NCAA Votes To Allow Major Junior Hockey Players. Now What?

The vote is in, and with it, a brand-new era of developmental hockey is upon us. With the NCAA voting to allow major junior players to maintain college eligibility if they are not signed to a pro contract, recruiting battles are going to take on entirely new boundaries and competition will be fiercer than ever.

Inevitably, there will be some unexpected ramifications to this ruling, but in the meantime, we can only speculate about the effect this ruling means beginning next season.

Will the QMJHL expand back into the United States? Will USHL teams join the OHL? What does this mean for the recently super-sized BCHL? Those are all blogs unto themselves, so let’s just start off with some broad thoughts on this revolutionary day.

Before the vote even happened, NCAA programs had begun to court major junior players. Overagers will be the easiest to pitch to since the new rule gives them four more years of developmental hockey – and a free education at that. But teams were also talking to kids who are just starting their CHL careers, hoping to snag them before they sign an NHL contract (some of these kids aren’t even draft-eligible until next season). We’re already seeing examples of player movement: Hayden Reid and Blake Montgomery left the USHL and are expected to play in the OHL soon – notably, both are still NCAA recruits and wouldn’t have moved without the new rule.

Ultimately, this new landscape is great for elite players, who no longer have to decide whether or not they want to play NCAA when they’re 15 (right now, even playing an exhibition game with a major junior team spoils your eligibility). They could, hypothetically, play several years in the CHL and then jump to college once they’ve earned their high school diploma. The player gets to face off against older, stronger competition, and the NCAA team gets a great talent who already has elite experience.

For overagers, it extends their window. Right now, the top destinations for CHLers who don’t get drafted by NHL teams are the ECHL and U Sports, a.k.a. Canadian university hockey. The new rule would allow these players to get another four years of elite hockey in the NCAA, where they can still get a college degree but also be on the radar for NHL teams that might find a late-bloomer for their system.

Now, there will be losers in this new world, too.

U Sports is an obvious example. The Canadian schools will no longer get the best of the rest when it comes to prospects; they’ll be getting the next tier down. And if CHLers are now joining NCAA teams, then kids from the USHL, NAHL or Canadian Jr. A leagues may get bumped off of college rosters. At the least, we’re going to see a lot more kids in the transfer portal when coaches notify them that they would likely be healthy scratches if they stayed with their current program.

I believe this shake-up could actually benefit smaller NCAA teams because they’ll have the space to bring in kids with chips on their shoulders – but they’ll also have the space for a lot of these new overage CHLers. Think of a school like Mercyhurst, located in the same town as the OHL’s Erie Otters. The Lakers could ostensibly recruit two or three outgoing Otters every season to add to their own lineup – and some of those kids will be coming off major offensive campaigns in the OHL.

There is fear around this new order, of course.

CHL fans are worried about what it will mean to the quality of their leagues, though I don’t think there will be a huge exodus. There will be changes, but the talent lost to the NCAA would be replaced by high-end Jr. A kids who no longer have to worry about keeping their college eligibility. And, of course, it’s going to put the onus on CHL franchises to make sure their players are given all the resources they need to be successful, lest they seek out the greener pastures of a major college program instead.

What will it mean for the USHL? It’s hard to say right now. There has already been a rumor that a couple franchises were looking into joining the OHL, but I also wonder if a lot of American kids would just prefer to stay home to play in the USHL before heading off to college. The USHL also allows more imports than the CHL, so Europeans will still flock there.

I know this is a lot, and there are many questions to be answered, but change is coming. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens once the dust settles.

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