If you’re serious about playing at the next level, you’ve probably heard the term hockey advisor at some point.
The right one can help guide you and greatly increase your chances of playing at the next level of hockey. The wrong one can give you bad info, waste your time, and money...
Here in this post, we’ll walk you through what a hockey advisor actually does, when it makes sense to hire one, how to find one you can trust, what it might cost, and how to make the most of the relationship without ever putting your collegiate eligibility at risk.
That's a lot of stuff, but they're all important aspects to cover.
Many of these questions are ones that our team wishes we had ourselves during our playing careers so the goal here is to unpack them for you.
Table of Contents:
- What Does A Hockey Advisor Do?
- When Should You Start Working with an Advisor?
- How Do You Find a Good Hockey Advisor?
- Hockey Advisor Costs
- Hockey Advisor vs. Agent (NCAA Compliance)
- Red Goal Lights to Look Out For
- Getting the Most Out of an Advisor
- Closing Thoughts
What Does a Hockey Advisor Do?
A hockey advisor helps a player (and family) navigate the overall process in their aim to play at the next level, whether that be at the junior, prep, or collegiate level. At the pro level, the relationship can move more from ice hockey advisor -> hockey agent or agency working with the client.
Depending on the level you’re aiming for next, the role of the advisor may differ a bit (and with good reason).
For example, at the junior level, advisors can be in communication with teams/coaches along with many other functions.
At the NCAA level though, hockey advisors cannot contact NCAA coaches directly on a players behalf.
Whether the aim in your situation is juniors or college (or pro), hockey advisors can help players immensely in the following ways:
Hockey Career Guidance + Fit
Having helped former players who’ve been in your shoes before, they know how to best map out paths for you based on your specifics such as your level of play, age, and your goals. We’ll often make players + families aware of playing options they maybe weren’t even aware of based on their situation.
Education around Eligibility + Rules
Advisors ensure throughout the whole process that players abide by set eligibility rules (especially NCAA), amateur status guidelines, and stay fully compliant both with the NCAA Eligibility Center and also ensuring academic requirements are met if they’re going this route.
Video + Resume Insights
High quality advisors can often assist players in creating professional hockey resumes and highlight videos if they don’t already have one in place. For example, we have a professional videographer on our team who can assist us in creating compelling videos for our clients to showcase to teams.
Additional Exposure + Showcase Strategy
To complement the rest of the work advisors help with, they’re able to best recommend which camps or showcases may be good for you to attend based on where you’re aiming. Say a number of scouts from a particular collegiate conference plan to attend a showcase in a city, it may be beneficial to take part in that among many other things.
Communication + Presentation
This is one of the areas that makes a big difference. Having well refined communication to share with teams can make all the difference. We’ve talked with hundreds of coaches over nearly a decade- we know quite a bit in terms of what coaching staffs do (and don’t) like to see. If an advisor is able to help you in this area alongside followup messages and an overall plan strategy wise, this will give you a much better chance to present yourself strongly to coaches at the next level.
Academic Planning
This one only pertains to players (and families) going the collegiate route, but it’s equally important. This ones a collective effort since it’s up to each player/family to ensure you’re putting in the work academically. Advisors though can broadly help make sure you understand any hockey related requirements, grade benchmarks, and timelines best as can to help keep you on track in the process.
Advisor Relationships
Depending on the level you’re aiming for, they may or may not be able to directly talk with coaches. At the junior level, they fully can. At the NCAA level, they can’t. A strong hockey advisory team though will have good informal networks across various leagues. With this, they can make non-direct recommendations to players to help steer them in the right direction. If they have past players they’ve helped advance to particular programs, they’ll definitely know the caliber those teams are looking for.
When Should You Start Working with an Advisor?
It depends on your situation. Timing does matters a bit more for some junior leagues and then NCAA or course, but teams scout players across the board.
If you’re under 14-15, it’s likely still a tad too early to need an advisor yet unless you’re already getting attention from junior, preparatory schools, etc. At that point, it may be worthwhile to open up dialogue.
The biggest window is often during midget years or early in junior years (16-20) as this is when you ideally want to start planning.
Do you aim to play Tier I-II junior? Push for a NAHL spot? Go the Canadian junior route? A good hockey advisor can help you look at all the pros and cons of each and help guide you toward the route that fits your long-term goals.
For a bit older players, say you’re in your last year of juniors or have a bit less conventional resume on paper, an advisor can help you jump quickly into the most realistic situation before you lose momentum.
How Do You Find a Good Hockey Advisor?
This is an important question to ask.
There’s a number of ways to find a good hockey advisor.
If you live in a big hockey market (ex: Toronto, Minneapolis, etc) and have a number of friends/acquaintances who’ve previously worked with a hockey advisor, getting a direct referral from them is great way to get an intro to one.
If that’s not the case, you can find a best fit elsewhere by researching and to see if there’s an advisor who thinks it’s a fit based on your situation.
In terms of finding a good hockey advisor, you want to look for advisors who’ve actually helped players get to the places you want to go.
Bonus: if a few members on the advisory staff themselves have played at a high level themselves (NCAA, pro), even better. That means they’ve been in your shoes. Half our team has previously played professionally.
An important part of finding the right advisor is to talk to them via email, phone, and so on. Whatever your preference is here. Their communication and responses can tell you a lot.
Are they asking quality questions about your game, your playing history, and your goals? Are they being realistic about your next step, or just telling you what you want to hear?
In our own work with players, we believe that the combination of good advisement (via us) and a motivated player on/off the ice is the winning formula as you need both in order to maximize the chances of succeeding in your aim.
Hockey Advisor Costs + Fees
How much does a hockey advisor cost?
This is where things can get a little tricky since costs and fees from one advisor to the next can be all over the place. This makes our ranges quite wide to cover the full spectrum.
Some advisors charge on an annual retainer that might be anywhere from $1,500usd to $7,500usd. Some keep it simple and use a higher cost flat fee anywhere from $2,5000-$12,000usd. For players aiming for juniors, the cost will likely be a bit more on the lower end of the spectrum. For collegiate aim, it depends.
Some advisors might even charge monthly. In our experience, that's not often enough time to help based on the majority of players goals from start to landing where they want to play.
Adding to this, many advisors offer further a la carte services such as video editing or showcase bookings that can increase it even further. It varies.
The important thing isn’t just the price, it’s what you’re potentially getting for that money.
The idea of paying $7,000 or $10,000 might seem very high at first glance, but if the aim is to help a player earn an NCAA scholarship, that could garner the athlete anywhere from $30,000-$100,000+ in savings over the course of their upcoming collegiate career. If this opens up the door for you to play beyond college hockey, it’s even more.
Of course, all players can’t earn partial or full-ride 6-figure D1 scholarships.
This certainly isn’t the only path for players to take though. For example, we’ve had many instances over the years of NCAA D3 players who receive substantial benefits as a byproduct of our work with them which helped them to make it to the college hockey level.
These benefits include hefty academic scholarships, financial aid, and packages that help many of these players save over $5-10k+ per season. That adds up over a few seasons. At the junior level, we've also helped countless players and their families in their savings based on the setups they've earned.
With this in mind, the cost makes a lot more sense.
We’ve found that players (and parents) prefer a straightforward fee structure so we offer this at a couple different package levels depending on what the player wants included.
Hockey Advisor vs. Agent (NCAA Compliance)
What’s the difference between a hockey advisor and a hockey agent?
In short, a hockey advisor “advises” you and provides expert guidance on how to navigate the process. They cannot directly negotiate with teams or have a pro deal with you in place as an advisor.
A hockey agent differs in that they can negotiate contracts with players, talk freely on behalf of players, and aren’t restricted to limitations by say the NCAA.
Understanding the difference between these two is critical especially if you’re aiming for NCAA hockey.
You’ll be looking for a hockey advisor if the goal is college hockey.
Red Goal Lights to Look Out For
If any hockey advisor out there guarantees fast results (example: you’ll have an NCAA D1 offer in 3 months or less), run the other way as fast as you can.
Same goes for anyone who pressures you to sign immediately or doesn’t have good email communication. Hopefully neither of these happens, but it’s important to keep on the look out for.
Good advisors should aim to be honest about where you stand and what it will take to move forward. We always remind players (and families) that this is a journey- one that takes time to do right.
No advisor can guarantee a team spot for certain because the ultimate decision comes down to what a hockey coaching staff needs and them determining if a player fits in their picture.
That said, we’ve likely helped players in similar shoes to you in all sorts of situations to get noticed, move up, and our track record speaks for itself. Our team's job is to as best we can guide, support, and position you for success with the aim of earning you the opportunity to play at the next level up.
Getting the Most Out of an Advisor
Hiring an ice hockey advisor does not mean you can just sit back and magically wait for coaches to come to you.
It’s a dual winning effort as we touched on earlier in this post. The more effort you put in as a player, the more a quality advisor can help.
Aim to keep them in the loop with your current training, stats if it’s mid-year, share any new highlights on ice, and sharing academic info (if that’s applicable). If they give you feedback, try to take it seriously and work on it as best you can.
Also, try to be clear about your goals and make sure they know when something changes too.
For example, we’ve had players in the past that initially thought they wanted to play at one level (say NCAA D1), but realized they prefer another (say NCAA D3) where they had a major they were interested in along with then having a bigger role on the roster at this level. This is just one example of many but it's important to touch on.
We’ve also had players change their mind through the process and make the jump straight to pro and that’s fine as well.
Quality player advisor relationships work because both sides are all pulling in the same direction.
Closing Thoughts
The bottom line is, there’s no quick fix or shortcut to the next level in hockey.
There luckily is a huge difference between navigating it alone and having someone (or a team) in your corner who knows the proper steps, timelines, process, and the right people to connect with based on first-hand knowledge.
Players (and parents) come to us at many different stages in their hockey journeys at different ages. We’re happy to tell you if we think there may be alignment for us to help based on your situation. You can send our team a message here to introduce yourself.
With the right guidance alongside you as a player putting in the work on and off the ice consistently, the playing opportunities available to you can open up much wider
