The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Dan Near (WHL Commissioner)

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Dan Near, Commissioner of the WHL, joins Jeff Marek to discuss the league's new partnership with Victory+ TV, welcoming back Penticton, expansion to Chilliwack, new rules with the NCAA, and much moreShout out to our sponsors!👍🏼 Fan Duel: https://www.fanduel.com/Reach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us!If you liked this, check out:🚨 OTT - Coming in Hot Sens | https://www.youtube.com/c/thewallyandmethotshow🚨 TOR - LeafsNation | https://www.youtube.com/@theleafsnation401🚨 EDM - OilersNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Oilersnationdotcom🚨 VAN - CanucksArmy | https://www.youtube.com/@Canucks_Army🚨 CGY - FlamesNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Flames_Nation🚨 Daily Faceoff Fantasy & Betting | www.youtube.com/@DFOFantasyandBetting____________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with us on ⬇️Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/daily_faceoff💻 Website: https://www.dailyfaceoff.com🐦 Follow on twitter: https://x.com/DailyFaceoff💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfaceoffDaily Faceoff Merch:https://nationgear.ca/collections/daily-faceoff Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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all the audio squared away. The floor is yours. Congratulations. We'll start again. What a great weekend for the Western Hockey League. How about that? Yeah, well I appreciate it. I should apologize that I didn't make it on Friday afternoon. I had a little trouble getting back from. I think I know why. I think I know why now. But we got a two for one today and you know, it's obviously been a few exciting days. We can start where you want. But Victory Plus happened first. You want to do that?

Sure. Yeah. So just so everybody understands, like this is, and Anaheim Ducks fans are very familiar with Victory plus Dallas Stars fans certainly are as well it's a very uh quickly growing streaming service all Western Hockey League games starting with the Western Hockey League playoffs and into next year and the regular season um will all be available for free and and the big one for a lot of people is not geo-blocked like not geo-restricted anywhere. And even, it's funny, Dan, when I first saw the announcement,

the first thing I thought of, to be honest with you, was Napster. And what Napster taught us was just get people in the door. Just get people, like the hardest thing right now in media in a lot of ways is try to figure out where on the ladder or which rung do you monetize at and what's good for marketing to bring them in and at what point you start to charge etc. And what we're learning now is just get people in. And I looked at this and I said what a great way for the Western League

to get people in to have a look at what the offering is. Yeah one thing I inherited that I think is beneficial to this is we don't have a plethora of regional broadcast deals that exist today. And so to the extent that it was a clean slate, and you can go and negotiate something this broad, really gave us an opportunity to bring something material to fans. And so the idea of 700 plus regular season games being broadcast worldwide at no charge is something I think, when I look back at our fans comment on social, they almost can't believe it

because we've been operating behind a paywall and a subscription model for a long time and it's served us well. It's a comfortable revenue stream that helps offset the cost of producing shows and so on and so forth. But I think the idea of saying, to your point, I never thought of a Napster reference on this, Jeff,

but the idea of allowing fans to access the product more readily. Free. Yeah, it connects. And, you know, right now we play 68 games, 34 of them are away, naturally. And they're really, aside from tuning in on a traditional radio or buying a subscription package there's nothing in the middle that allows people to consume and you know how young people are watching games right now they're watching multiple screens they're

watching highlights they're watching YouTube so we did an experiment it was called Wednesday nights in the dub you know about it we opened up access to the games on Wednesday nights and we saw that fans were hungry for this. They were engaging, they were coming back. And so this is a, you know, there's a couple of things that happen here. One, you get to follow your own team more closely. And I think that's gonna make you go to more games,

bring your friends, be more interested in the players, buy merchandise, all those things. But then you're also gonna say, holy moly, this run Gavin McKenna's been on, I need to watch McKenna play. And there's lots of people who don't buy the package right now that would like to see it. And we're not super well served by traditional media

as it relates to night to night highlights. You have to go out and seek it. So the idea is rather than making the fans come to us, we're trying to go to them a little bit. And I think it's good for the fans. I think it's an interesting experience for the clubs. And I think in the long run it has the potential to change how people consume sports media. Well, I'll tell you what and this is like non-scientific. This is just sort of anecdotal within my family. I'm gonna sound like I'm gonna sound like hockey dad here. So Dan, I've got a 2010 to 2012.

So my oldest, my 2010 is getting right into junior hockey and minor hockey right now. We're gonna go watch OHL Cup games as soon as I'm done with this show today. And so what he does, and he sends me stuff all the time, like it is a nonstop stream of clips of Landon DuPont. And it's nonstop like clips of Gavin McKenna. So it's like, it's gonna sound like my youngest son now

is sending all these clips to his old dad who grew up watching, you know, Bruce Dowie and the Toronto Marlies in the late seventies and Maple Leaf Gardens. But now like, you're right, like the way that this is all consumed is completely different. And he does, like he'll have multiple screens and a lot of it is grabbing stuff on his phone now though the one the one area where and I'm gonna I hope I don't I hope I don't offend anybody here in the in the West is the time the

timing for this I look at as as perfect and here's why I'm sensitive to what I'm about to say I don't want to insult anybody because I was gonna like, Gordie Howes from Flynn Flawn and Kerry Price and Joe Sackett in America, you can shut up. Right now there are so many, there are more potential superstars in the Western Hockey League and from Western Canada, whether it's Badaard and I mentioned DuPont and I mentioned McKenna and so many, so many more coming right now. Like when I saw the announcement, Dan, I thought to myself, it's kind of perfect. Because there's like all these future first overall draft picks that are all coming out of the Western league.

If I'm Dan Neer, I want everybody to see all of them whenever they want. Yeah, I think we have to be in a position to deliver that to fans. And, you know, it goes right down, even when you're at a game The idea that people might want to be on their phone and take in what just happened in the intermission figure out what's going on around the league but the idea of showcasing the star power like McQueen and Brandon scored a goal between his legs the other day and

You know most people won't see that unless they're dialed in on our social but creating a content factory a content hub You know is talking to my kids about this and I have two 2011s into 2010 if we want to talk hockey terms And and the Regina Pats are doing some really interesting shorts on YouTube Yeah but guess what nobody will ever see it because you have to go and actively seek it out the idea of having a hub where People can cycle through content and it might be something about the game day experience, it might be a story about the equipment manager and how he changes steel on playerskates between periods. It doesn't matter

what it is. People are hungry to learn the stories behind the stories. Listen, I'm a gear geek and sort of my kid, so like just bring that stuff on all day long. Okay. Penticton V's like, you know, like this, this has been whispered out there for a while every now and then the story erupts. Like I'll get a text from someone. It's happening next week. Oh, okay. Well, maybe it wasn't like, oh, no, this is definitely happening. Oh, no, it's definitely off. No, like this has been sort of this, you know, from our point of view, from this side of the microphone, this is kind of in a story that's been whispered for a while. point of view from this side of the microphone. This is kind of in a story that's been whispered for a while. In your mind, why is this the right time and how did this all come together? Well first of all, these things take time, right?

And this took a lot less time than a typical move like this would. And the junior hockey landscape shifted massively when the NCAA rule changed. And you know, we had operated in a traditional environment where there's a tension at 15 years old, you're choosing major junior or you're choosing NCAA and you're gonna play in some other junior league until you get there. Now that friction is gone and every best player in the West should be, if they want to go to the National Hockey League, if they want to play U-sports, if they want to play minor pro, pro in Europe, NCAA, wherever they want to

go, all roads ought to lead through the Western Hockey League. And this was an opportunity for us to anticipate what we think is gonna happen around the player pool, around player movement. You know, we've just developed a really strong alliance with Hockey Canada called the Western Canadian Development Model that aligns with the Junior A leagues in the four Western provinces.

And we're in a really good position to have a really complete and thorough development environment. So as more high-end kids come into our league it'll be more competitive as players want. They can play U18 AAA, they can play Junior A wherever their kind of development path leads them. And the idea of adding Penticton to us, it's a historic brand and hockey franchise. It's in the South Okanagan which is a great territory for us with proximity

to the other BC division teams. And you know, it just all made sense for us. And so we're excited to be here today. We just did a local press conference, had fantastic turnout, and we're off to the races for next season. Did you talk at all, and forgive me, because I wasn't able to see the press conferences,

putting the show together here. Did you talk about what things like the expansion draft will look like? Have all these things been sort of ironed out yet? Where are they picking? How many can they protect? I mean if a kid's property of the Medicine Hat Tigers or Kelowna Rockets yet he's playing for the Penticton Vs, who gets that player? Have you sorted all of this out as well? Yeah, and I'll probably botch some of the technical stuff, so I'm not going to go crazy

deep into it, but I will say, so if a player is from the East, then that player would either stay in the BCHL with another club, or they would go to Ontario or to Quebec if they were to play major junior. And so, and then players from the West, if they are unclaimed or undrafted by a WHL club, Penticton would have the right to list those players and presumably sign them to play next year. There would be some players on the team who have previously been drafted. On the current Vs team that would previously been drafted by a WHL club, they'd be property of the WHL club and Penticton would have the opportunity to make a transaction or negotiate those rights.

And so we'll have an expansion draft in early May, I think May 7th, and then the Vs will participate in our regular prospects draft, our US draft and the CHL import draft. And I won't get into exactly where they'll pick. We'll do a story down the road. That was my next question. For everyone who wants to know how we did it. But what I'll tell you, after watching the NHL and what they've been through and you know,

that combined with the NCAA changes, there's a lot of anxiety because people think there's going to be a little more roster volatility in Major Junior than there has been in the past. The Vs come from a background of being super dialed and connected with NCAA coaches and programs as they've been in the Elite Junior A program for a long time. And so we're doing our best to try and create a level of parity but it's not our ambition that the Vs take five years to be good. We want them to have a competitive

franchise and to be able to come in and compete and you know and have rivalries up and down the road you know in short order. BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self-care. Imagine what you could do with more.

Visit betterhelp.com slash random podcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now now just relax Couple of things come to mind here. So when I look at Penticton joining the league and The expansion draft I'm assuming that essentially every team is going to lose a player. Do you think that that could be or will be offset by an influx of American born players into the league that may end up going to play NCAA hockey, and they're choosing the Western Hockey League pathway

to get there. Yeah, we spent so much time trying to triangulate that and figure out how many ins, how many outs, you know, Americans coming our way. But I do think there's a likelihood that some there's a grouping of players, whether they're Canadian players who chose the NCAA path or American players, you know, we're going to have to get used to the idea of players with NCAA commits showing up in our league. And so, you know, imagine a territory like Minnesota, where historically it's you finish

high school, you've got to commit, you go play in the USHL as your bridge to whatever you happen to be ready to play college hockey. I think that that's an example of one where I think more Minnesota kids are going to be interested in playing in the Western Hockey League. I have no idea how many, but to the general question you've got about the offset, you know, adding a 25 player roster, do we see 25 new players come into the league of comparable or high-end talent? You better believe I think that or we wouldn't be doing this.

The other thing that I wonder about as well, this is something that I don't know I've seen anybody, any of the commissioners certainly comment on. And again, all of this is, I understand Dan, that all of this is hypothetical, but that's all that any of us have right now, because we don't know how this is gonna work. Nobody does, and no one knows what the NHL's gonna come in

and say, okay, you're gonna do this, and you're gonna do that, we just don't know. But what I am curious about is, let's say a player decides to leave the Western League, the OHL, the Quebec Maritime Junior League, and goes and plays for a month at a random US college, decides that, you know what, I'm getting health bombed, I'm playing minutes that really aren't helping me at all. From your point of view as the commissioner of the Western Hockey League,

if that player wanted to leave and go back, would it be open arms? Our standpoint, it would be, you know, we have to adapt our process and our regulations to deal with a situation like that. But to the point you made, and I know that there's some various folks on social media that think that it's some degree of posturing or being argumentative. There's just a lot of unknowns. And I know that a lot of players are now aspiring to make NCAA part of their journey, whether they'll have a guaranteed place in the top six or on special teams, whether they're eligible to earn NIL money while they're on an F1 student

visa, whether the transfer portal will affect them. Like all of these things are unknown. So whether it's part way through a season or someone that decided to leave major junior early and and try and pursue an NCAA run and wants to come back, what I can tell you is we're in a position to accommodate it and we will accommodate it. We probably need to address some of those regulations but as it relates to ensuring that there's a healthy balance around what we contribute to the athletes such as the scholarship earnings and so on and so forth those are all things that will be

important because you know we make a significant investment in player development as it relates to the costs we incur for a player to be part of our league and to prepare them for the next level of hockey. The idea that some players will elect to leave and we'll allow them to leave, we're not going to try and force them to play somewhere they don't play. But we'll have to have conversations about implications as it relates to scholarship accrual it and those types of things, because those are hard costs in addition to our player development costs.

That makes sense too. And the one thing that I wonder about as a sort of dovetail to that would be if there are players that are now building into their development model X amount of time in Canadian junior hockey and then over to NCAA, would you look at perhaps, and this would probably have to be done at the CHL level now that I think about it, bumping up the number of overagers that you allow or maybe expanding the import draft,

maybe one more overager, maybe one more import allowed, does that come under your nose across your desk about how do we offset this to keep the quality of the league high? There's a ton of speculation right now, and that's all it is right now is speculation and that we don't have all of the answers on who's coming, who's going, how the changes are gonna impact us.

I think we're better off in the end, but I'll address the question. We're talking about all of those things. Some are more serious than others as far as whether it's something we're bringing and thinking about negotiating or voting, but to your point, some of those are CHL matters as it relates to trying to maintain some level of parity when we compete together for the Memorial Cup. Speaking of Memorial Cup, one of the things that someone mentioned to me was, and I was there when the Oil Kings won in London,

it was a great game against Guelph, but we haven't seen the Memorial Cup won by the Western League in some time, and one of the things that's been pointed at is, the league's too big, and now it's expanding, and the Quebec League's got 18, but they wanna grow, and listen, I think if everything worked out for the OHL, they'd be at 22 right now, but how much in the back

of everyone's mind in the Western League is like, okay, we need to create an environment where we can get back to winning this thing consistently? Sure, being competitive for the Memorial Cup's important. I think that if we believed we were moving in isolation here and the other leagues would never consider growth, then that might have been a consideration. But we're not all moving at the same time. But I think the other commissioners have all said, like, you know, we're looking at this

new landscape and there's a real opportunity for us to create Space for for more elite players. And so I don't think of it as something that's a tremendous risk for us We think that our league one of the reasons we haven't won is because we're so darn competitive with one another You know, we put ourselves in the level positions, you know We put some difficult travel positions on one another during early rounds of the playoffs. We have a lot more miles to cover than some of these other guys. There's some other factors that I think have nothing to do with the player pool.

We had four players drafted in the NHL draft in the top 10 last year, and we intend to keep a trajectory similar to that over the next little while. I know you're busy. Let me let me finish up with this one It's a hot button issue in all the leagues and that is the future of fighting and the Terrell Goldsmith fight Most recently was I'll just be blunt was was horrifying my stance on Fighting has evolved over the years. I'm fine with it at the pro level has evolved over the years. I'm fine with it at the pro level.

That's professional hockey. As I grow older, maybe it's just a byproduct of age or being a parent. And I'm aware of that too. I really don't have much time for it at the youth level, at the junior hockey level. And I do, like many people, wonder about the future of it in junior hockey.

Do you have a thought on that? Well, what I would say is obviously the Goldsmith incident was one that was scary, it was horrifying. I reached out to Terrell and he and I had a conversation about it. He's doing well. He's back home with his family in Vancouver and recovering. What I'll tell you is our fight stats show that over the past 10 years or so, and I don't have the exact data,

it's gone down by about 50%. I can tell you we have regulations for different things like multiple fight situations, so more than one fight breaking out at the same time. We have regulations for goalie fights. We have regulations for stage fights, which by the way, this was, and so this would have earned

both players a game misconduct, if not more. We're attuned to the situation, we're preparing players to play in the National Hockey League, we're that very last step, and we do look to create a game that mirrors that as closely as possible. But whether it's checks to the head,

checks from behind, slew foots, fights, concussion stats, we spend a lot of time talking about player safety and we'll do that again in this off season to ensure that we're doing everything possible to keep the players safe. I didn't ask you about Chilliwack. Let me close on that. It's a big day for Penticton.

Chilliwack on the horizon as well. Just to put a bow on it. This was a, as a friend, first of all, thank you so much for stopping by and answering very honestly, everything that I've thrown at you, which is probably just more than just expansion and victory plus. And I appreciate that. A quick thought on Chilliwack on the horizon as well. Yeah, we're excited and we're going to make this kind of second wave of the local announcement tomorrow, but the board of governors has identified the opportunity to go through a franchise

application process in Chilliwack. So as you know, we were there for a number of years and the WHL moved out. And so I've spent a lot of time with the city, with the counselors to talk about. We think now's the time. We think that perhaps we made a mistake in leaving there and it's time to make amends for that. And so we're going to invite potential ownership groups to submit an application and to be considered to own a team in Chilliwack for the

26-27 season and so we're launching that process today and tomorrow and hopefully over the next few months we'll identify an opportunity to add yet another team and to grow the BC division by one and to bring hockey back in its right in a rightful form to Chilliwack. I was encouraged to ask you about an idea from someone with us here. Any chance we see considering how historic this league is, I'll close on this. I appreciate your time. Any chance we ever see reverse retro nights in the Western Hockey League with some great old WHL jerseys?

You know, it's funny, we had talked about this when I was at Adidas. And I'm passionate about this stuff. And what I found in my first 15 months or so is anytime I come up with stuff related to uniforms, merchandising, licensing. I get a few eye rolls because I was like, oh, Mr. Know-it-all. So I try and stay a little distance from that. But we are having some good conversations about that. You should have a look at what a couple of the clubs are doing. I have some of the great... Because just like in the NHL. Yeah, like this Lue Sharks and there's some other like Mystical teams or Manufactured team names and logos that have been going on and so it's already kind of happening All we need to do Jeff is get everybody to do it tell the story at the same time and amplify it now

we've got a platform to do it victory plus show the story behind the story and Honestly would be great. I just got too many fish to fry. I'm trying to add teams, trying to deal with these NCAA regulations. We'll get reverse retro down the road. I know, here I am. It's like the biggest moment in the history of the CHL where everything is all up in the end transition and here's this goofy host, Dan, asking you about, well, can we see some old medicine at Tiger jerseys. But thanks so much for stopping by. Much appreciated. Congratulations on not just Victory Plus, but certainly Penticton and On the Horizon, Sherlock. It's a wonderful time for the Western League. Congratulations. Thanks so much for joining me today. That's Jeff. Every day this week, every day this month I can't get out my head, lost all ambitions day to day

Guess I'm caught up, right? I went to the dark man, he tried to give me a little medicine I'm like, nah man, that's fine I'm not against those methods, but no It's me, myself and Alice gonna be fixing my mind I'm not against those methods but I knew It's me, myself and how this gon' be fixing my mind I do wanna break it I turned on the music

I do wanna break it I turned on the music But you stand now, wherever add to remind you right now wherever you are to unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self-care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com slash random podcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.