2025-26 NTDP U17 Team Selection

[Rabid Ranger]

Truthfully I don’t think there should really be a debate. Todays hockey is all about opportunity and the Canadian kids are choosing the NTDP because of the development and exposure it offers, not because they want to play for the USA.

Maybe that’s a hot take but the program has proven to churn out pro player after pro player and if you’re Barch or Thibodeau, under the new NCAA rules, why not take the opportunity to play with some of the best 09s in the world for two years rather than playing 3rd or 4th line minutes on an OHL team.

I think some kids have a measure of patriotism, but most in this context are probably opportunistic. It's all possible as duals that they have been raised to feel pride in both countries.

 

[SK94]

It doesn't really matter why they choose this path. As long as the US citizenship policy is what it is and they have citizenship, they have the right to this choice. Period.

 

[Hockeyville USA]

Truthfully I don’t think there should really be a debate. Todays hockey is all about opportunity and the Canadian kids are choosing the NTDP because of the development and exposure it offers, not because they want to play for the USA.

Maybe that’s a hot take but the program has proven to churn out pro player after pro player and if you’re Barch or Thibodeau, under the new NCAA rules, why not take the opportunity to play with some of the best 09s in the world for two years rather than playing 3rd or 4th line minutes on an OHL team.

If Barch are Thibodeau are good enough, they'd be in the top 6 of most O teams that aren't London right away. And conversely, plenty of NTDP guys get buried down the lineup because there's not enough ice time to go around on an all star team, and thus several guys have their development stunted. Several NTDP guys are better off on normal USHL teams or in the O, getting more minutes.

 

[SK94]

I guess I'm having some kind of age crisis here. It's so hard to internalize that these teams are starting to have sons of players who played in the NHL in the late 2000s when I started seriously following the NHL as a teenager.

It was exactly the same feeling when Ovie broke Wayne's goal record. It feels like just yesterday I was arguing with my friends on the outdoor rinks when they both came into the league about who was better. Crosby or Ovie. Or when we rewatched Ovie's goal against the Coyotes a million times on YouTube. Now he is all time leading goal goal scorer in the league history and both of them are almost retired.

And sorry about this off topic.