The Formula to National Success as a Small School

The not-so-simple answer to the question: How does RPI hockey compete in this era?

Photo: RPI Athletics

RPI’s last 2+ decades have created lots of questions about what the program’s ceiling is and whether the program can realistically compete in this new era of college athletics. I wanted to write this article to layout if RPI can compete nationally with all the changes to the NCAA, if so, how they can do it. However, before even getting to all those changes and their impact, the way to win generally as a program is important to go over. This also isn’t just applicable to RPI; it’s the same for every small school out there.

What I (and many others I assume) have discovered over the years is that there’s a clear recruiting and on-ice formula that small schools have to follow in order to compete nationally. This is the formula that Quinnipiac has been following to be a top program nationally the past 5 or so years, and it’s also the one that Minnesota State followed under Mike Hastings during their excellent run. These are the two main examples I use since these are the two programs that I feel perfected the formula, and that’s why Quinnipiac was able to win it all while Mankato made it to the title game (and had a 3rd period lead that they gave up).

What this article won’t be focusing on is the recent NCAA landscape changes and the effect of that. Those matter a lot, and there will be a follow-up article (a part 2 if you will) about how you follow this recruiting and on-ice formula as a small school while disadvantaged by those rules. For this article though, let’s breakdown the recruiting and on-ice system.

Part 1: Recruit Top Older Players

At a school like RPI or even Quinnipiac, you’re not getting top prospects who are top NHL draft picks. When Brandon Pirri came to RPI, it was an entirely different era. That’s not going to happen again barring RPI getting a major upgrade in facilities and the ability to pay players, and even then, it is quite unlikely.

It is possible to get some mid to late round picks, and I’d say your ideal roster has a handful of these players. Quinnipiac brought in Elliott Groenewold as a true freshman last year and Ethan Wyttenbach this year, as examples, and usually has somewhere around 5-6 draft picks on the roster. Minnesota State had Nathan Smith on the roster when they made it to the National Championship in 2022. Cornell had Morgan Barron on their excellent 2020 team and has typically had a handful of mid to late round picks on the team. There’s plenty more examples, but you get the idea.

However, the majority of your roster is going to be made up of older players who have played at least 2-3 years of junior hockey (even a lot of their drafted players fit this bill and didn’t enroll until 19 or 20). They still have talent and skill, just not as much, but they are older and more experienced. Traditionally, these have been players that are playing multiple years in the USHL or BCHL.

These are players like Zach Metsa and Ethan De Jong on Quinnipiac’s national title team. Both are skilled, good players who played leading roles on that team, but they’ve both primarily only played in the AHL to this point with Metsa only just now getting NHL games. For Mankato, they had Ryan Sandelin and Julian Napravnik among the leaders of that national runner-up team in 2022. Those are just a few examples, but both programs have been littered with these types of players that come to college older, develop and become excellent college players, and then top out in the AHL or European leagues most likely.

Obviously, you also have to do a good job developing these players once they get to campus, but you can’t compete for national championships without great players. You have to recruit the players and then develop them. It has been a big challenge finding and keeping players of that caliber, even when they’re older, for small schools in the past.

However, it has now become a whole lot easier. With the rule change to allow CHL players to play college hockey, there is more talent than ever before to recruit. All 3 major junior leagues in Canada are high quality leagues. The consensus is the WHL and OHL are both on par with the USHL, if not better, while the QMJHL is a bit below. They’re all high quality leagues and clearly in the same ballpark talent wise. Not every player in the CHL will play college hockey, but the talent pool is nearly doubled from this. That’s huge for any small school. There’s so much talent that it’s going to introduce more parity as more schools recruit these talented older players that are now available from more than just the USHL and Junior A in Canada.

That’s why during the coaching change last year, I kept mentioning the ability to recruit the CHL as incredibly important for the next coach. With RPI’s location and league, they should be able to thrive at recruiting the CHL. They need to recruit players that contribute in these leagues and are coming in after 2-3 years in order to compete. While the staff ended up shifting to the WHL instead of staying more local with the OHL and QMJHL, the point is that the quality of these leagues are all stellar, and you need great players to compete. Good players come from everywhere, but most of the good players will be in the USHL, OHL, WHL, and QMJHL.

This is the most important part of the formula. You can’t win without good players, no matter how good your scheme and system are.

Part 2: Play a Strong Puck Possession Game

Puck possession for these small schools has to be the bread and butter for how they play on the ice. While still talented, they don’t have these high-level, blue-chip NHL prospects. Those prospects can break open a game by themselves by dangling through the defense and beating the goalie, or cutting to the middle and ripping one under the bar. They can create scoring chances from nothing, so the blue blood teams with more of these players don’t need as strong puck possession to score and control the game.

Small schools don’t have that luxury. While the older talent is still good and can score pretty well too, it’s a different level. They need sustained possession in the offensive zone to take over games and win a lot. Even more importantly, when you have the puck a lot, it means your opponent doesn’t have it and can’t score.

Quinnipiac has been absolutely elite in this regard during their reign, and Minnesota State was the same way under Hastings. They both were consistently top 5 in the country in close corsi percentage, which is a great measure of puck possession. For those that don’t know, corsi is just a measure of all shot attempts, and the percentage of shot attempts a team has is roughly how much possession they’re controlling. Close corsi is adjusted for score effects and only takes into account when the games are close at even strength. This is because teams that are losing in games tend to start throwing everything at the net in desperation, and it often skews the numbers, especially as it gets later in the game.

Both schools have been absolutely elite at possessing the puck, and that’s a big part of how they both have consistently been national championship contenders.

Part 3: Defend the Slot

This falls under puck possession to a certain extent, but I do think it’s distinct enough to mention separately. A hallmark of the Minnesota State teams were the way they defended the slot and made their goalies’ lives easier. Quinnipiac is the same way. Both teams have had good goaltenders, but their numbers have been a lot better than their talent level because of how well they defend. Call it the Dryden McKay effect. He would consistently have shutouts making less than 20 saves because of how good the defense was, and he had great numbers for his entire career because of it despite having only an ECHL career in the pros to date.

Both programs particularly have defended the slot well and prevented high danger chances. Only allowing around 20 shots is outstanding defending on its own, and out of those shots, very few of them would be big scoring chances. This smothering defense has been a trademark of these teams, and it is shown by their extremely low expected goals against numbers.

Expected goals is a measure of shot quality. Every shot has a chance of going in, but obviously shots taken in the slot or near the net have a much higher chance of going in than a point shot. Using historical data, every shot is assigned a percentage chance of going in based on the location and situation. That percentage is the expected goal value for that shot (e.g. a shot with a 30% chance of going in is worth 0.3 expected goals). You can sum up those expected goals over a game, season, etc. to see how well a team is playing in terms of earning or allowing dangerous shots and scoring chances. Quinnipiac and Minnesota State have consistently been elite in expected goals against per game, meaning they defend at a high level.

Both teams have had those elite suppression numbers lead to outstanding results in the actual goals department too.

To be competitive on the national stage as a small school, the team defense has to be elite at preventing dangerous scoring chances and keeping the puck out of the net. The recruiting from part 1 even plays into this because the older and stronger players make it more difficult for the younger, more skilled players to get to the dangerous areas. Defending the slot is a huge part of the blueprint.

Part 4: Control the Neutral Zone

The final piece to the puzzle is the neutral zone and transition play. Controlling the neutral zone is extremely important for any team in general because that’s what drives the rest of the game. The most dangerous opportunities come in transition and off of turnovers. Being able to generate off the rush and defend the rush is a big part to keeping the possession and game tilted in your favor, so a lot of this ties into the previous topics. I thought it was still worth mentioning though.

Think of it this way: if a team can enter the zone with possession, they’re able to start their offensive zone sequence immediately and look to attack the net. Since not all players on the other team are back in their own zone yet (typically), that also means there is more time and space to work with. If they are forced to dump it in, they start the sequence without the puck and have to spend the time and energy winning races and puck battles to earn possession before attacking. The time spent doing this also means that typically all the players on the other team are now back in the zone, which takes away space. If a team can do this well offensively while preventing it defensively, it’s pretty much always going to lead to good possession, chance generation and chance suppression.

Looking at controlled zone entries per game, the trend is clear here too. Controlled zone entries are zone entries either through stickhandling or through passing because the team is entering the offensive zone with control and possession.

Typically, the most skilled teams tend to be the best here, so it’s not totally shocking that the two programs were typically more in the 6-10 range rather than top 5. They’re not recruiting the blue-chip prospects with elite skill as noted earlier, but they’re still getting the talented older players with a good skill level. Then, they play to their system perfectly.

Unfortunately, data is not available for preventing controlled zone entries on the defensive side, but given everything we have analyzed, I’d be willing to bet that it would look similarly excellent. Both programs have controlled the neutral zone to tilt the possession in their favor and help contribute to also generating and preventing dangerous scoring chances.

The Formula

The formula for competing nationally with the chance to win a championship is clear. You need high-level recruiting of older players, great player development, and a system that effectively prioritizes puck possession, defending the slot, and controlling the neutral zone in order to maximize that talent. It sounds a whole lot easier than it is, and there’s a reason that ECAC, CCHA, and Atlantic Hockey programs are hardly competitors on the national scene. The coaching needed to execute this has to be elite; it cannot only be very good. Both Mike Hastings and Rand Pecknold are unanimously top 5 coaches in the sport for a reason.

They are elite in all of these areas. Recruiting, player development, and systems execution are all areas where they excel, and a small school coach cannot afford to be missing in even a single area. That’s hard to do; even really good coaches in college hockey tend to be slightly behind in at least one area. It takes a truly elite coach to excel in all of them and build a nationally competitive program. For the RPI fans, I think Eric Lang is one of these rare caliber of coaches after what he was able to do at AIC, winning 4 straight league titles for NCAA tournament berths with ZERO resources. Building them up to do it once or twice is one thing, but the ability to keep them there for so long is truly astounding. His accomplishments there were genuinely unreal.

The good news if you’re a small school fan? The blueprint is obvious, and I can practically guarantee you that every single coach at a small school is trying to replicate it. With the plethora of talent available now because of the CHL, it has never been easier to execute on the recruiting front of this. The depth of talent means there will be increasingly more parity in the sport. After that? It’s a matter of player development and system execution. Personally, I don’t think the small schools are dead. I think we will continue to see at least a couple per year with a legitimate shot at winning it all like a Quinnipiac or Minnesota State. The biggest blocker to there being more small schools competing is the transfer portal and ability to pay players. Stay tuned for part 2 for how small schools will have to navigate that in this new era of college sports.