A look inside the college hockey recruiting process

Tory Pitner, a potential college recruit, answers calls from colleges on Jan. 1, 2022. (Courtesy photo)

Tory Pitner and his mother, Rysa, had a big potential conflict as the calendar flipped to 2022.

Pitner, then a standout defenseman for South Kent’s 15U team, was home in El Cerrito, Calif., for the holidays. On New Year’s Day, he was slated to play in a scrimmage with his hometown buddies — eat breakfast together, play in the game and then hang out the rest of the day.

The other event on Jan. 1: Colleges could begin reaching out to Pitner to express interest. He knew that three schools had scheduled calls with him. He could handle that.

But he heard through his agent that more schools had interest. When they would dial his number was unknown.

So, Tory and Rysa talked over what to do if schools called while he was on the ice. Would they let the phone ring? Would he call them back after the scrimmage? Would Rysa pick up the phone, come to the door leading to the ice and signal Tory to come off to talk with each school?

Yes — that would be the plan. And they executed that plan a lot.

“He had way more phone calls than we were expecting,” Rysa said.

Three or four times during the on-ice session, Rysa signaled for Tory and the right-shot defenseman hustled to the door, got a quick brief on who was on the other line and switched from hockey to conversation mode.

Once the calls were over, it wasn’t right back to the ice. Tory took meticulous notes at the end of each conversation so he could evaluate what was said later.

Then, it was back to the ice.

“Some of my buddies gave me a hard time about it like, ‘Dude, we’re down two, you just got on the ice and now you’re taking calls? It can wait,’” Tory said. “That kind of stuff was pretty funny.”

By the end of the day, Tory had a lot more than the three scheduled calls. He finished with 10.

“He had a pretty full notebook,” Rysa said.

Tory Pitner, a potential college recruit, answers calls from colleges on Jan. 1, 2022. (Courtesy photo) And that was just Day 1 of the college recruitment process.

That first phone call

In April 2019, the NCAA enacted new rules that drastically changed the college hockey recruitment landscape.

First, they eliminated all recruiting conversations before Jan. 1 of a prospect’s sophomore year. After Jan. 1, there could be telephone calls, emails, texts, unofficial visits and camp and clinic recruiting conversations.

A second rule said NCAA coaches couldn’t make a verbal offer until Aug. 1 prior to a prospect’s junior year. Then coaches could also offer official visits.

Had those rules not been in place, Cole Eiserman would’ve likely been talking to colleges when he was 13 or 14 years old. Prodigies like that were usually swept up quickly by top colleges.

Despite all the buzz around Eiserman, he was forced to wait until the calendar flipped to 2022 for schools to make contact. And make contact they did.

“I had a lot of calls,” Eiserman said. “It was obviously a really cool experience. …You kind of dream of it a little bit. And then once it comes, it’s awesome.”

Talents like Eiserman are a small minority. Even most top prospects aren’t sure-fire first-round picks.

Ethan Gardula, for example, had plenty of calls on Jan. 1, which he was expecting. The first came from UConn. Jack Sadowski’s first call came from then-assistant coach Mike McLaughlin at Northeastern.

“It was pretty cool to talk to a college coach for the first time about college and college hockey and what the experience was like,” Sadowski said.

Later in the day, Sadowski got the call he was looking for: UNH. Sadowski’s father, John, played for the Wildcats and the son had his aim focused on the Durham, N.H., school. Head coach Mike Souza was on the other end of the call.

“That was the call I was looking most forward to,” Sadowski said.

For some, the day didn’t pan out as expected. Owen Keefe, the son of Northeastern coach Jerry Keefe, knew he was going to get some calls from colleges. But, admittedly, there were still some nerves about just how many calls would come in — after all, he was coming from the Massachusetts high school ranks, which develops fewer high-end recruits than the prep school circuit.

The day began and the calls didn’t come in as early as he thought they would. So, he made a Dunkin’ run with his mother.

It was in the drive-thru when his phone rang. It was Quinnipiac.

“I was so happy,” Keefe said. “It was just cool. Even though you’re not getting an offer or anything, it’s cool to know there are people that are watching and that kind of thing.”

Both Boston College and Boston University went through coaching changes during this time. Longtime BC bench boss Jerry York retired in April 2022 and was replaced by Greg Brown in May. Albie O’Connell was fired by the Terriers, with Jay Pandolfo eventually taking his spot in May.

That caused some changes in recruiting local prospects.

On BC’s end, the Eagles had already reached out to Matthew Frost (who’s from Saskatchewan and was playing on South Kent’s 16U team) on Jan. 1 but didn’t give Landan Resendes a call until after Brown took over. Keefe wasn’t heavily recruited by BU until Pandolfo became the head coach and Joe Pereira, a recruiting guru, was announced as an assistant coach, moving over from UConn.

“Joe called me one of the first days he got the job,” Keefe said. “And from that point on, I kind of just wanted to go to BU.”

Communication, visits and pressure

As prospects fielded phone calls from colleges, their actual hockey seasons were taking place. No prospect wanted their season to move to the background.

So after the rush of Jan. 1 and the days following, most prospects wanted to get back to focusing on their current team.

“It was pretty much a longer, drawn-out process for me,” Pitner said. “It wasn’t like — talk to schools every day from Jan. 1 on. It was more like — talk to them here and talk to them there. And then as my season went on, I was more focused on our season. I honestly tried to put the recruitment aside a little but until after our season was over.”

When the season was finished, Pitner sat down with Mike O’Rafferty, his agent, to figure out which schools might be best for his ambition of playing in the National Hockey League.

“Tory’s got a very analytical brain,” Rysa, his mother, said. “Every year when he makes a decision around where he wants to play in the coming year, it’s very much about what he perceives he needs as part of his development curve to get him to that next level.”

One of those schools that made it to Pitner’s final list was UMass. Then-associate head coach Jared DeMichiel was the primary contact for Pitner in Amherst. When DeMichiel left for the same position at Michigan State, UMass assistant coach Tom Upton took over.

“It kind of sucked to see [DeMichiel] go,” Pitner said. “But now we have coach Upton and he’s been unbelievable as well.”

Sadowski took on a similar strategy in waiting until the hockey was finished — his season at Arlington High and Select 16 Camp — before diving into talks with UNH.

“We kept the contact a little bit,” Sadowski said. “But we didn’t really start really talking until probably the summer — like in July.”

Frost, despite being one of the more highly sought-after players in the recruiting class, only had one free weekend in the second half of his season at South Kent. That weekend, he went to Providence College for a visit. It wasn’t until school ended that he got a chance to visit Boston College.

Another prospect who visited Boston College was Eiserman, in August. He ventured over to Boston University and Northeastern later that month. For his final visit, the Newburyport, Mass., product flew back out to Minnesota, where he had previously been going to school at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, to visit the Golden Gophers.

“Schools have their differences,” Eiserman said. “Kind of see what you like and what you don’t like and you will really get a good feel of the campus when you’re there. The coaches are really good, no matter where you go in kind of showing you around and letting you feel what it would be like if you were on their team.”

Keefe had a visit with UMass, but his final one came with BU, allowing him to see the pros and cons of two very different schools in Hockey East.

“You learn a lot from them,” Keefe said of visits. “This is a place you’ll be for a long time in your life and one of the most important parts of your life from the hockey and living standpoint. You’re going to enjoy it and make sure it’s the right fit for you with the hockey and the campus. A lot of schools are different in their own ways. With some schools, you like part of it and don’t like other parts of it as much — like the hockey is good or the other way around. I think you just have to find the perfect mix.”

The pursuit of that perfect mix, along with finding a school that will help define the rest of your life a year or two before non-student-athletes do, can create lots of pressure for 16-year-olds and their families.

“The only pressure is kind of from me because it was obviously a stressful time,” Teddy Stiga said. “You don’t want to make the wrong decision.”

While some of that pressure came internally, the outside noise is often the hardest to block out.

“Everyone always has an opinion,” Pitner said. “Just trying to find out where I want to go and what’s best for me and my hockey development. I wouldn’t say pressure really. I feel like the pressure is more in games. For me, I didn’t really feel any pressure to commit because I knew it was my decision.”

A lot of that outside pressure, however, comes from hearing about other players going on visits and seeing peers commit.

“I think that these kids have pressure without question,” said Danny Resendes, Landan’s father. “Not so much just from the coaches. I don’t believe that. I do believe that seeing friends commit and ‘OK, they’re really good.’ I would be like ‘Guys, just take your time. Everything’s going to be fine.’”

Making the decision

This wasn’t Stiga’s first time being recruited. Yes, it was the first time colleges could reach out, but a year earlier, prep schools were hot on his trail. The recruitment processes aren’t far off from each other.

It was tough to choose a prep school. There were lots of good options with different kinds of campuses, academics and hockey programs.

“We hemmed and we hawed over which private school he was going to go to,” Amy, his mother, said. “He had some choices and some coaches were on him. I think that was almost like a turn-off for him.”

After accelerating a school year in July, he knew he wanted a different process when picking a college. It was a big decision that had implications he wouldn’t experience for another couple of years.

COLLEGE COMMITMENT DATABASES: 2005-born players | 2006-born players | 2007-born players

He knew he wanted to go to school in Boston, so he narrowed his sights to Harvard, Boston University and Boston College, which he visited in that order over a two-week span. It was a quick process, but one school stood out of the three.

Boston College showed Stiga clips of alums having success in the NHL. The coaching staff gave him the phone numbers of Alex Newhook and Spencer Knight to pick their brains. Both were first-round picks and Knight played with the U.S. National Team Development Program, which Stiga was headed out to a month from when the Eagles were recruiting him.

“That was awesome to hear from them,” Stiga said.

Along with the NHL factor, Stiga was also impressed with a program promoted by Brown, the new head coach. Every so often, BC hockey alums who didn’t continue their playing careers after college come back and speak and talk about their jobs — some are neurosurgeons, work in finance or are teachers.

It provides players with a wide variety of career paths and connections if professional hockey isn’t the next step upon graduation.

“It’s so funny to me to look at a 15-year-old and him saying that sounded really interesting,” Amy said. “Like, it did? I know it would have been great and I’m interested, but I find it fascinating that you actually picked up on that.”

So BC it was for Stiga. Frost followed with a love for the coaches, the structure and the city of Boston. While Frost didn’t have a dream school in mind when entering the recruitment process, Resendes did — and it was BC.

“The dream school thing was big,” Resendes said. “But if it wasn’t the right fit, I wouldn’t have chosen there. But I felt a different kind of feeling when I was there on the tour and just talking to the coaches. It just was awesome. It was everything that lived up to my expectations.”

Other schools used the NHL connections to help with recruiting. UMass coach Greg Carvel knew full well that Pitner, a defenseman, wanted to play in the NHL. Carvel’s cupboard is full of defensemen he’s helped shape for the NHL — Cale Makar, Mario Ferraro, Zac Jones and Matthew Kessel just from the past bunch of years. Soon, Scott Morrow and Ryan Ufko, two current standout UMass blueliners, may join that group.

So, Carvel made sure to have those names listed behind him on a whiteboard as they met in his office. He also made mention of personal film sessions with players.

“Carvel hooked him when he talked about Scott Morrow and how Scott Morrow would come up to [Carvel’s] office and break down film with him on a weekly basis,” Rysa, Pitner’s mother, said. “Tory’s eyes lit up.”

But sometimes things change. Recently, Pitner de-committed from UMass and is back to Square 1, talking to colleges once again. So is life in the age of college recruitment.

Another element that was attractive in recruitment was the other sports teams on campus. UConn, for instance, has a world-class men’s and women’s basketball program.

“It’s just how their sports teams have the community that they have,” Gardula said. “They have all their facilities right in this little area. So you just walk by and you see one team and obviously, really good programs, like the [men’s] basketball team won it all this year. Just the winning culture around there is something that stood for me.”

That, plus the new Toscano Ice Forum on campus, sold Gardula on UConn.

For some prospects, the pull of where their parents went to college was so strong that they followed in their footsteps. There is no better example of that than Sadowski and UNH.

“That’s where both my parents went and my dad got to play hockey there,” Sadowski said. “So he’s always telling me about how fun it was. And then going to the Whittemore Center growing up and going to a bunch of UNH games. I loved watching the games, loved the rink and loved the campus. And then obviously it’s a great coaching staff.”

Eiserman’s older brother, Shane, went to UNH. Eiserman made many trips as a young hockey player to Durham, N.H., to watch his brother’s games.

BC LANDS A STAR: James Hagens commits to Boston College and other college recruiting news

Still, his sights were set on BC, BU, Northeastern and Minnesota. Ultimately, Minnesota won out.

“They’re very family-minded,” Eiserman said of Minnesota. “They’re really, really good as a culture group and just really hockey-based. I was really attracted to that and it was awesome.”

Back in Hockey East, Keefe — who said he knew early on he couldn’t play for his father at Northeastern; “it wouldn’t have been good for either of us,” he said — eventually got his wish. BU was his last visit and preferred destination.

“I was just hoping they were going to offer Aug. 1 because that’s where I wanted to go,” Keefe said. “I took the visit and going into the visit, I was pretty pumped up. I already loved it and then I got onto the campus and I’d been to the rink a lot just from going to games and stuff. But then going around the locker room and walking around to see everything. It was just so cool.”

All eight recruits took vastly different paths to reach decisions. They navigated through the ups and downs of the process, the good and the bad.

They weren’t the first to endure it and they certainly won’t be the last.