Gary Eggleston, a scout for the NHL's Central Scouting Service, had only a few minutes to talk about the difficulty of evaluating American high-school-age hockey talent. Eggleston, who is based in Massachusetts, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the topic but very little time for small talk.

"Sorry, but I've got to catch a plane to Des Moines," he said in mid-September. "The United States Hockey League has a tournament, the Buc Bowl, this week. We'll see 11 teams a couple of times each, then the Eastern Junior League has a tournament in Marlborough, Mass., the next weekend with about 40 teams. Then we'll see a couple of games in that league before the colleges start up and I have to go to Canada in November to look at some of the players we're evaluating in the Ontario Hockey League. Now that there is a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team in Lewiston, Maine, I can go to Orono and catch a couple of college games at the University of Maine and stop in Lewiston on my way back. The Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference hockey starts a little later than Hockey East, so I have to catch their games a little later. Brown University always schedules a few games against the Canadian colleges so I have to get to those games and, of course, we're watching all the high-school games and then the prep schools have their big tournaments around Christmas. In January, we have the Central Scouting Service meetings when we'll rank the players."

Whoa, stop for breath, Gary.

Eggleston is one of hundreds of full-time and part-time scouts working for the NHL, its member teams, American and Canadian colleges and junior-hockey leagues, prep and parochial schools. Almost 8,000 American high-school-age hockey players will be evaluated with upwards of 1,000 getting at least a second look, said Jack Barzee, a CSS scout based in Minnesota.

"I break my players into groups and start sorting with the top guys," Barzee said. "It's more of a feel than a science. So many kids fall in the middle that it's difficult to eliminate some kids."

The scouts

Cross-checking has two meanings in hockey when it comes to scouting. Every drafted player is seen by as many eyes as a club can afford to dedicate to the process. Then the club's list is checked against the Central Scouting Service rankings. The lists don't always agree and teams try to determine whether they've over- or under-rated a player.

"We are paid by our organizations to be right," Chicago Blackhawks scout Ron Anderson said. "We don't always agree with Central Scouting. They provide information on so many players. Our organization may not be interested in some of those players so we go deeper with the ones that do interest us. We don't try to beat their system, we use their system. It's a great tool. Everyone is interested in the top guys, but we go further on the guys we identify as possible draft choices for the Blackhawks."

"The Red Wings have regionalized our scouting," said Detroit Assistant General Manager Jim Nill. "Mark Leach, who played for St. Lawrence and whose brother, Steve, played in the NHL, is based in New England. His responsibility is to go through all the American high school and junior players and identify players we might be interested in. When he finds players, we have other scouts look them over. They have some good centralized tournaments where he can see a lot of kids early on and that helps eliminate a lot of players. If you have three scouts in three different territories, they wouldn't see all the players. One guy can make the comparison between the player in Minnesota and the one in Massachusetts. So, it's Mark's job to rate them. It's a tough job with a lot of projection and limited sighting.

"Mark makes a list, then myself and others look it over," Nill continued. "Our list is changing after every game and it becomes a year-long rotation of players on that list. We see players in the Canadian juniors, American juniors, high schools and then the U.S. Under-18 program. We have to slot people in different areas. We have a computer program and we have reports in there on players in this year's Draft and the kids for next year. It gives us a chance to see whether the 16-year-old got better. We want the kids who get better every year so we're always evaluating every age group. We have kids as young as 14, that's the minimum. There's not many 14-year-olds but we have reports on a lot of 15-year-olds."

Eggleston said the crush of scouts last season wanting to observe first-round pick Brian Boyle and his three about-to-be-drafted St. Sebastian's teammates -- goalie Kevin Regan, defenseman Sean Sullivan and center Ken Roche -- got to the point where the scouts were jostling with players' parents to watch the games through the big picture window where the rink is attached to the arts center.

St. Sebastian's coach Steve Dagdigian saw four of his players get selected last June at the NHL Entry Draft in Nashville.

"Oh, I don't think it was that bad," laughed St. Sebastian's coach Steve Dagdigian, himself a high-school star who won a state championship at Needham High School with Robbie Ftorek and Cap Raedar, two former NHL coaches, and later starred for Harvard. "Our new rink is attached to the arts center and there's a window on the second floor where you can watch the game. It's a lot warmer than in the rink."

Dagdigian said the scouts presented no problems for his players nor are they a new phenomenon at St. Sebastian's. The school has produced top talent for many years, including Chris Kelleher and Joe Hulbig before Dagdigian and, since his arrival nine years ago, former Boston University captain Mike Pandolfo, Carl Corrazini, another BU star now with the Providence Bruins, Harvard's Noah Welch and Northeastern's Mike Morris, the first-round pick of the San Jose Sharks in 2002.

"I know many of the New England scouts from way back and most of them have been prominent in local hockey," Dagdigian said. "There's guys like Gary Eggleston, Bob Crocker, who was an assistant at BU when I was a kid, and Ron Anderson, who played for BU and coached Merrimack. Some of the scouts are new and some not from this area. This year, with several high-profile kids on our team, different guys came in because the teams wanted to get their impressions. There's a whole bunch of frequent visitors when you have someone that they are very interested in."

Dagdigian said the scouts are unobtrusive, rarely speak to players and only sometimes ask him a few questions about a prospect. He said the scouts have never caused a problem for his team.

"The scouts are just background," he said. "The players may know one or two, but I don't think that enters into their thinking. They're pretty focused on the task at hand because there are so many good teams around they better be ready. They realize that if they don't concentrate on the game nobody's going to be coming to watch them. That's their forum, their showcase where they can show what they can do. Maybe I've been fortunate with the players that we've had but it's never been a problem."

Hiding behind posts

"The scouts used to wear trench coats and we called them 'Columbo,'" said Barzee, who was the owner, GM and coach of the Dubuque USHL team for several seasons. "You'd see them with the collar up, standing in a corner. But hockey is a small world and we knew who they were. Herb Brooks used to disappear and you'd find him behind a post because he wanted to watch a game and everybody wanted to talk to him because he was a celebrity. I move around to get away from people who want to talk when I want to observe. It gives me a better chance to make the right decision."

Eggleston has been watching hockey since the late 1950s and he knows some of the Americans he saw then, like Bill Cleary, Red Martin and others could have succeeded in the NHL. He still thinks Richie Hebner, who helped lead the Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies to seven National League division titles in eight years, was the best New England hockey player he ever saw. Donnie Mason, the goalie on Newton High's 1960s state championship teams, never gave the NHL a second thought, instead fashioning a long career at shortstop with the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres.

It wasn't until after the expansion in 1967 that the door really opened to Americans and it was still a tough sell to convince teams that players like Ftorek, St. Louis Blues GM Larry Pleau, Bobby Sheehan and others could succeed, but they did.

"People are mystified at how we do this," Eggleston said. "How do you know a player can go in the first round? You just know after doing it for years. Was Bill Guerin, playing then in Massachusetts juniors, better than a player with the Toronto Marlboros? He went with the fifth pick in the first round and I think he's justified it. After a while you just had the feeling Scott Young was a better player than the Canadian player being compared. After a few GMs agree, you become more comfortable. There's pressure in sticking your neck out and saying Tom Poti belongs in the first round. Out-of-town scouts would flood into town and tell us they were here because of me. They'd come and rip the guy and I'd say thanks for your support. It always made it difficult to stick to your guns. You're not always proven right until later on. Poti didn't go until the third round because of the dietary problem he had but he was a first-round player."

NHL veteran Phil Housley was recently asked to evaluate players for a district select under-17 team.

Players and their coaches and parents are sometimes approached by scouts from the junior leagues and "bird dogs" for agents, but rarely by NHL and college scouts.

"The colleges are not allowed to contact prospects off campus until the completion of their junior year of high school," said Chicago Blackhawks scout Ron Anderson, the former Merrimack College coach. "If he comes to your campus though, you can talk to him.

"With the Blackhawks, we don't talk to kids who aren't old enough," Anderson continued. "We look at them, but we don't talk to them until their draft year. If I want to talk to a kid, I approach his coach. When the draft is approaching, if there's a kid were interested in we'll set up a formal interview in his home."

That's what the Blackhawks did in Boyle's case.

"I had followed Boyle for several years and I know what he can do," Anderson said. "Obviously, he's big and he can skate. When the season was over, we asked if we could meet him. His coach, Steve Dagdigian, gave me his phone number and we called Brian and made an appointment. Bill Lesuk, our director of amateur scouting, was there and that's the way everybody does it."

"NHL scouts don't contact a kid until well along in the process," Dagdigian concurred. "With the coaches, they may want to verify height and weight, but it's mostly a background observation. Later in the process, they'll ask about things like their character and work habits."

NHL veteran Phil Housley, who remembers the night he was scouted by University of Minnesota coaches John Mariucci and Glen Sonmor, was recently asked to evaluate players for a district select under-17 team. He said there a couple of things he looks for in a prospect.

"You look to see how he fits with his team," Housley said. "Is he a leader, does he play both ends of rink and does he make those around him better?"

USA Hockey Coach-In-Chief Bob O'Connor exemplifies another unique aspect of competitive sports: When the game is over, the participants recognize each other as fellow members of the hockey fraternity. He's one of the most celebrated coaches in American high-school history, winning the 1995 American Hockey Coaches Association John "Snooks" Kelley Founders Award for his contributions to American hockey.

He was a highly competitive coach who won state championships and he also scouted for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Providence College, which he attended and where he played on a line with New Jersey Devils chief executive Lou Lamoriello, later the Providence coach and athletic director.

O'Connor and his Edina players did everything they could to defeat every other team and player in Minnesota, but when the games were over, O'Connor helped nearly 40 kids from Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota go to Providence College. Two of his Edina players, David Maley and Brian Burke, are well known to NHL fans. O'Connor recommended Burke, now the Vancouver Canucks GM, to Providence as well as Grand Forks, Minn., native Kurt Kleinendorst, now a key member of Lamoriello's Devils' staff.

Brian Boyle was one of fifty-nine American teenagers who were selected at the 2003 NHL Entry Draft.

There was a time when seeing an American player drafted was as rare as ice in Tahiti.

But over the years, American players have steadily improved in the rankings, opening up another vein of talent for NHL teams and more roads to travel for the team's scouts.

Fifty-nine American teenagers were selected at the 2003 Entry Draft, including seven in the first round. Among them was Brian Boyle, one of three first-round picks of the Los Angeles Kings and one of four players taken from St. Sebastian's, a prep school in Needham, Mass.

The Kings aren't looking for Boyle to help them immediately. They're happy he's planning to attend Boston College, where they expect he'll show continued improvement playing against older, but not necessarily bigger, players. For when Boyle hits the NHL, he'll hit it hard. The defenseman stands 6-foot-6 and 225 pounds prior to his freshman season.

Boyle is illustrative of the options for American hockey players who comprised 14 percent of last year's opening-day lineups, 93 of the 714 players.

Prep schools and juniors

As an attractive hockey prospect, Boyle was lured from the public-school system to a quality prep school famed for its educational advantages, plus a longer hockey schedule than the public schools. Boyle and other talented Americans have other options while still in the high-school age bracket.

Prep schools throughout the northern tier of the United States vie for talent. Top Catholic high schools like Matignon, Arlington Catholic, Boston College High and Catholic Memorial dominate Eastern Massachusetts hockey, while former public-school champions like Walpole, Norwood, Newton, Melrose and Needham have slipped.

Some high-school players with NHL aspirations feel that even the prep schools don't give them enough games and sufficient opposition to hone their skills so they leave the United States to play junior hockey in the three Canadian Hockey Association leagues, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League and the Western Hockey League. Others, wishing to retain NCAA eligibility, opt for American junior hockey leagues in New England and the Midwest or Tier II hockey in Canada.

"There are two unfortunate scenarios for players in the Canadian major junior leagues," said NHL Central Scouting Service scout Gary Eggleston. "Once drafted, they must be signed within two years. A high-school kid has four years and the Europeans never have to do anything. The NHL teams can let the European play in the elite leagues until he's ready for the NHL. The major junior kids have to make it quick or fall by the wayside. The Canadian college teams are dotted with former major junior players who decided they'd be better off going to college. It's good to see in some respects, but given the proper opportunity they might have made it eventually. The deck is stacked against them in that regard."

Forty-four American 16- and 17-year-olds are in the residential U.S. National team development program in Ann Arbor, Mich., playing a lengthy schedule against Junior A, college and international teams. From this group, USA Hockey selects the core of the team for the World Junior Championships.

Danville Wings GM Josh Mervis of the United State Hockey League, a 12-team Midwestern circuit, pulls no punches in his insistence that playing in the USHL or staying is school is a better route than Canadian major junior.

A graduate of St. Thomas College in Minnesota, he's done graduate work at Northwestern University and the University of Maine, where he was an assistant coach to the late Shawn Walsh. He has his teaching certificate and coaching-instruction certifications from both USA Hockey and the Canadian Hockey Association. His father, Lou, graduated magna cum laude from Indiana and spent 17 years on the Illinois Board of Education. Wings players have won USA Hockey's Community Service award the last five years running.

"American players like Dustin Brown, Danny Fritsche, Robbie Schremp and Patrick O'Sullivan are currently doing very well in the OHL. Kevin and Derian Hatcher, Mathieu Schneider, Pat Peake and Bryan Berard are just a few of the Americans who played in the OHL and have gone on to good NHL careers." - Ontario Hockey League Director of Operations Ted Baker

"We were a poor immigrant family and my father was the first to go to college," Mervis said. "Everything we have we owe to education and while there is a strong emphasis on winning here, we stress education and community service. We have placed over 72 players in college. In fact, we have completely changed the graduation demographics of Danville High. A newcomer to the area, looking for a place to raise a family, reads the Chamber of Commerce information about Danville High and says, "Hey, kids in this town go to Harvard, Boston University, Bowling Green, wow!

"Why give up your college eligibility to play Canadian juniors when you can play high-level hockey here and retain your options?" Mervis asked.

The Canadian major junior leagues have heard that argument and counter that they also stress continuing education while offering a better route to the NHL.

"The Canadian Hockey League is the No. 1 development league in the world for the National Hockey League and there are more and more opportunities for American-born players to come into our league," said Ontario Hockey League Director of Operations Ted Baker. "American players like Dustin Brown, Danny Fritsche, Robbie Schremp and Patrick O'Sullivan are currently doing very well in the OHL and Kitchener's Matt Lashoff looks like a probable first-round pick. Kevin and Derian Hatcher, Mathieu Schneider, Pat Peake and Bryan Berard are just a few of the Americans who played in the OHL and have gone on to good NHL careers.

"We offer an NHL-type 68-game schedule and require players to continue their schooling," Baker said. "The OHL teams offer college scholarships to players who don't pursue NHL careers so you can combine education and hockey. Canadian juniors offer the fastest route to the NHL and you can be supported in your educational goals. Dustin Brown has won our Bobby Smith Trophy for scholarship the last three years which is a great testament to Dustin and the Guelph Storm organization.

"We've always stated that some players should play in the OHL and some shouldn't," Baker said. "It's up to the individual and his family to determine what his best interests are. You need to be a dedicated, disciplined player. If not, you won't be successful on or off the ice. Do you compromise your NCAA eligibility by playing in the CHL? Yes, you do, but we are offering college scholarships to every player in our league."

Public schools

Public high-school hockey still dominates in Minnesota while Michigan players have traditionally concentrated on travel hockey. Much has changed, experts say.

"High-school hockey is starting to get a little stronger in Michigan over the last four or five years," said Jim Nill, the assistant general manager of the Detroit Red Wings. "People are going back to the alumni tradition, taking pride in their schools. Also, some of the elite travel teams around here closed down so there are fewer options. A player can go to the juniors or stay and play for his high school. I think it will help Michigan high-school hockey quite a bit."

Minnesota took steps to block the junior and prep-school incursions because hockey is closely tied to the communities with their traditional rivalries and alumni fervor.

"Minnesota is all about community-based hockey. There's a loyalty there," said Bob O'Connor, the longtime coach at Edina, Minn., H.S. and now USA Hockey Coach In Chief. "Minnesota goes against the national trend. All the kids in youth hockey want to play in the state high-school tournament. You've got 18,000 people at the games. They have the AA tournament for the big schools and the A tournament for the smaller schools."

But high-school supremacy was challenged for a few years, O'Connor said.

"There were a number of kids going to the Midwest junior league and the far west junior league," he said. "Kids realized they were getting 60 games against faster, more mature talent in juniors. So they established a fall elite league here last year that adds 25-30 games, two or three games a week. Since it started, the percentage of kids leaving school has dropped because they are getting the jump the junior league would have given them."

Chris Robinson, a standout defenseman for the Danville Wings of the USHL, chose the American junior route because he wanted to play Division I college hockey.

Seven-time NHL All-Star Phil Housley, from South St. Paul, Minn., was the first American to go directly from a public high school to the NHL when he joined the Buffalo Sabres in 1982, a year after Bobby Carpenter jumped from the private St. John's Prep in Danvers, Mass., to join the Washington Capitals.

Any player trying to emulate that feat today would have Housley's best wishes, but he thinks it's a much tougher task.

"My dad taught me to get good grades, to get an education. He wanted me behind a desk because he was a construction guy," Housley said. "I wanted a scholarship and college and a good job. In my senior year, I knew I had NHL scouts in the stands and I worked hard to impress them because I thought, later after college, I might have a chance to play in the NHL, which was my dream from the time I was a kid.

"I found out years later that Scotty Bowman (then the GM-coach of the Sabres) was saying to the college scouts, 'What are doing here? I'm going to take him in the first round.' And he did. When I came to the NHL at 18 I think I was really prepared. I had played in Junior A with guys older than me and with the national team before I got drafted. It gave me an idea where I stood. I think I had more of jump on my contemporaries than a lot of guys today because the average player is better today. The stars then would be stars now, but the average player is better. That's why it's harder for young guys to come into an environment where most have some maturing to do. Some guys can do it but most need more experience to make the jump. And, it's a roll of the dice because you don't know how much a guy will mature between 18 and 21."

Billeting

Chris Robinson, a standout defenseman and captain for the Danville Wings of the USHL, chose the American junior route because he wants to play Division I college hockey and needed to play against better opposition than he could find in his native Pittsburgh. It's been an odyssey. He played his freshman season at Allerdice H.S. in Pittsburgh while also playing for the Pittsburgh Vipers AA bantam team. He moved to Detroit to play his sophomore year with the HoneyBaked Midget Major team. Robinson is in his third season with Danville, which moved over from the North American Hockey League last year. He graduated from Danville High and is attending community college. He's been living with a billet family, the Moedendorfers, in Danville and is a strong advocate for the route he chose.

"I think I have enough smarts to go to college and I want to go the college route to have options," Robinson said. "It's been great, especially living with this family. It's been absolutely great hockey since I got here. I've stepped up every aspect of my game and practices here are really intense. Coach Tom 'Chico' Adrahtas is a very good communicator and he's very open to talking to players. He makes sure he gets across what he wants from us. I would definitely recommend this route."

"Our oldest son, Todd, went to college and we had an extra room. Our son, Derek, now 16, had played for the Junior Wings and we were Wings fans and knew some of the other housing families," Dawn Moedendorfer said. "Chris, who is in his second season with us, is our sixth player and we also have baseball players from the Danville Dans in the summer. There's only one week a year when we don't have a player living with us. Some have done very well. Todd Grant is now playing hockey for Miami of Ohio and Jon Papelbon is pitching with the Lowell Spinners. Derek and Chris work out together and are very close friends. It's been wonderful. We had Chris's family here for Thanksgiving dinner."

Housley has been a close observer of the Minnesota hockey scene for more than 25 years. The veteran knows the pluses and minuses of each available route. He is coaching his 11-year-old son's team this year and knows a decision to send him away to billeting family could be only four or five years away."

"I know it can be good but, gee, I like my kids and you only have them home for so long. I don't know if I want to rush them out of the house," he said.

Jack Barzee of NHL Central Scouting said it isn't hard to pick out the elite players like Jeremy Roenick at the high-school level, but you have to go deeper and interview them to find out if they're mentally tough.

This is where the duck used to come down on the old "Groucho Marx Show" - when the secret, magic word was spoken.

Phil Housley identified the biggest fear of scouts -- what they call the "projection," how a player will develop physically and mentally over the next two or three years -- and the reason why so many high draft choices fail to become NHL stars. This is the age when players are changing from boys to men and some don't make the transition as quickly as others. Many players find other things becoming more important in their lives. Alexandre Daigle recently admitted he had come to loathe playing hockey before he was taken with the first pick in the 1993 Entry Draft.

Projecting focused Canadian major junior players against three-sport American athletes is one of the most difficult jobs, the scouts agree.

"The people who do Canadian major junior scouting have a hard time projecting these American kids," NHL Central Scouting Service scout Gary Eggleston said. "Traditionally, kids here lag behind in development. Major junior is fast-track and these kids are playing soccer, football and baseball. They're not as focused, but they're more rounded athletically. They lack in experience, coaching and competition and they take a little longer to develop, but I've had Canadian people tell me that this is the best training ground for college and pro hockey players. It gives them more time to develop and catch up as hockey players."

Many people believe you can gauge a candidate's character by watching him play but it's not the whole story.

"At a high-school game the elite players jump out so it's not so tough to identify them," Central Scouting's Barzee said. "You have to go deeper and interview him to find out if he's mentally tough. The first time I saw Tony Amonte and Jeremy Roenick play for Thayer Academy I was with Marcel Pronovost, the great Detroit defenseman. He loved Amonte, but he said that Roenick had no hockey sense. But, I said, Roenick, with his speed, could be out of the play and catch up with it. Marcel's a good guy. He said good point. When see that much talent you don't have to be a brain surgeon to know he'll be able to play."

The scouts agree that the junior tournaments, the national team tryouts, practices and games, and special events like Hockey Night In Boston, a summer elite hockey program, are the best for evaluating talent while regional high-school matchups can be the worst.

"Hockey Night in Boston for the last 20-25 years has provided a great service for scouts and college coaches," said Ron Anderson, a Chicago Blackhawks scout who won two NCAA championships at Boston University in 1971-72, playing with UMass coach Don "Toot" Cahoon and 1972 Olympic silver-medal winning goalie Tim Regan. New York Islanders coach Steve Stirling was a member of that first championship squad and he and Anderson later played together in Austria. Anderson then coached Merrimack College for 15 years. "Initially, it brought all East Coast kids together for a summer tournament but now they come from all over the United States. It saves a lot of mileage and groundwork for us.

"We take into consideration that it's summer hockey. Some kids are more serious than others, so we look at it as another stage to see kids perform. You can learn positive things. I disregard negative impressions there. I get to see a ton of kids I've been tracking in high-school and midget leagues. Now they are getting of age. I see them together and how they compete against other guys I've been tracking."

Anderson said an HNIB tournament in March gives him one of the best "true bills" on high-school age players.

Before getting drafted by the Montreal Canadiens, 6-foot-4, 240-pound defenseman Mike Komisarek was the big man on campus at the University of Michigan.

"They've turned HNIB into a year-round business," Anderson said. "They publish their recruiting guides and information on the kids. Their newspaper publishes results of travel-hockey games and they have a full scouting service that provides personal information on the kids. They have the best players for a one-week tournament in March at the end of the high-school season. It pulls them all back together again but not as many as in the summer. It's an All-Star tournament, the best of the best."

While scouts can watch a half-dozen or more prospects in a HNIB game, sometimes they have to drive hours through Minnesota snowstorms to see one player, only to realize that due to a lack of quality opposition it's hard to draw an accurate conclusion.

"I saw Eric Rasmussen in high school and he was 6-foot-3, 190 pounds at 18, playing against 5-foot-7 sophomores," Barzee said. "The hockey was just brutal compared to the level we're looking at in the USHL and college. You see these kids dominate their shifts and you say, 'Wow, how good is this kid going to be in two or three years?' You have to be careful."

The national team

Talk to Kevin McLaughlin, USA Hockey's Director of Youth Hockey, and you might wonder why the scouts log so many miles. He begins gathering America's top talent each summer with boys as young as 14. The entire USA Hockey organization helps to identify the best players.

"Are there ways to make it easier for an NHL scout to do his job?" McLaughlin asked. "Sure, go to Ann Arbor any weekend. We have what we think are the best 44 players in the U.S. Some kids turn us down but it's rare. We get the majority of kids we invite. We do we make some mistakes, just like an NHL GM makes some mistakes. But our 16-year-old team is pretty scary. It might be the best group we've ever had.

"In our summer national player development program for 14-to-17 year olds, we bring in the top 240 kids in each bracket for a week," McLaughlin said. "They try out in the 11 U.S. districts and advance to the national level. Any kid that has a desire to get exposure, if they go to those festivals and go through the tryout process, they will raise the attention of someone. While the Brian Boyles and Hugh Jessimans, etc., only play 25 games during their school seasons, they get exposure at our camps and every NHL team and NHL Central Scouting is there and the scouts are hard to miss."

McLaughlin has studied the European and Russian hockey-development programs and believes a boy benefits from a well-rounded program of sports and studies, rather than a heavy concentration on hockey.

"I can't condemn high school or prep school because I believe it's the best route for some kids," he said. "For instance, many people believe Boyle is capable of playing shortstop on a major-league level. I'm not sure playing other sports is a bad thing. He came to our festivals and went to our world junior camp. The University of Minnesota recruited a good player who was also an all-state quarterback. He left after a year to play in the USHL. Who's to condemn a kid for wanting to stay in his school, be a big man on campus and quarterback the football team? Where's the problem if you're continuing to develop as an athlete?

"Another important issue is who knows which kids are ready to move away from home at 16 or 17? I guess my point is that there's no perfect system. All of them have been proven to work for some kids."