Elite Prospects vs Shift Excellence: recruiting profile vs development tracker
They sound similar. They're not. One is the résumé that shows where a player has been; the other is the scoreboard for how they're developing right now. Here's the honest breakdown — including when you actually need each.
Built on 649 real games and 7,315 players across 6 leagues.
Forward · RHA Kelowna · U18 Prep CSSHL
Sample player card — anonymized data from the live app.
What Elite Prospects is great at
Elite Prospects (EP) is the category king of hockey databases — a vast, public record of players, teams, and seasons. It's where you go to look up a career: which teams a player has suited up for, their box-score stats by season, draft history, and how their path compares to others. It's cheap, it's public, and for recruiting visibility it's genuinely valuable — a get-seen résumé.
What it doesn't do
EP is a record, not a development tool. It won't tell you how your player is playing. There's no game report, no synthesized rating of their skills, no “here's what to work on,” and it works off box-score numbers rather than advanced game data. It shows where a player has been — not whether they're developing right now.
What Shift Excellence does
Shift Excellence starts where EP stops. It reads your player's real game data — including advanced game data from the games they play — and turns it into a coach-style Game Report, an OVR rating across six skills, and head-to-head comparisons. It answers the development question EP can't: is my player getting better, and what should they fix next?
Side by side
A fair read: EP wins on history and visibility; Shift Excellence wins on development.
| Shift Excellence | Elite Prospects | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Development tracking | Recruiting database |
| Game report on each game | ||
| Synthesized OVR rating | ||
| "What to work on" guidance | ||
| Advanced game data | ||
| Career history & résumé | Limited | |
| Public recruiting visibility | Growing | |
| Price | Free–$69.99/mo | Low / mostly free |
When you need each — and why “use both” is the right answer
If you're trying to get seen, keep an accurate Elite Prospects profile — it's the résumé scouts check. If you're trying to get better, use Shift Excellence to turn every game into a development plan and to build the trajectory that makes that résumé worth a second look. The smartest hockey parents do both: EP for the record, Shift Excellence for the work.
A résumé is a list of where your player has been. The process is the work that gets them to the next line. We don't replace your coach or your EP profile — we give the development they're both working toward a scoreboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why trust the number
Built by hockey people. Backed by real data.
Pro-level evaluation
Designed with coaches who've worked in pro and elite youth hockey — your player is graded the way scouts actually evaluate talent, not by a self-rating.
Real games, not opinions
7,315 players across 6 leagues and 230 teams. Every rating comes from real game data, measured against your player's own division.
The number is earned
Nobody scores themselves. The OVR comes off the ice and it moves as the work goes in — so progress is something you can see, not argue about.
“Every parent asks the same thing — is my child actually developing? For the first time there's a real answer on the ice, not a hunch. This is how pro organizations evaluate players, built for youth hockey.”
Build the trajectory behind the résumé
See how your player is actually developing — game by game.