Monday, September 8, 2008

Canadian Junior A NCAA/Major Junior Equivalencies

I now have five-to-seven years of player data for Canadian Junior A leagues, so it's now possible to generate equivalencies for each league. I ran the data for British Columbia (BCHL), Alberta (AJHL), Saskatchewan (SJHL), Manitoba (MJHL), Ontario (OPJHL), Quebec (QJAHL) and the Maritimes (MJAHL).

The Quebec and Maritimes leagues did not send a significant number of players to the NCAA, and few players went from the SJHL to Major Junior. The Manitoba league was more likely to send players to other Junior A league than to have them step up to a higher-level of hockey.

Here are the equivalencies normalized to a player age of 18:






Junior A to NCAAEQUIVMean AgeN
*USHL0.6619.41384
AJHL0.3918.3891
BCHL0.3418.34190
OPJHL0.3218.3394
SJHL0.3118.3742
A huge drop from the USHL to the Junior A leagues - but not a huge difference among the Canadian leagues. The AJHL seems to have a higher level of play.







Junior A to Major Junior
EQUIVMean AgeN
AJHL0.6117.4348
BCHL0.5718.7034
QJAHL0.5118.5130
MJAHL0.4717.6231
OPJHL0.4418.44217
Less of a difference this time, but again the AJHL is on top.








Major Junior to Junior A
EQUIVMean AgeN
BCHL0.3318.3733
SJHL0.2719.1729
AJHL0.2218.8043
QJAHL0.2118.7185
MJAHL0.2019.2319
OPJHL0.1718.2071


Note that the equivalency is in this table is actually for Junior A to Major Junior so that we can compare the relative performance of players stepping up a level of hockey versus those stepping down. Junior A leagues appear substantially less difficult for players coming from Major Junior than they did to players going in the other direction.

Overall, assuming that the level of play is identical in all three Canadian major Leagues (which has been shown elsewhere on this site), then the BCHL and AJHL appear to have the highest level of play of all the Junior A leagues.

Labels: , ,


Comments:
I was wondering if you could explain what EQUIV means to me.

Junior A To Major Junior:

BCHL 0.57


Does this mean that the average player going from the BCHL to Major Junior scores 57% of his Junior A points in the new league? Is it goals?

Thank you, love your work.
 
yes, exactly. A guy who scores 1 point per game in the BCHL scores 0.57 points per game in Tier I junior.
 
Post a Comment



Links to this post:

Create a Link



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]