While you all have the Caps and the Phils on your mind this morning I do not. I have kids on the mind. Specifically young boys.

Just like Tyler Hostetter did this past summer, and FGSB Friend Matt Herneisen over 10 years before, even though hockey in the Philadelphia has grown leaps and bounds, if you're a real, true NHL prospect they're going to send you away at some point. You might get a year playing with the Junior Flyers and tearing it up as a freshman at Malvern, but eventually you'll be off to the Midwest, the Northeast, or Canada. Things have advanced to the point where you can play big time D-1 college hockey without leaving the area, but those are the exception far more often than the rule.

Right now, as far as I can tell there are about 40 local kids in either the USHL, the OHL, or playing NCAA D1 hockey - levels I consider to have a chance to at least hit the AHL. I don't really have the resources dig too deeply into the prep school scene but as soon as Fran let's Raaaaaaaandy off of some of his special projects I'll have him look into it. The New England Prep School Athletic Conference is loaded with local talent (as I know from experience, ahem Uncle Rico), and when you include schools like The Hill and Lawrenceville we're talking about some seriously good hockey players mostly from the Delaware Valley. But to start off I'm just going to look at some kids who have already gone great distances to make themselves better players - both literally and figuratively. Today, by random selection, we're going to take a look at a young P.O.A named Richard Young.

Atco, New Jersey's Richard Young is a lot like you probably were at eighteen years old. 6'3, 210 pounds, and his favorite actor is Channing Tatum (the guy from one of those dancing movies where they dance at each other, called Step Up). After a good year in the Atlantic Junior Hockey League with 15 goals and 12 assists in 37 games, as well as 158 PIM, Richard was wooed away to the USHL by the expansion Youngstown Phantoms. It may have been after his single game 44 PIM performance during the last 5 minutes of a 7-0 shalaking by the Walpole Express that Richard got the first visit from the Phantoms scouts, but regardless they have him billed as "a big, tough young power forward who’s going to get better every time you see him" according to the Phantoms coach, according to the Phantoms website.

So Richard showed up Youngstown this summer in one of those situations where you have a fairly decent idea of what's going to happen, but also no idea at the same time. I can't say what Young had to face in a training camp that was surely competitive, as I spend my days trapped in a cubicle in New York, but he did drop the mitts once during a pre-season game against Tri City and who knows how many times during the team's tryouts. Good news, he made it.

Youngstown's had a rough start of it, as many expansion franchises do, with a 2-4-1 record so far this season. For some reason Young didn't play in the franchise's first game (scratch, flu, the runs) but has appeared in the six games since. Just this past Friday Young recorded his first Tier 1 Junior goal in a 5-3 loss to Tri-City. He also recorded his second fight. Fighting in the USHL is tricky for the casual fan to understand. The league ranges in ages from 15 to 20, and if you are under 18 you have to wear a full cage. If you're older you can wear a half visor. The penalties differ for altercations depending on whether or not a cage was involved, if the fight falls in the last 5 minutes of a game, and whether or not one player has a little poop in his pants at the end of it. Young's first fight earned him five minutes and a ten minute misconduct. Saturday's, which is in the box score as an instigator only and no fight, earned him two minutes. Who knows.

Either way it looks like big number 88 is looking to channel the spirit of another big number 88 who was actually wrapping up his own junior career during the first year of Richard Young's precious life. God, am I old.

Anyway, keep going to the net Richard Young. We're rooting for you.