Something I’ve noticed for a while in 2028, but also across other age groups is that the DC based teams tend to produce better poles than the Baltimore/Annapolis teams and the Baltimore/Annapolis teams produce much stronger attackmen. Anyone disagree with that or have a theory about why?
I do think this is true across classes, though there are lots of exceptions. The DC teams (NL and BLC/DC Express in particular) are very aggressive with moving back kids who are fast enough and skilled enough to play midfield to defense. The kids and parents of the kids are happy to go along with the switch because of perceived recruiting advantages. I don’t think there is as much of that with the Hawks/FCA/Crabs, though of course there are exceptions.
My 2028 pole has played from A to Elite over the last 4 years so here's my observations.
1. I'd rank the best D units (5-7 poles as a whole) as NL #1, BLC #2, ML #3. And then a steep dropoff to everybody else. But BLC and NL specifically will *impress* anyone who knows how players play at their age.
2. FCA Blue, Hawks, Crabs each have 2-3 really skilled and aggressive poles with good IQ, who could play anyway.
3. Here's the truth bomb, the back half of those 3 D units above, almost all AAA units, and half (ish) of the poles in AA are basically equally talented. They are developing, talented players who on any game day bring 2-4 of the following to the field: Size, speed, stick skills, IQ, aggressiveness. Some days you see a monster kid out there and it's like "Oh he literally cannot run." Or you see a smaller kid out there beating the bejesus out of attackmen......but they can shoot over his head, so.......And then there's some kid out there who looks like Mega Goon and occasionally he just lets a kid run by him with no contact, for no apparent reason.
I have seen poles on A level teams who you could hide at the back of the roster at Crabs, FCA White, KP AAA, Claws, Sidewinders, etc and for the 10-15 minutes they play per game, you would think they were in the right place. I think this is fundamentally different than offensive players. Just an opinion though.
ML dad here. But my kid is not a D man. But had to challenge the guy who says ML has the 3rd best D crew of the DC teams. I mean are you serious? Hawks got 2 goals on them in July, I don’t think they gave up 4 goals in any of their other 30 games this summer/fall other than to NL at Hershey. The Ex North game they gave up a bunch but they had B team kids playing because they were missing 3 poles to other stuff. I won’t mention the 24 goals that ML hung on BLC in May, I guess their #2 defense was a little off that day.
They struggle at times at a few positions, but D is NOT one of them. That’s just an absurd statement.
Hawks dropped 20+ goals in 2 games in HOCO. Get that noise outta here…
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