The Athletic Hockey Show - How will the NCAA-CHL eligibility change impact hockey?

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

On a special edition of The Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series, Max, Corey, Scott, and FloHockey’s Chris Peters discuss the NCAA vote allowing CHL players to compete in US college hockey and how the seismic shift could impact the hockey landscape going forward.Hosts: Max Bultman and Corey PronmanWith: Scott Wheeler and FloHockey’s Chris PetersExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Chris Flannery Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series. Hey, everybody, Max Boltman here alongside Corey Pranman and Flow Hockies, Chris Peters for another episode of the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series. Scott Wheeler going to join us in a little bit here for what is really a special episode of the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series, some big news in the hockey landscape coming down, the NCAA voting to allow major junior hockey players, CHL players, to play NCAA hockey. Chris, what's your first reaction to this? Well, you know, I think that we've seen this coming and it seemed inevitable. And I think the NCAA realized, hey, we continue to lose these lawsuits. And they were facing an additional lawsuit challenging this rule that barred CHL players from being in the league. You know, this meeting was the Division I council.

So they create, you know, it's not a hockey specific council that does this. So really it's just the NCAA recognizing that this. This was something that they probably weren't going to win and made this decision. Now we all have to deal with the fallout of what that is going to be. But in the end, I think that this was always the way that this was heading in the era of NIL and in the massive changes across the college landscape. So the fact that it's happening now in terms of as the season is starting is probably the only surprise of this whole thing. But, I mean, really, anybody that's seen how the winds have been blowing has seen this coming from a mile away.

A lot of people are going to look at this. And certainly American fans are going to look at this and say, okay, great. A lot more talent is coming to college hockey. That is probably going to be the case, Corey. A lot of chaos is coming to hockey more broadly here. Yes, I kind of would analogize a situation in some respect to what's been going on with NLI in college sports, in that these changes have been basically pushed forward due to the threat of litigation. And the NCAA will be making these changes to protect itself from paying millions and millions of dollars in a lawsuit.

But to my knowledge, much like in the NLI situation, there's no plan for what happens next. It's you guys deal with the consequences. We're just changing the rules. and when I've been talking to people around the college sport, they don't have a real consensus on what's going to happen. They don't know when is this being implemented. What happens to the kids we've already committed? How does this impact kids who've been signed to NHL deals or not signed to NHL deals?

What's the future of the USHL and all this? What's the future of the BCHL? What's the future of the United States and TDP? There's a lot of unanswered questions. that I think are just going to be figured out on the fly here. And I think you mentioned some of the key ones here. I mean, if you're, Chris, if you're one of these leagues in Canada, the Junior A leagues, the B, CHL, the AJHL, this is where if I think that I am a

NHL caliber talent, but I want to play college hockey, I've been going there instead of the CHL. If this goes away, is there any incentive for a kid in Saskatchewan who wants to go to college who has the ability to play in the CHL to not go there? I mean, yeah, probably not. I mean, I think for a lot of players, there's also, you know, there's a number of reasons that a player is going to pick a league, but obviously the primary reason is which league is going to give me the best

opportunity to go the furthest I possibly can. And for years and years and years, you had to make a decision at 16 years old what the trajectory of your hockey career was going to look like. And now with this, you have a multitude of options available. You'll still have those leagues as far, you know, you'll still have those leagues as potential outlets. The vast majority of players in Canadian Junior A, you know, are not getting college scholarships.

They are extending their hockey careers. That will still allow those leagues to exist. They're staples of their community. I do think from a business standpoint, they are going to be able to survive. What they'll have fewer of is those higher end players. And this is going to really be true across the board. We're going to see a consolidation of junior talent. And I think that the leagues like the USHL, BCHL, and the Canadian Junior A Leagues have to really figure out how they're going to fit into this because it is a change from what they've been used to.

Their players, you know, the USHL has been doing a fantastic job over the last several years where they've gotten Macklin-Colabrini, Owen Power, guys that were Adam Van Tilly, top-level NHL prospects with the express reason that they wanted to go on the college path. And that is why they chose that route. they also felt that they were going to develop well enough there, and they did, and it worked. And so I think, you know, for the other thing, for a number of American players, this does open up other options for them too. However, I do think that there will still be that kind of, there are some more traditional routes that players have been used to and have been planning to take for much of their career and will continue to do that. I think that that's going to happen. But really, what's interesting is, is like Corey said, the NCAA, especially on things like NIL,

they just change the rules and let the chips fall where they may. This is a situation where it impacts the NHL, it impacts the CHL, it impacts all these junior leagues, and it impacts college hockey as a whole. And really, you know, they're like the college coaches

had been against this because they felt like they were winning the battle, the recruiting battle because the celebrinis and Fantilli's and powers were coming and they still had a great product. And they were also retaining most of their American players. But now the NCAA basically, says it doesn't matter what you want. You know, this is the, this is the reality that we're in.

And the NHL has had these discussions with their general managers as well. And, and I, and the board of governors meetings, this has been addressed at times. But I don't think anybody anticipated it happening this quickly. And so now they have a lot to discuss because there's CBA implications as well about the college and junior, major junior players are defined, definitive. in the CBA. So, you know, and there are different rules governing those players. So there's a lot of things to be sorted out here.

But ultimately, all of these Junior A leagues are going to have to be proactive in how they manage this because it will impact the player pool that they're pulling from. To Chris's point, if you draft a player out of the CHL, you have two years before they become a free agent to get in the draft. if you do that with an NCAA player, you have until they graduate college to sign them. It's a massively different set of rules. If you were to draft a guy out of the CHL in his draft year now,

and then he goes to college, I have no idea what would happen in that scenario, Corey. Yes, and Chris just correctly, I said NLI, I meant NIL, just like I think in the last episode I said Norse instead of Vezna. So I'm just really struggling here at the start of the season on this podcast. But you're right, Max, and... The CBA has a bunch of different scenarios. They have mapped out for in terms of how long you hold the player's rights for,

depending on where you're drafted out of. And they have different scenarios thought of in terms of, well, if you were drafted out of this league, but you go to this league. And one of those scenarios is if you are a bona fide college player or a college-bound player and you end up going to junior hockey, that scenario is mapped out in terms of how the rights are described, in terms of how long the NHL team has that player's rights for. but in no part of the CBA or in the negotiations of the CBA,

was it ever envisioned that a CHL player was going to go play college hockey? So I think the NHL, the NHLPA will have to make an amendment to the collective bargaining agreement. I know they're set to begin negotiations on a new collective bargain agreement during the later parts of this season, but they might need to make this one on the fly here because I don't know what happened in that scenario, to be quite honest, and how that would work. I think there's a couple of uninterested questions, too, and what happens if a player's already signed to an NHL deal? Can a player who's been signed to an NHL deal go play college hockey now?

Seems unlikely based on the current status of amateurism. I think there's a whole bigger question about whether in the next five or so years is the whole concept of amateurism in college sports is going to come crumbling down. And these players are all going to be treated as employees of the university. who just happened to play a sport, that's all very possible, but that's not the current state of college hockey, and it's not what the NCAA is discussing right now.

The other thing I think the sport needs to reckon with is this extremely strange set of circumstances where, unlike every other major sport, we allow players who have been drafted into the National Hockey League to go back and play in school, guys who have been, you know, major picks in the draft, first round picks, second round picks, third round picks, don't go to training camp, but they go back to school. That's not, doesn't happen in the other sports.

Even baseball, baseball players have to decide when they get drafted out of high school. Are you coming to play pro or are you going to school? There is no, they'll be drafted, but go play a couple of years of college baseball. College football, college basketball, those guys all have to sign after, you know, after they've been made eligible for the draft. You know, people may forget, but before the two, 2005 CBA. If you were a college-bound player, the draft age was 19, not 18 for hockey players. So maybe we go back to that system. So if you do want to go play junior for your 16 or 17-year-old seasons and then get at least a year or two of college,

maybe they push back the draft age back to how it used to be about 20 or so years ago. That's a possibility. Because I'm really struggling with this reality that we're dealing with where you're going to have players who have been signed to contracts going to play college sports. or you have to make this binary decision about whether you sign them or not, and then they still go. It's very strange. And I do wonder whether we just kind of basically migrate more towards kind of how baseball runs their amateur and their pro sides, where if you're drafted out of college, you have to sign. You go play in the ECHL, you go play in the American League, or you go back to school,

and some will say, well, the kids are too young to go play American League or ECHL. It's like, well, then you've got to increase the draft age. This is all speculation about talking through these different scenarios, but this kind of reinforces what I said at the outset of this episode. There is no plan. There is no, oh, the vote happens. This is the new structure. This is the new world we've thought through all.

This is how things are going to go. None of those conversations have happened, you know, at a high level. It's just speculating like we are right now. Because I look at this situation, and one of the big things I wonder is, is there a future, Chris, for the United States NTDP? in a world where CHL players can go play college hockey. Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting.

I've thought about that a lot. Like, where does that fit in this new landscape? And I've said it before. I mean, the NTP is going to exist for as long as the NHL wants it to. I think that that is probably, you know, the NHL, I don't know that people necessarily realize how much of the bus the NHL drives beneath its own level. They have a lot of say in the junior hockey landscape.

They give a lot of money to these teams. Teams get, you know, receive money for players that are drafted out of their, out of their programs. You know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the HL is given grants to the CHL, USA Hockey, Hockey, Hockey Canada for years and years with the express purpose of developing players. And so that's going to be the case. But, you know, when you see this new landscape and you say, well, we have all of these

teams to fill, does it make sense to have them all in one place? I think when the NTDP was formed in the 90s, it was a necessary that there wasn't a uniform or really even, you know, plan for developing American talent in that way. So I think that that is going to be interesting to watch. I mean, I think that this is going to be the end for a number of junior teams. I think that there's, it's going to get harder, you know, to get players of the caliber that fans are used to seeing. And when the quality of a team or a league drops and people recognize that, it can have an impact on the business. So we're talking about a seismic shift in the landscape. We're talking about something that is going to not, we're not going to know the true effects of this for years.

the thing is is that you know some people have asked me who wins in this and really the the only people that do win in this is that is the players which is actually some players some players yeah there are definitely going to be players that lose their college opportunities because of this too the CHL players that are not going to the NHL is what you're getting at here well them maybe yeah I mean I but no I think it's I think it's any player because now you don't have to make a life-changing decision at 16. You know, you don't have to, you can, and if you are a Canadian kid that wants to stay close to home, you can now.

If you're an American kid that, you know, that wants to go give Canada a try, you can, you know, and still have the option to go back. So it creates choice. You look at all like the top 10 picks in last year's draft, like Beckett Seneca, Teague, again, the Berkeley can. Like, a lot of them are probably going to be too good for junior this year. they would have a, if they could theoretically go play college and be challenged and push their game to a new level.

And that's, and that's really the next thing that's going to be interesting to see. Do NHL, it doesn't take the NHL very long to figure out how to game a system and to their advantage. And if that's the way to do it, like the NCAA has been viewed as kind of that hybrid step between junior and pro because of the age gap of players. When you throw in all these overage CHL players that are, of a certain level of talent, then you're going to make it even bigger. The other thing that I think, so with that in mind, you know, the thing is, is like

NHL teams, do I sign Beckett Seneca immediately, or do I not sign him and loan him to a college program or whatever, you know, or not, I guess you wouldn't loan him because you wouldn't have contractual rights. But like, those are the types of discussions they're going to be had. That's the other thing is, will college hockey still get the high-end player? will they still get the Macklin Celebrini's and others of that nature? And the answer may be yes, because the reason Celebrini won it,

chose the college path was because he could go play college at 17 years old and be challenged. He destroyed college hockey. Imagine what he would have done in Seattle, the Western League. I mean, it would have been maybe a million points. I don't know. But the,

but the, it might be a little high. But, you know, like I think that, I think that, it's going to be an interesting thing. And the other thing that I kind of hope happens from this, Max, is that if this does happen,

this really does open the door for not just, like a necessity of expanding college hockey. Now of a sudden you've doubled your play, more than doubled your player pool. We're talking 60 teams full of players. And so now you have this potential for, you know, parity, competitiveness, you know, schools that haven't, you know, I think the big 10, a lot of those schools would,

would be able to find some, some attraction here. There's also some new scholarship rules that could be coming in that may or may not impact this positively or negatively. So there's a lot, a lot, a lot to be sorted out. And, you know, we're just all going to be figuring out as we go along. One thing I've thought of with the future of the NTDP, and I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they just don't continue the NTDP. I think there's all kinds of possibilities there. I think there's a possibility that the USHL could get folded into the Canadian Hockey League and they can just continue on doing what they've been doing. I think it's possible that NTDP could just incorporate a CHL schedule into their college hockey schedule.

And there's, you know, again, just more speculation. None of us know what's going to happen. But one thing I've been thinking of is if all the best American players can just go play CHL and then go play college hockey thereafter, then maybe you presume you don't need the NTDP. So let's just say in this scenario there's no NTDP. that all the best American kids are going to go play in Canada for their age 16, their age 17-year-old seasons. I wonder what the future is then of the U18 World Championships in April, because a big issue with the U18 World Championships has been that we could never find a great time on the calendar to have this event

because either the best Canadians aren't going to be available, meaning at the end of the year, or everyone's in the middle of their seasons. But if all the best American kids and all the best Canadian kids are all playing in the same league, then why can't the Canadian Hockey League just break for a few weeks in February when all the European leagues are breaking? And you just have the U18 World Championships right then and there. You have all the best players playing in that event at a time of year where the NHL playoffs aren't happening. And we could make this a really big and special junior event. A lot of domino is still the fall, but this is the big one.

Good stuff, guys. Let's take a quick break right there. We're going to come back with Scott Wheeler, who's got a lot more on us. All right, we are back now with Scott Wheeler. And Scott, you did an in-depth story on the fall. out of this decision, what comes next. The big question is still remaining. Touched on some of them with Corey and Chris in the last segment.

But I think you can shed a little bit more light on some of these things, starting with does the population base basically for the CHL leagues that has so far really been geared for ages 16 to 20, basically. Does that get younger now that there's a potential kind of college education finish line here? Definitely. My understanding is that clubs are already begin to plan how they're going to build their rosters a little bit differently. I had multiple GMs across all three leagues tell me, look,

we build our rosters to win championships with 19 and 20 year olds. We're now going to have to lean in and give more responsibility to 17, 18 year old kids and build our cores to win when we have kids in their draft season and maybe their post draft season rather than hoping that at 19 and 20 they're going to stick around. Now, the CHL clubs are still going to make sales pitches to keep these kids saying, if you like it here, why leave and go NCAA at 19 or 20 once you've graduated high school. But I think the expectation is that some of those kids will leave regardless in search of a higher level of competition that college hockey offers and that teams are going to have to build their teams a little bit differently. And then the other added layer is that

I think discussions have already taken place. It was hinted at it by multiple people to me. But I think the CHL and they came out and told me that they were open to adjusting and realigning some of their draft ages across all three leagues. As it stands right now, the W. is a 15-year-old bantam draft where the oh-l and the QMJL obviously are 16-year-old drafts. I would expect that in the coming years and maybe within the next year or two even, that we're going to see a move to standardize that to have all three leagues on 15-year-old drafts potentially instead of 16-year-old drafts in two of them. And that the CHL is going to have to become more of a 15 to 18-19 league rather than a 16-20 league.

and the CHL in aggregate will get younger. All sorts of ripple effects from that, including the number of 16-year-old player cards that teams are allowed to carry. As it stands right now, there's a set number of 16-year-olds that are allowed to be on CHL rosters. GMs have already told me they want that number to increase.

They want more cards. They want to be able to bring more players in out of minor hockey at a younger age. So all sorts of ripple effects for the CHL. But I think absolutely the expectation is that they're going to lose more 19- and 20-year-old kids. to college and that as a result, the league's going to have to get a little bit younger. You mentioned a little earlier that the CHL-NHL agreement, and I don't know if there is a

piece of documentation of legal record that gets as much play in the prospect space as the CHL-NHL agreement. Everyone always wants their, you know, 18-year-old second round pick to be able to go right to the AHL if they're ready or even at 19, you can't go. You wait until you're 20 if you're drafted out of the CHL. I have two questions here. One, is this progression, this natural progression that we're talking about where a kid leaves the CHL now at 18 and goes to college, going to lead to kids showing up in the HL, not until they're like 20 or 21, because now there is that middle ground option. And two, if I'm an 18-year-old and I want to get to the HL as fast as possible, can I just jump to college for a year and then go immediately into pro hockey in the American League where I wouldn't have been able to under the current HHL-NHL agreement? Absolutely.

That all needs to be ironed out. But the 19-year-old rule in the HL in particular now just doesn't become a theoretical question that NHL fan bases get to complain about every year. Now there needs to be a concrete decision. Obviously, as it stands, players can leave college hockey whenever they want and sign a contract to turn pro. That has allowed some players to play in the HL at 19 years old out of college hockey. That for years has not been the case, again, to protect the financial security of the

CHL with the NHL's understanding that the CHL needs, as many of the HAL, as many of the HAL, any 18 and 19 year old kids as they can. And the belief was always, if this kid isn't ready to play in the NHL, it's more valuable for the ecosystem of hockey and for the financial survivability of teams that already lose millions of dollars, non-London Knights teams, that being, already lose millions of dollars in many cases. They need those those NHL prospects to sell tickets into market. And so a lot of it comes back to that. But a decision now needs to be made because as it stands at the moment, in theory, you're absolutely right. I have. had multiple CHL general managers come to me and say,

could a kid now leave my team at 18, go play a year of college hockey, and then play in the HL at 19, where he wasn't otherwise permitted to do that in order to skirt that rule? And the answer is murky. It needs clarity. So that is true. And also to your first point, yes, I think I had, again,

multiple people say, I think the HL gets older. The HL maybe goes back to where it was in the 90s and early 2000s, where it was more of a men's league. And as time has passed, more and more kids out of Europe and out of college hockey have made their way at 19, 20, 21 years old into the HL. Now, if CHL players can go extend their development by playing two or three years of college hockey from 19 to 22, maybe the HL does get a little bit older in aggregate as well.

So that's sort of another layer of this to keep an eye on as this all shakes out over the next four or five years. I will say, I do wonder how many like 19 year olds are that eager to get off of a college campus and onto the long bus rides of the AHL. Usually I think you see that, you know, the CHL, you're not on a college campus. So there's probably a little more eagerness to get to pro hockey. I do wonder if the college experience ends up being a pretty decent draw to keep those kids like NCAA rather than the AHL. I also think anecdotally that people coming out of the pandemic season got a little bit too excited. about how many teenagers were actually capable of playing in the HL.

I think people forget that there were taxi squads that season. And as a result, the five or six best players on every HL team were on NHL rosters. And the HL was much weaker that year when we saw so many young kids have an impact and played a 0.75 points per game as a teenager in the HL. Ever since then, it's been much tougher for young kids to have success in the HL. Artium Lev Shunov, the second overall pick from last year's draft is still figuring out his game at the start of this season coming off an injury in the HL.

I've made the case on this show and even to his representatives in conversations with them that I thought he should have gone back to MSU for a second season. So, yeah, it's fun in theory to say, okay, Matt Savoy should have played in the HL at 19, but there's no guarantee that Matt Savoy would have had success in the HL at 19. And Matt Savoy is one type of player and there's maybe five like him. there isn't 50 like him. So it's not going to be this avalanche of talent that way. Yeah. All right. So since we're getting a little nerdy here on the financial side of this,

there is something interesting you have on the CHL scholarship money here that I think people will be curious about. It's my understanding it's a small amount that the CHL teams kind of leave earmarked for players for continuing education. Right now, obviously, that would go the only place they can go to college after junior hockey, hockey wise, and that would be Canadian U-Sports. is this going to be a thing now where not only are these NCAA teams taking these 19 and 20 year old kids from the CHL, they're also taking this scholarship money here too?

Well, I asked that question to the QMJHL commissioner recently and he told me, look, that money as it's written right now, now this could change and I think there is an appetite for it to potentially change. The money right now is available for kids to take to any post-secondary institution. So again, when you're talking about the price of college in the United States, States, it's a, it's a different ballgame than the price of college and university here. Right now, typically players get one year of their tuition paid for for one year of playing in the CHL. So in theory, if you play four years in the CHL, you get four years worth of tuition. But that's, we're talking six to nine, 10,000 Canadian, which when you bring it over to US dollars

and then bring it onto a college campus is a drop. It doesn't go that far. Right. So, uh, but in saying that, there is a desire amongst, uh, especially in Quebec, I think, where they're a little bit more protectionist as a population in general, but a desire across all leagues to keep those student athletes in Canada at Canadian universities, getting Canadian jobs after keeping them here. And as a result, I think there is a push, certainly from the QMJL, there will be a push here to restrict that money to U-Sports moving forward so that the NCAA with their NIL money and all of it doesn't have too, too much of a leg up on U-Sports.

Although I think regardless, it's going to be very difficult for U-Sports moving forward to attract the top 20-year-old players that they've been so reliant on, the 90-and-100-point kids that never got NHL deals, those kids have typically almost always gone U-Sports. They occasionally sign in the ECHL and that kind of a thing. But top, top scorers on junior teams that don't have NHL deals have typically gone U-Sports and they're they're really new sports is really worried about the implications for them no question one last thing i want to get your thoughts on we we talked about at length with

with Corey and chris about the ush-l in all of this and i have to say the memorial cup being a four-team tournament has always seemed like naturally like why don't we just stop giving the host a free bid and have the ush-h-h-l champion go there and that could be kind of fun but i'm curious how you see this resolving just to kind of let you in on our conversation earlier with the USHL and the CHL. Do you think there's a world where the USHL merges and joins this coalition of leagues? Are we going to see it team by team? How is this going to shake out? I don't think a merger is even at the front of anybody's mind from a CHL side.

I don't think they believe that that would be in their best interests at the moment. Those leagues, all three leagues are pretty healthy. All three leagues are doing well in terms of producing NHL talent. it is called the Canadian Hockey League. Now, there are already several member clubs, especially in the WHL and the OHL, who are American markets. So they've clearly made that move previously. But the one layer of this is that there has been reach out from some USHL clubs,

not to say we're jumping ship and we need to make this happen tomorrow, but to say, hey, we would be open to expansion potentially if this doesn't break right for the USHL. And I think in the coming years, it's going to, that's going to enter the foray. I spoke with obviously all three, all three commissioners and presidents as part of this process, but also several USHL coaches and even had one, and general managers and even had one USHL coach to say, look, I think my program would be interested in joining the CHL out of all of this and creating sort of a super league of sorts. But from the CHL side, they actually sort of said to me on the record that, look, we're, we're, we're over.

open to expansion. So now, are the Chicago Steel going to continue in the interim to try to be the Chicago Steel and to lure all of these players and to sell themselves as the Chicago Steel and continue to be a destination? Absolutely. There's no guarantee that the Chicago Steel and the Youngstown Phantoms all of a sudden jump ship. But I do think that those discussions are going to take place here in the coming months or if not the coming months than in the next couple of years with some of those big USHL programs and maybe even at Panticton. Vs in the BCHL, for example, to say, look, if you guys feel like you're not in a good place after all of this shakes out, our doors aren't necessarily closed to expansion.

All right. Obviously, a lot more to come with this story, but that's a great feel for where we stand now. Thank you so much, Scott. We'll talk to you all soon.