All Tier I, Tier II, Prep, and High School Varsity players within the 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 birth years are eligible by invitation only for the 2024 Amateur Hockey Association of Illinois (AHAI) Player Development / Identification Tryout Camp held in Mt. Prospect, IL the weekend of April 12th through the 14th.

The process has already started with an online ranking of each of the age-appropriate players. AHAI has developed a web tool that allows ALL the IL Head Coaches, from each of the above divisions, to go online to rank those players they saw play during this season. All player rankings will be completed by February 21, 2024. These Head Coaches will be ranking the “best” players from this State, NOT JUST THEIR OWN PLAYERS, within a specific birth year, by position, starting with number 1 as the best and so on down the line.

After these online rankings are compiled by the web tool software (in a weighted average versus the number of votes a player receives) the AHAI Player Development Committee conducts a Web Tool Ranking Evaluation Meeting. This meeting will be held in late February and will be broken into four different groups, for the four eligible birth years.  During this meeting, consisting of the Player Development Committee Members, along with select Head Coaches from Tier I, Tier II, Prep, and High School Varsity, will review the compiled player rankings. All nominated players are reviewed, in each birth year, in the order they were ranked, in an unbiased manner, regardless of which club/association the different Committee Members and Head Coaches are affiliated. This process determines the final selection of players who are to receive an invitation to the AHAI Player Development Camp. The invitation goes out to 36 forwards, 24 defensemen, and 8 goalies within each of the eligible birth years.

Following the selection of the aforementioned invited players, at this same meeting, the committee selects alternate players, by birth year, by position and ranks those alternates who might be presented with the opportunity to participate in the AHAI 2024 Player Development Camp if an invited player cannot attend. 

The players invited to attend the AHAI 2024 Player Development Camp will be notified by email from AHAI during the first week of March. Invited players will be given 5 days to respond. If a player does not respond or cannot attend for any reason, the alternate players will be contacted in their ranked order.

(Special Note: The AHAI 2024 Player Development Camp evaluators do not know who was an initially invited player and who was a selected alternate).

All players are judged fairly on the body of work that earned them an invitation to the AHAI 2024 Player Development Camp and their on-ice skills and effort shown during this year’s Player Development Camp.

Again, only Head Coaches within the applicable birth years will be able to nominate and rank the players from Illinois for consideration to participate in this year’s AHAI Player Development Camp. Illinois registered players that participate in programs outside of Illinois will be considered by the AHAI Player Development Committee upon a written recommendation from that player’s head coach sent to Christopher Naveja, Chairperson of the AHAI Player Development Committee at playerdevelopment@ahai2.org.