Every statistic, ranking and roster on State of Hockey comes from a public source and is maintained by hand. This page explains where the data originates, how it is updated, what its known limitations are, and how our ranking boards are built. If a number on this site looks wrong to you, this page should tell you enough to work out why — and then please tell us.
Where the Data Comes From
| Data | Source | How it is confirmed |
|---|---|---|
| Prep season statistics | Prep school athletic reports, NEPSAC results and published team records | Recorded per player, per season, from published box scores and season totals |
| School affiliation | School athletic rosters and published tournament scout books | Confirmed against at least one published roster |
| Club affiliation | Published tournament rosters and scout books | Clubs do not formally publish rosters. See the caveat below |
| USA Hockey camps | USA Hockey published selections and results | Taken directly from the governing body |
| USHL and QMJHL | League draft results, tender announcements and transaction records | Taken directly from the league |
| College commitments | Public announcements by the player, family, school or program | Verbal only — not signed letters of intent |
| Career stat lines | Elite Prospects and published league records | Attributed where reproduced in an article |
How It Is Maintained
All player records are kept in a single master spreadsheet maintained by Mike Wallace. Pages on this site read from that record directly, which is why a correction made once propagates everywhere that player appears. There is no database, no login, no user accounts and no automated scraping of third-party sites.
Records are updated as sources publish: statistics through the prep season, camp results as USA Hockey announces them, draft results on draft day, and rosters as tournaments publish their books.
The Two Seasons — and Why It Matters
- Club half season — September to November. Ends with the Massachusetts state tournament. Coverage is editorial: results, rosters and analysis.
- Prep school season — December to March. This is the season our leaderboards and season statistics pages are built from.
Club production does not appear in our leaderboards. Club scoring is not centrally or reliably reported, and individual goals and assists from club events are frequently recorded incorrectly or not at all. We will describe what happened in a club game in an article; we will not put an unverified club stat line next to a player’s name in a statistical table.
Known Limitations
- Club rosters are not formally published. Club teams are set through tryouts in March and April, but no official roster release follows. Until a tournament book confirms a roster, any club affiliation shown on this site reflects our own tracking. Articles that rely on club affiliation carry a notice saying so.
- Roster documents contain errors. Published tournament books have printed incorrect hometowns, misspelled names and inconsistent team labels. Where a book contradicts our record we report the discrepancy rather than silently overwriting either one.
- Statistics can be incomplete. Prep programs vary in how completely and how promptly they publish results. A missing or zero stat line may mean a player did not record a point, or may mean the source has not been published yet.
- “Prep varsity” means different things by age. For the 2010 birth year it means a player was rostered on a varsity team last season. For the 2011 birth year, most players attend a prep school but have not yet made varsity — December tryouts are ahead of them. We do not present the two as equivalent.
- Coverage is limited to Massachusetts players. A player at a Massachusetts prep school who is not a Massachusetts resident is outside our scope, and so is a Massachusetts resident playing outside prep hockey.
How Ranking Boards Are Built
Each board states its own method at the top of the article. The weightings differ by position, deliberately:
- Forwards — production leads. A forward’s job is to score, and points measure it.
- Defensemen — the USA Hockey national camp process leads, then production read as a goals-and-assists split rather than a total, then Festival and Final 40 selection, then junior draft standing. Points measure the wrong thing for a defenseman.
Boards cover players who are in scope and for whom sufficient published data exists. A player with no record in our source data cannot be placed on a board, and we say so in the article rather than omitting him silently.
Corrections to Data
If a statistic, school, club or credential on this site is wrong, email mike@stateofhockey.us with the player name and the correct information. Data corrections are made at the source record and typically appear on the site within a few days. See our Editorial and Corrections Policy for the full process.