunity and reps that are just not available for certain types of players? That is up for interpretation.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are schools that don’t usually attract early round players but still do a quality job of putting a high quantity of players into the NHL. Ohio State, St. Cloud State, Quinnipiac, and Minnesota State all jump off the page as programs with high raw number of alumni and a high percentage of those alumni being defined as “unlikely” NHLers based on draft status. Again, there’s questions that can be asked of this data. Do these schools have more opportunity for these types of players to try and take advantage of? Is it mindset buy-in or program philosophy that caters more to players with a chip on their shoulder? Every program is different in where they place their priorities and emphasis, but with so many programs developing these types of players into eventual NHL-caliber ones, it shows there is no one true model to get those results. It’s worth noting that the head coach of Minnesota State, Mike Hastings, is now leading the Wisconsin program, so it remains to be seen if Mankato will maintain their success under current head coach Luke Strand.
When looking at the last part of each chart, the view narrowing to the last five years of NHL alumni production out of the late round/UDFA pool, we see some newer names pop up: Providence, Western Michigan, and Northeastern round out the top-5 of that data set, showcasing their recent success of development and NHL-quality production. In some ways, that’s ultimately what matters; sure it’s great for programs to point to legends of the past, but in the “what have you done for me lately” world we live in today, more recently applicable results will hold more weight than showing off results of distant years. WMU unfortunately gets an asterisk for their data as one NHL debut in the last ten years was Scott Foster, he of arguably the most famous NHL debut in the last ten years against the Toronto Maple Leafs, but as a 2006 graduate he was not a product of WMU program’s developmental success within the reviewed time frame.
Northeastern fans reading may be wondering where their beloved Huskies stack up with all this data. We are the Northeastern Hockey Blog after all. And the Huntington Hounds stack up quite well in all three categories of note. Northeastern has produced 17 NHL players the last 10 years, the 9th-most nationally tied with Notre Dame and St. Cloud State, and fourth-best in Hockey East. Of those 17 players, 13 of them were late round picks or UDFAs, tied with St. Cloud State for the 5th-most in that time span and second-best in Hockey East. When the time frame is shortened to 5 years, the Huskies can claim 7 late round/UDFA NHL alumni, good for 5th-best again nationally and tied with reigning national champion Western Michigan. Among schools in the East, only Providence has been better at putting these unlikely NHL players into the world’s highest level of hockey. What this tells us is that the system put in place by Jim Madigan and continued by Jerry Keefe is one of proven success. Keefe of course was Madigan’s associate head coach for many years before taking the bench boss job in 2021.
Ultimately, there is no “right or wrong” to be gleaned from these charts. The goal for every hockey player is to make it to the National Hockey League, and there are many paths to get there, many schools that have shown they can put players into The Show, and many schools that have shown success with both early round draft selections and late round or undrafted players. When a recruit is making their decision on where to enroll, finding schools that have a history of success for players like them, whether that’s play style or draft pedigree or some other factor, will be a major factor in their decision. Schools that continue to invest in player development and prepare their players year over year to step into professional hockey will continue reap the most rewards in the ever-changing landscape of college sports. This data shows who has been among the most successful over the last decade- it’s up to each institution to put the effort in to ensure they are among that same list in the next decade.
As always, go Huskies!