Mission - Complete Player Development & Exposure

At DMV Prospects we want to change the model.

We are NOT an advising agency. We don't like that word, the connotation that comes with it or what it stands for. Anyone can charge a family money, tell them what to do and use part of that money to get them a tryout or team placement.

What is the point of that if the player is not suited for a particular level or the team placement will result in a bad fit with a coach, stryle of play or organizational reputation? Or if it's simply a charade to say, "See, I got you the opportunity, but you just weren't good enough."

If people are accpeting money and placing a player on a team or in a high-level tryout sitaution without a long-term plan outlined to help the player achieve his or her goals, without a backup plan in place if the initial situation doesn't work out, without educating the player on the complete process and without teaching the player how to network and handle situations as an adult, they are basically stealing your money. 

Our goal is to provide all of that for young elite hockey players looking to play hockey beyond high school and 18U, while also providing ways once the outline is presented, doors have been opened and feedback has been provided to help players see the big picture and do whatever they need to do to get to the level of hockey they ulimately hope to attain.

We call this Complete Player Development & Exposure, and it includes:

• Educating the player and family on the various pathways to college hockey and giving them all the information they need to make the decisions that best suit their family and situation. 

• Providing the player with an honest assessment of the player's current level of play - from our staff and oustide, trusted third-party coaches and scout - and a realistic projection of the level the player can attain short- and long-term.

• Opening doors for the player to organizations, coaches and scouts at the player's current and potential levels of play, networking on the player's behalf, assiting the player with initial correspondence and providing advice for the process going forward once initial contacts have been made.

• Utilizing our network to provide playes with opportunities to skate with appropriate- and desired-level teams for the purpose of evaluation, getting feedback, starting a relationship and hopefully getting future opportunities with that particular coach, team or organization.

• Educating players on what needs to be done (correspondence, video promotion, resume building, etc.) to put a player in the best position possible to be recruited, drafted, tendered or offered a tryout with a particular team at an appopriate- or desired-level of play. 

• Providing opportunities for players to be seen by coaches and scouts at various higher levels of play through showcase teams that compete in the most-scouted events as well events created by us in the DMV area. 

• Creating opportunities for the players to use the feedback received from our staff, as well as third-party coaches and scouts, to improve their level of skill, level of play, level of fitness, level of hockey IQ and confience in interacting with adult coaches and scouts. This includes:

  • ​In- and out-of-season on-ice training programs - individual, small group, larger camps & clinics

  • Access to high-level coaches,scouts & instructors from the DMV and other areas of the country

  • Off-ice training programs and advice

  • Video review and analysis of game play by our staff, professional-level players and college/junior-level coaches for the purpose of providing continued assesment of a player's level of play plus advice and instruction on areas that need improvement

  • Sunday Elite Hockey League - a spring/summer league featuring players from 16U all the way up through college that features minor league professional players; NCAA Division I & III players; Tier 1, 2 & 3 junior players; AAA players; high AA players and prep school players

  • Access to new, cutting edge training products, techniques and concepts

  • Consisent communication to help keep the player and family on track, assess the player's level of play and opportunities and to map out a plan for the future with various alternate options and opportunities

At DMV Hockey Prospects our goal is to help develop, promote and educate the elite hockey players of the DMV (DC, Maryland & Virginia). There are a high number of great young hockey players in our area - and the number is growing every day - but often as they get into their teen years many of them tend to pursue other sports more seriously and play hockey in more of a recreational manner. There’s nothing wrong with that if the decision is made because there is a love for that other sport. Unfortunately, many times it’s because parents and players do not understand the various pathways available to progress up the hockey develoipment ladder or feel that there is no future in hockey for players who compete in a non-traditional market such as the DMV.

That simply is not true, and it’s our mission to make sure all of the elite players in the DMV are aware of the possibilities and are armed with the information and opportunities they need to keep playing hockey at higher levels beyond youth and high school hockey - if that's what they desire.  

Strategy
It has never been our goal to replace the regular-season fall and winter club hockey experience. Instead, we want to enhance and then supplement that experience by promoting what the young players in the DMV are doing during the fall and winter with their club teams and then providing opportunities to train, learn and compete with other top players and be seen by reputable junior teams and college programs during the spring and summer. We plan on doing this by creating our own teams of the top DMV players and taking them to events as well as by networking with reputable junior coaches and scouts to get players opportunities to play with their clubs in similar events.

We aren’t trying to steal anyone’s players and have them play for a team we operate or are associated with during the regular season. Instead we want to expose players to new, higher-level opportunities at which they will receive evaluations from the coaches they hope to one day play for and then educate them on the options they have and pitfalls to avoid on their pathway to junior (or prep school) and eventually college hockey. Through our network of junior and college coaches, we hope to aid in player development by exposing local elite players to different coaches and philosophies from around the country, parterning with the right experts to help players get bigger, stronger and faster and providing access to video analysis from experts who can help them take their games to higher levels. 

 
Our Programs
We plan to accomplish our mission through the following mediums:

• Website – Our website will promote the junior, AAA, AA and top high school programs in the DMV throughout the year. It will include stories about teams and players, video highlights that anyone can contribute, a commitment tracker of all DMV players who commit to play junior or college hockey, player and team rankings and statistics. This will be free for anyone to see and contribute to and will cover every team we can in the area at the levels mentioned above that is cooperative and provides information.

• DMV Prospects Showcase Teams - We will be assembling invitation-only teams to compete in the top spring and summer showcase events around the country. And if we don't have teams entered in a specific tournament and/or can help a local player hook up with a team that provides a better expsoure opportunity, we are happy to assist with that using our vast network of contacts. In addition, we partner with PVAHA and DeMatha High School Head Coach Tony MacAulay in selecting a team of local high school junior and seniot all-stars called TEAM DC to compete the USA Hockey-sponsored national showcase called America's Showcase St. Louis each April in St. Louis. 

• The DMV Prospects Network – DMV Prospects has been creating a network of REPUTABLE scouts and coaches from REPUTABLE junior teams and leagues over the past four years, and those will be the people that we will be exposing and introducing our players to along with NCAA and ACHA college programs. Players will get opporunities to practice and work out with higher-level teams and to get real feedback on where they stand and what they need to do to get to the level they want to achieve. Coaches and scouts from our network will be brought in regularly for mini-camps, longer camps, evaluation skates and other opportunities in which they can teach, observe, evaluate and provide feedback to our players. Our staff as well as higher-level junior and college coaches will be made available to provide game and video analysis and will be invited out to watch and evaluate our players in the showcases we attend and any events we run locally. The goal will be to provide local elite players with resources and relationships they can rely on and develop to help them achieve their hockey goals. 

• Hockey Night In Boston – DMV Prospects is partnering with Quebec Junior "A" hockey scout and former college/AAA coach Ben Hammock and Hockey Night in Boston to provide opportunities for three "Capital District" teams to attend and compete in the Hockey Night in Boston showcases, some of the most-scouted events in the country, every year. The teams will be open to players entering eighth grade for the upcoming fall school year all the way through players in their first postgraduate year. The three teams will be chosen during a HNIB Capital District Selection Festival, a weekend event that will feature a practice with junior or college coaches, three or four games and off-ice seminars covering topics such as pathways to college hockey, strength and conditioning and concussions. 

• Player Promotion and Development – The founder of DMV Prospects, Scott Lowe, recently served as his son’s only “advisor.” Devin Lowe started getting recruited by teams in New England who saw him play as a 16U player with the Howard Huskies AA team in EJEPL showcases. From those first days unitil today, through a lot of trial and error (and money that could have been better spent), Scott began building a network of contacts and asking a lot of questions about junior and college hockey and the various pathways to get there – and started recommending other players from the area to junior teams. The ultimate result was that Devin was a high-round draft pick in the NAHL (the only DMV player drafted in 2017) and the NCDC (one of three DMV players picked), both tuition-free leagues. He accepted an offer to play with the Connecticut Jr. Rangers in the NCDC, a NCAA Division I and III prospect league started by the USPHL at the urging of Division I college coaches in the Northeast. Devin recently finished his second full season playing in the NCDC for the South Shore Kings and accepted an offer to play NCAA Division III hockey for Suffolk University in Boston. Our goal is to use the information Scott absorbed and the network he started to build during Devin's recruitment to help expose elite players from the DMV to similar opportunities beyond youth and high school hockey. This process has really taken shape the past two years as Scott sent numerous players to skate with high-level AAA, NCDC, NAHL, USPHL Premier and EHL junior teams and lliterally had players offered contracts on the spot and get drafted. While Scott and our staff provide many of the services family advisors SHOULD be offering, we are different as our goal is COMPLETE PLAYER DEVELOPMENT & EXPOSURE. We strive to help open doors and provide opportunities for players to compete at higher levels, to provide education and information to allow players to make the best decisions possible and to help players develop their games by allowing them to network with top hockey minds and bringing some of those minds to the DMV area to work with them.

• Training Programs – We will provide invitation-only spring and summer training opportunities in conjunction with our invitation-only Sunday Elite Hockey League designed to help elite players focus on the finer points of the game they specifically need to work on to get to where they want to go In addition we partner with high-level NCAA Division I and professional strength and conditioning experts to provide opportunities for players to ehance their overall fitness, conditioning, strength and speed. It is our opinion that the two things that often hold our players back as they attempt to move on to higher levels is their level of fitness compated to players at the collegiate and Tier 1/Tier 2 junior levels as well as their overall exposure to different coaching philosophies and the type of high-level video analysis that can allow them to improve their hockey IQs and understanding of game situations.

• The Sunday Elite Hockey League (SEHL) – Elite athletes in other sports, specically basketball, use high-level pick-up games as part of their offseason training regimen. Many college basketball players play pick-up ball in the summer against other higher-level college players and pros. No coaches. No restrictions. Play against the best and throw your bag of tricks on the table to see what does and doesn't work against better players. No one yelling at you. No one getting benched. Unfortunately, because ice is limited and for many other reasons, it is very hard for hockey players to have this opportunity. With this in mind, we created the invitation-only spring and summer Sunday Game. Two years ago this invitation-only game at Reisterstown Sportsplex featured more than 100 players ages 16 and above competing at various times throughout the summer who had NCAA college hockey experience, junior hockey experience, prep school experience, AAA experience or high AA experience. This year we held a draft on Super Bowl Sunday, expanded to a league format with four teams and created a Tuesday night "supplemental game" for players who missed a Sunday or wanted to work toward an invite into the Sunday league games. The response and growth - and level of play - has been amazing. NCAA college players are on the benches to serve as "captains" keep shifts short and make sure the games were fast and played at a high level. We wanted these games to simulate real hockey as much as possible, but give the players the freedom to play an up-tempo, carefree style similar to what you might find on the ponds of Canada or Minnesota. The ultimate goal is for this to develop into a very high level spring and summer league similar to what you find in more traidtional hockey areas. The SEHL season runs from mid-May through mid-August. If you are interested in being considered for the league, please email us at DMVProspects@gmail.com. 

• Podcasts, Newsletters & Videos - This past summer we created the DMV Hockey Podcast, something that we hope will ultimately become a weekly source of information, opportunities and entertainment for local youth hockey players and their families. We also are planning on creating a regular newsletter that also includes updates on local teams and players; edcuational articles and videos; guest columns and breaking news from prep school, junior and college hockey.