Following a record-breaking season of prep school hockey in Ontario, St. Andrew’s College coach David Manning says Labrador City’s Mark Hillier is more than ready for his first season of NCAA Division I college hockey starting in the fall.
Hillier, 18, committed to Merrimack College of North Andover, Mass., just north of Boston, in November.
He’s just completed his third year at St. Andrew’s, the Aurora, Ont. prep school, where he was co-captain this season and set a single-season school scoring record.
Hillier potted a combined 52 goals and 112 points in 56 Conference of Independent Schools and high school games within the Greater Toronto Area this season.
Those numbers break the St. Andrew’s single-season scoring record held by Carolina Hurricanes forward Warren Foegele.
To put Hillier’s record into perspective, SAC has five alumni under NHL contracts and three players who have played in the NHL this season, including Foegele. According to Elite Prospects, there are 11 former SAC players in Division I college hockey this season.
“He’s actually more of a passer than a finisher,” said St. Andrew’s coach David Manning, a St. John’s native who’s been piloting the school’s top hockey team since 2008.
“Obviously, he can put the puck in the net. He had 52 goals. But he’s a smart player. There won’t be many coming into NCAA hockey with his hockey IQ.”
Hillier, a 6-0, 185-pound centre, is a former scoring leader and MVP of the provincial bantam AAA circuit for the Western Kings. He relocated from his native Lab City to Corner Brook in 2016 to play in the provincial league.
“He moved to Corner Brook, didn’t miss a beat, and then he came to us and took another step forward,” Manning said. “We don’t take a lot of Grade 10s, but he didn’t look out of place at all.”
Hillier was on the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau’s mid-term NHL Draft rankings for North American skaters, ranked in the seventh round.
However, he slipped off the recent final draft rankings released by CSB.
“I would think, though,” Manning said, “there’s an outside chance that he will get drafted.”
St. Andrew’s won the Conference of Independent Schools championship for the ninth straight year this season.
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Ryan Greene will wait one more hockey season before he joins Mark Hillier, reigning NCAA DI rookie of the year, Alex Newhook and Adam Dawe in the Hockey East conference.
Greene will play a full season with the Green Bay Gamblers of the United States Hockey League, a Tier I junior circuit in the U.S. that serves as a breeding ground for most NCAA schools.
A 16-year-old from Paradise, Greene has committed to Boston University. He is set to join the Terriers for the 2021-22 hockey season.
Newhook, from St. John’s, led all U.S. college rookies in scoring this season with 42 points for the Boston College Eagles.
Dawe, from Gander, just finished his second season at the University of Maine, scoring eight goals and 18 points in 28 games for the Black Bears.
Greene spent three years playing prep school hockey at Connecticut’s South Kent school, with the Selects Academy squad.
This season, he left South Kent in January and joined the USHL’s Gamblers for 18 games where he had three goals and a pair of assists.
“It certainly took five or six games,” said the 6-0, 160-pound forward, “to get adjusted to the flow of the game, But I could definitely see an improvement in my development there (in the USHL).”
Also returning to the NCAA ranks next season is Bowling Green goaltender Zack Rose of Paradise, who just completed his freshman season with the Falcons.
Rose was 2-2-1 with a 2.20 goals against average and a .905 save percentage.
Out west, Matt McKim of St. John’s is set to play U.S. college hockey with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA).
McKim committed to Alaska in January.
A 5-9, 160-pound winger, McKim, 20, led the Bonnyville Pontiacs of the Alberta Junior Hockey League in scoring this season with 24 goals and 85 points in 57 games.
He was eight overall in league scoring in the junior A circuit.
This is McKim's second season playing in western Canada. He spent the 2018-19 campaign with the Surrey Eagles of the British Columbia Hockey League, but had his junior A rights traded to Bonnyville in a summertime deal.
Before moving into the junior ranks, McKim also attended St. Andrew's College.