Do Your Homework & Maximize the Odds
By Scott Lowe - DMVProspects.com
There are so many things to write about right now.
New topics. Old topics. Unprecedented topics.
One thing you won’t see here is speculation. Speculation leads to panic and the widespread distribution of misinformation. Most people don’t seem to read much these days. Writing is a lost art, because so many people aren’t willing to take the time to actually sit down and consume something in its entirety.
Just last week a respected publication (Forbes) posted an article with a headline that read, “Boston University First to Announce It May Postpone Opening Its Campus Until January 2021.” People read the headline, and immediately the game of “telephone” began as everyone started passing on the misinformation. Very few people actually read the article.
There was no “announcement.”
Instead, there was a post on BU Today, a website updated by the Boston U. communications department, outlining the various options the university was considering. All you had to do was read to the third paragraph of the Forbes story to find out the truth.
“The BU Today article says the January start date would happen in the ‘unlikely event’ that health officials advise that social distancing should extend through the fall.”
By simply reading to paragraph three you could find out that the “announcement” was really an article and that the “postponement” was something that was being considered – among many other options – and that it was even considered “unlikely.”
Wow.
I actually had seen the Forbes story just after midnight when it first hit the internet amid so many oohs, aahs and gasps. Panic set in immediately as a major university announcing that it may not open until January surely was another indication that the end of the world was upon us.
Having a son attending Suffolk University in Boston who is about to finish up his freshman year taking classes in our basement, I also was shocked to see the headline. So guess what I did? I read the story and immediately put my mind at ease.
Over the next 24 hours I had multiple people ask me some variation of the following questions:
“What is Suffolk going to do now that B.U. isn’t opening until January?”
“What’s going to happen to college athletics with B.U. shutting down?”
“What’s going to happen to college athletics with B.U. shutting down?”
“Do you know what’s going to happen with hockey and the summer showcases in Boston now that B.U. announced it isn’t opening until January?”
My response was simple, “The headline was misleading. Read the article. B.U. is not shutting down. There was no announcement.”
Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in. Instant news. Instant reaction. Instant gratification. Instant spread of misinformation. Worse than people believing what they read in click-bait headlines is people believing what they hear second-hand from people who only read click-bait headlines.
I was a journalism major. Graduated second in my class summa cum laude from a top-15 journalism school. A former boss of mine used to tell me that my communication skills were poor, because I am a details person to whom writing came easily. He actually would grade me down at my yearly performance review, because if he asked me for information on a topic or for my thoughts on something, I would provide as many details as I could so that he could be thoroughly informed if anyone had questions for him.
Writing came easily, and I wanted to do the best job I could and make sure he would be armed with all the information he needed. “It’s not your fault,” he would tell me every year as he informed me of my average communications score. “You’re a writer.”
That wasn’t insulting at all.
He would then go on to talk about how he had a short attention span and would blame his ADD, explaining to me that he was not capable of reading more than four bullet points. This was the athletic director of a mid-level NCAA Division I institution. Believe me when I tell you that if I sent four bullet points he usually didn’t read those either.I mention this only because it has become pretty clear to me – especially in recent weeks – that there are many people who access this website, follow @DMVHockey on Twitter and receive the weekly newsletter who tell me on a regular basis how great DMVProspects.com is and how much they love the information that the site provides.
Of course, the compliments are much appreciated, as is the support that so many have shown. I feel blessed that is so easy for me to transform all the lessons I have learned and information I have gathered to so many people so easily because of my writing ability. After not getting many opportunities to write throughout my professional career, I truly enjoy the opportunity to help others through my writing.
For some reason, though, my messages don’t seem to be getting across to everyone.
Part of me wants to chalk that up to the modern-day aversion to reading and the need for instant gratification, but I tend to think that if a topic is really important to someone that he or she won’t mind spending the time to read about it. And I know for a fact that there are people out there scouring every article and who truly appreciate the information provided.
So while I think that our sound-byte society has something to do with this phenomena, there has to be something else going on; and the more I interact with people individually the more I think that there is just a prevalent “this doesn’t apply to me” mentality.
It’s similar to when parents or players ask me for my opinion about where they stand or what path they should consider – or they ask me to get them an opportunity to skate with a team or be seen by a coach so they can get some independent feedback – and then they get angry or debate what they are told when it’s not what they want to hear.
It’s flattering for someone to ask my opinion, and I do my absolute best to use all the resources at my disposal and all the information I have gathered over the years – along with my knowledge of the game and what it takes to play at certain levels – to provide the best advice possible. But I have to tell you that it’s incredibly frustrating when someone disagrees with what I say or questions the information I provide after seeking my advice or opinion.
If you already know – or think you know – then please don’t ask.
That is a waste of my time and yours. There seems to be a group of people that wants validation, not real feedback, and they will ask the same questions and for the same advice from as many people as it takes until they hear what they want to hear.
I’ve sent players to skate with NCDC teams who have gotten indignant with coaches when they tell the players that they would love to have them on their Premier team and that they aren’t ready for Tier 2 yet. Players who have attended NCDC predraft camps have ripped up Premier contracts they have been handed and thrown them in the trash before leaving the building.
Many times, when I use my network to provide a kid with an opportunity to skate with an NAHL or NCDC team – and the coach or general manager tells them that they aren’t at that level – the response basically is, “That coach doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Can I skate with another team?”
We call this independent or third-party feedback, and it is critical to determining where a player stands and helping figure out what the appropriate next step is to maximize that player’s chances of reaching his or her goals.
The point of skating with these teams is to find out from somebody who coaches and competes at the level the player aspires to exactly where that player stands, and if the player isn’t good enough for that level yet, what he or she needs to do to get to that level.
There are many reasons to seek this type of feedback, but one of them is NOT to conclude that yet another coach has misjudged the player’s ability. What you want and what you are can be two very different things. It’s an important part of this process to determine and accept where a player stands so that the next steps in terms of where to play and what areas need improvement can be more easily understood.
It happens to me, too.
Someone asks my opinion or advice and I provide it and try to be as professional and polite as possible without misleading anyone. I can’t tell you how many times the next response is, “Well my son wants to play Division I,” or “My son thinks he should play in the USHL or NAHL.”
The main reason I started this website – and over time have added all the components of what DMV Prospects now includes – was to educate the masses about a process that too often is misunderstood and help players and families find the right path for them to maximize the odds of achieving their hockey goals.
By doing this, the hope also is to help them avoid wasting a lot of money that could be better put toward hockey or off-ice training, SAT or ACT tutoring, school or a bank account instead of being spent to help fund some team for which the player will never play.
Maximizing the odds. That’s the most important concept to understand.
When it comes to prep school, AAA and junior hockey, it’s nearly impossible to tell – even after the fact – if you’ve made the best possible decision; there are too many variables and unknowns about how things might have played out somewhere else. But it usually isn’t hard to figure out if you’ve made a good or bad decision.
There are a lot myths and misunderstandings out there when it comes to junior hockey – as well as some important facts that are essential for players and families to understand as they try to navigate the pathway toward their hockey goals and to maximize their odds of making the best decisions and getting to where they want to go.
Just as I try to maximize the odds for individual players and families when I speak to them directly, the information you will find here and throughout the website is geared toward the vast majority of young players ages 15 and up in the DMV area who hope to play NCAA or ACHA hockey someday.
If you are a 15- or 16-year-old who has been invited to USA Hockey National Camp or been recruited to be a top player for a prep school – or who has heard directly from a USHL or NCAA D1 coach – you are in that fewer-than-one-percent category to whom this information does not apply. You don’t need me or my advice.
For everyone else – which is pretty much everybody who wants to play college hockey – this information is useful and helpful to understand.
Plan of Action
The best plan of action is to for a player to assess the current level of his or her team, build a relationship with his team’s coach throughout the season to get honest feedback from him or her on what needs to be done to move up the lineup and play at a higher level, get third-party independent feedback from a higher-level coach to determine what needs to be done to get to that level and then find a team and coach for the following season that will provide plenty of playing time in many situations and allow for development and ultimately advancement.
For example, a player at the 15 or 16U AA level who is one of top-three players on that team might want to look at moving up to the AAA level while keeping an eye on how much playing time might be available and the development opportunity. Playing on the fourth line with no special teams and little chance to play in key situations might not make sense from a developmental standpoint.
An 18U AAA player who is in a bottom-half position, might want to consider another year of 18U AAA as a top player who plays in all situations instead of going to a Tier 3 junior program and playing a bottom-half role or fighting to be in the lineup.
A player who is aging out of 18U AAA and wants to pursue NCAA college hockey, but was not one of the top two or three players on the team, should look for the best opportunity at the EHL level or with a USPHL Premier team that has a solid record of moving players on to college or higher-level junior opportunities. Only the very best players at that level should be chasing the Tier 2 junior carrot.
For younger players at the 14U or 15U levels who are top players on their AA or AAA teams, if the goal is to play the highest level of NCAA hockey possible, leaving the area to find a prep school, academy program or AAA opportunity in New England or another hockey hotbed might be worth considering. When examining this path, however, it is important to keep in mind that not every kid possesses the maturity level necessary to move away at that age and that the hokey situation is going to be highly competitive with very few guarantees.
Players who move away and are able to handle everything that goes along with that – and who succeed at hockey – very well might position themselves to reach the highest levels of NCAA hockey. Unfortunately, there are many stories of kids who leave home before they are ready, struggle in the classroom and on the ice and never really recover from that decision in terms of advancing up the hockey ladder.
Parents should not push players to leave home at a young age. It should only be considered if it’s what the child wants and is the right fit from a maturity standpoint, the kid has proven to be a dominant, elite-level player who will have no trouble adjusting on the ice and the family can handle it financially – and emotionally.
Parents should not push players to leave home at a young age. It should only be considered if it’s what the child wants and is the right fit from a maturity standpoint, the kid has proven to be a dominant, elite-level player who will have no trouble adjusting on the ice and the family can handle it financially – and emotionally.
The key, as always, is to find a coach who fits the player’s personality and style of play and who will provide the best developmental opportunity.
Do your homework, because there are no guarantees. The bottom line is that no matter what role or opportunity any coach promises, the player still has to be good enough to handle it. If he or she is not getting the job done, someone else will move into that spot.
Just as kids entering their senior year of high school should be developing a realistic view about the types of colleges that might be a fit for them academically and in terms of available fields of study, young hockey players at that crossroads should be narrowing their hockey focus by determining where they stand as players and reassessing their on-ice goals to make sure they are realistic and attainable.
Taking an extra year beyond high school to figure out where you are as a hockey player, live on your own and maybe take some classes to get ahead and figure out what you want to study can be a great experience for any graduating senior. But whether you are a hockey player or not, there should be an endgame and constant revaluation of your progress throughout the process to make sure your family isn’t spending $15,000 a year on something that leads right back to where you were at the end of that initial gap year.
Stats & Facts to Consider
Below you will find some very important statistics and facts that players and families should be aware of as they try to chart their path toward college hockey:
Only 12 of nearly 460 NCAA Division I hockey freshmen for the 2019-20 academic year went from high school or prep school directly to their college teams.
This doesn’t mean that those were the only D1 freshmen who entered college with their correct graduating classes. There were a handful more who did, but pretty much every one of those players came from either the USHL or the USA Hockey NTDP.
In a given year, the general accepted percentage of NCAA hockey players who enter their freshman year in college from junior programs and not directly from high schools or prep schools is between 86 and 90 percent.
There is a common misconception that by attending a prep school and playing for the varsity hockey team there a player who ends up playing NCAA hockey automatically will bypass juniors. At the D3 level for the 2019-20 academic year, only 9.3 percent or 71 of 737 incoming freshmen hockey players went directly from high school or prep school to college. Many prep school players end up playing juniors before playing NCAA hockey.
The USHL is the only Tier 1, tuition-free junior hockey league in the United States.
This is the highest level of amateur hockey you can play in our country. There are only 16 teams in the league, which means there only 370 or so spots available each year. Keep in mind that one of the teams is from the USA Hockey NTDP, so if you are not in that program there are really about 345 spots available – and most of those are given to players who already have made NCAA Division I commitments. Although there are limits on the number of foreign imports a team can roster, players from all over North America and Europe strive to play in this league, which is made up of NCAA D1 commits and NHL Draft prospects.
The USHL is youngest junior league that produces NCAA players in the United States.
The USHL limits the number of age-outs (20-year-old players) that can be rostered by each team. Five age-outs may be on the initial roster, but that has to be reduced to no more than four three weeks into the season. Teams also must keep at least three players who are 18U-eligible on their active rosters at all times.
USHL teams averaged only three age-outs on their final rosters when the 2019-20 season shut down, with several teams having one or none. The NCDC, another league that usually has 35-40 D1 commits playing in a given year, limits the number of age-outs its teams can roster to six, while there are no limits for age-outs in the NAHL, EHL, USPHL Premier/Elite or NA3HL.
The USHL and NAHL produce the most NCAA Division I commits of any junior leagues in the United States.
The USHL produced 176 of 293 D1 freshmen (36.8 percent of the overall total and 60.1 percent of the U.S. total) who went directly from U.S. junior teams to Division I programs for the 2019-20 academic year, while the NAHL produced 92 (19.2 percent overall and 31.4 percent U.S.) and the NCDC sent 13 (2.7 percent overall and 4.4 percent U.S.).
Of the 35-40 D1 commits who play in the NCDC on an annual basis, many commit before playing in the league and stay in the league for two or more years, while others go on to play in different leagues like the NAHL, BCHL and USHL before actually attending college.
Canadian junior leagues produced 175 D1 freshman for 2019-20 (36.6% of the overall total). Keep in mind that there are as many as 500 Americans playing in Tier 1 Canadian junior leagues at any given time.
Only three players from the DMV were on final USHL rosters in 2020.
Of those three, two are from Virginia – one hailing from Alexandria while the other listed Powhatan, 140 miles south of D.C., as his hometown – and the other is from Clarksville, Md., but is a dual citizen who played most of his youth hockey in Canada. With 370 or so roster spots available in the USHL, players from the DMV represented less than 1 percent of all players on final rosters in 2020.
Only 13 players from the DMV were on final NCAA Division I rosters in 2020.
Of those 13, almost all of them left the area to play for AAA teams, prep schools or junior teams well before their 18U seasons. Only one played 18U hockey locally for the now-defunct D.C. Caps and the Little Caps. Several of the players went on to play for the South Kent School Selects Academy before heading off to juniors. Twelve of the players played in the NAHL and/or USHL, with a few also venturing off to spend some time in Tier 1 Canadian junior leagues. One was part of USA Hockey NDTP. Two of the 12 also played in the NCDC. With approximately 1,650 NCAA D1 roster spots available each year, the 13 DMV players represent less than one percent of all D1 participants. Almost all of these players DID NOT age out before heading to school.
Currently, approximately seven DMV products have committed to NCAA Division I programs.
These are the ones I am aware of, so there may be a couple more, but to my knowledge each of these players committed when they were competing at the 16U level.
Of the approximately 460 freshman spots that should be available at the NCAA Division I level for the 2021-22 academic year, more than 305 already are committed, with more than 60 commitments for the 2022-23 school year already on the books.
What does this mean? With more commitments for these two school years being announced daily, nearly 70 percent of all the D1 freshman slots two seasons from now are already taken. Almost all of the remaining available spots should be gone by Christmas.
If you have two years of junior hockey eligibility left and aren’t going to be playing in the NAHL or USHL for the upcoming season – or aren’t in pretty serious discussions with a Division I coach this point – you should be trying to figure out what Division III or ACHA (or CHF) programs might be of interest to you and starting to build those relationships.
If you are 17 or 18 years old and projecting to be a middle-of-the-lineup player for your AAA team or a Tier 3 junior team for the upcoming season, you also should start looking at D3 and ACHA (or CHF) programs that you might want to pursue and what junior leagues will help you get there.
And for all local players, as you can see from the numbers, getting to the USHL and NCAA Division I is very much a long shot. Well over 99 percent of the local players looking to play college hockey realistically should be focusing on the NCAA D3 and ACHA (or CHF). Players who are legitimate D1 candidates should start getting serious consideration from USA Hockey as National Camp-invitees or be hearing from top prep schools or even NCAA D1 coaches by the time they are 16.
There are a VERY small number of players who make very late NCAA D1 commitments out of the NAHL or NCDC (and even more rarely out of the USHL) toward the end or after their age-out seasons in those leagues, but first you have to get to those leagues and then you likely have to be one of the top 10 players in one of them to get that opportunity. As you will see below, it also is extremely difficult to earn spots in any of the Tier 1 or Tier 2 leagues.
The Canadian factor actually makes it harder than it looks to get to the D1 level.
If you scan the 60 NCAA Division I rosters it becomes readily apparent that there is a large Canadian presence in American college hockey. The majority of Division I teams seem to have between six and 12 Canadians on their rosters, and it may be surprising to many to learn that some programs offer a majority of their rosters spots to players from Canada. Cornell, the top-ranked team in the country this year, had 21 Canadians on its final roster, and in a random sampling Princeton had 17, Clarkson had 16 and Colgate had 15. The competition for D1 spots has gotten even more fierce as more Europeans are making the jump to NCAA hockey from countries such as Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Germany.
There were 10 DMV players on NAHL rosters at the start of the 2019-20 season.
That represents approximately 1.6 percent of all roster spots in the league, which makes the opportunity slightly better than that presented by the USHL or NCAA Division I programs. Of those 10, three finished the year in a different league and one was injured after one game and missed the rest of the season. Keep in mind that these 10 players represent a birth-year range of 1999-2001, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that 10 new players from our area will enter the league each year. Based on birth years it looks as though three or four new players from the DMV per year get the opportunity.
There were 7 DMV players on NCDC rosters at the start of the 2019-20 season.
That represents approximately 2.3 percent of all available NCDC roster spots. Of these players, two are NCAA D1 commits, one played nine games before getting injured and missing the rest of the season, one played 41 total games (37 NCDC, four USPHL Premier), one was traded twice and will be playing in the EHL next year, one was an all-star who led his team in scoring and one played the entire season with one team and recorded 18 points in 46 games. Much like the NAHL, three or four local players who weren’t in the league the previous season seem to get an opportunity to play in the NCDC each year.
There is a lot more scholarship money available to great students than to great athletes.
Please don’t make the mistake that families involved in other sports frequently make by pouring tons of money into hockey with the thought that it will pay off down the road in the form of an athletic scholarship. If a player is lucky enough – and driven enough – to beat the odds and get an opportunity to play at the NCAA D1 level, the odds of getting a full scholarship are even smaller.
The NCAA limits the number of full scholarships that a D1 hockey program can offer to 18. Those 18 scholarships can be spread among as many as 30 players. Most teams probably award money to between 26 and 28 of their rostered players. If a program wants to, it could actually award a 2/3 athletic scholarship to 27 different rostered student-athletes.
Most teams tend to vary their scholarship offers, with a few top players receiving “full rides” and other players getting percentage offers. Some players might just get their books or room and board paid for, while others might get 20 or 25 percent of tuition or a higher percentage. Every program is different, with some D1 programs (Ivy League schools, Union and RIT) offering no athletic scholarships and others limited by their conference’s rules. Atlantic Hockey programs are only allowed to award 14 full scholarships per team, for example.
Too many families spend thousands of dollars in pursuit of the difficult-to-achieve Division I dream – and the even-more-difficult-to-achieve athletic-scholarship dream – by sending their kids to multiple Tier 1 and Tier 2 camps and combines, as well as other showcases and tournaments, on a yearly basis. Some of that money could be used for SAT or ACT tutoring and in other ways to help improve the player’s academic performance and open up a lot more potential scholarship money than is available for athletic prowess alone.
Both of my kids – one is playing college hockey and the other is playing college lacrosse – received academic offers of between $15,000 and $36,000 per year from D1, D2 and D3 institutions that were recruiting them. They were fortunate to attend a strong private high school for free because my wife is the athletic director, but my son was just a solid honor roll student with high test scores and my daughter had great grades, but average test scores. So there is even more money available to those kids who excel both in the classroom and on their placement tests.
And, of course, strong academic performance sets young people up for successful college and professional careers regardless of where the athletic journey takes them.
The Moral of the Story
For some reason, over the past several years the local hockey community has developed an unrealistic perception of its place on the elite hockey landscape. While the DMV has become one of the fastest-growing regions in the country in terms of youth hockey participation during the Alex Ovechkin era, there still is a lack of education and understanding when it comes to junior and college hockey as well as the numerous pathways available to our local players who want to continue playing hockey beyond 18U and high school.
Four or five years ago, very few local hockey players and families had any idea what Tier 1 or Tier 2 junior hockey was. Now, for many, it has become an obsession. Perhaps the presence of the Maryland NAHL franchise in our backyard has created more interest, but there seems to be this “I play AAA, so I should be playing Tier 1 or Tier 2” attitude that has infiltrated our market without a true understanding of what it takes to play at those levels.
The end result of this obsession is families of kids as young as 15 spending obscene amounts of money in pursuit of this Tier 1 and Tier 2 dream that is just about as hard to realize as the opportunity to play NCAA Division I hockey.
Kids who are five and six years away from attending college – if they are planning on playing at the NCAA level – are talking about which junior camps and combines they were “invited” to, and parents are plastering videos and photos of their kids playing at these camps all over social media without realizing that probably less than one or two percent of the kids at the camp or combine will ever play at the Tier 1 or Tier 2 level.
Players who should be focusing on where they will be playing next year and making sure that they are continuing to develop and improve are worried about junior careers that might or might not be awaiting them two, three or four years down the road. Not only is money being wasted, but time spent attending too many of these camps and combines can be mentally and physically draining for young players and actually set them back as they prepare for their upcoming season.
They should be focusing on the next step and the next level instead of obsessing about two or three years – and two or three levels – beyond where they are at the present time.
The most unfortunate result of this obsession has been that when the inevitable happens and 99 percent of the kids who strive to get to the Tier 1 or Tier 2 levels don’t make it, they feel like they are hockey failures. That is why they react so negatively when a coach tells them that they aren’t quite ready for the NAHL or NCDC, and why they often seem offended when a coach or scout approaches them about playing at the NCAA Division III level or in a great Tier 3 league like the EHL.
This is unfortunate, because the EHL and USPHL Premier combine to send well over 200 players per year to NCAA Division III programs – and because NCAA Division III hockey is extremely high-level hockey. There are only 60 D1 hockey programs. Compare that to 350 Division I basketball programs. In all divisions of NCAA hockey, there are only about 150 teams.
That’s it.
So being able to play hockey for an NCAA D3 team is an amazing opportunity that should be cherished and appreciated.
Only about 4,500 hockey players are afforded the opportunity to play at the NCAA level in a given year, which equates to about 1,125 new players starting their college careers each fall. A look at just the U.S. junior leagues shows that there are more than 200 teams competing at all levels, with new programs being added each year, in addition to the more than 130 teams playing at the Junior “A” or Tier 1 level as part of the CJHL in Canada.
That’s close to 8,000 players competing beyond high school and 18U without even considering the other hundreds of junior and midget leagues in Canada, the hundreds of U.S. AA and AAA teams at the 16/18U levels or the hundreds of U.S. high school and prep school teams – all with young players hoping to play NCAA hockey someday.
For the adults reading this article, there are a few things we need to make sure of as this process unfolds. We need be certain that this is their dream and not ours. I have had multiple junior and even AAA coaches tell me over the past few weeks that they are “worried” because mom or dad continues to do the communicating instead of the player.
This parental intervention does not help, first because it is a red flag to the coach that the parents might be too involved and therefore a problem throughout the season, and second because it enables the player to use mom and dad as a crutch instead of learning how to communicate with other adults and advocate for him or herself.
These two concerns will become bigger issues for coaches – and hurt your kids more –
with each step up the hockey ladder. I’ve actually mentioned this to several very nice, well-meaning parents, in email exchanges with the parents telling me they understood yet continuing to not listen to my advice.
The second thing we can do as adults in helping guide young players along their hockey journeys is to help them gather all the information they need to make the best decision for them, and to celebrate support that decision once they make it.
The second thing we can do as adults in helping guide young players along their hockey journeys is to help them gather all the information they need to make the best decision for them, and to celebrate support that decision once they make it.
By stepping aside and letting them handle it – after discussing all the options and providing them with every bit of information you can find to help them make an informed decision – you are making 100 percent certain it’s what they want and not what you want, which means they are more likely to buy in to the final decision, give it their absolute best effort and fight through the many ups and downs that are part of the junior hockey experience.
This is the most important part of the whole process.
If we as adults don’t take the time to understand and appreciate what these young players are up against, to help them develop and understand the realities and to comprehend what an amazing gift it is to be able to continue playing hockey at a high level beyond high school and possibly into college, they are going to feel as if they failed simply because they weren’t able to advance to a level that realistically may have never been within their reach.
There are no shortcuts.
Do the homework. Read everything you can (completely). Seek and accept third-party feedback. And help figure out the best – and most realistic – path to maximize the odds of getting to the highest level a player can possibly achieve.
Then sit back and enjoy the ride.