NCAA D1 and the CHL Battle for NHL Bound Players
Every hockey player has a dream of playing in the NHL. It is true that only a tiny fraction of these players will ever attain this dream, but it is also true that most if not all players will try follow a path that allows them the best opportunity to reach this goal.
Imagine if in 5 years, NCAA D1 hockey didn’t develop one player destined for the NHL. Now imagine instead that if in 5 years every player destined for the NHL played NCAA D1 hockey. Would the difference matter to the student body, alumni, athletic directors, donors, sponsors, advertisers and the local hockey community of these NCAA D1 schools?
What Development Path produces the most NHL Players?
When phrased this way, it is obvious that the distinction matters. And if it matters, then NCAA D1 should be doing whatever they can do to not just remain relevant in the NHL development process, but to dominate the process.
Now, apply this logic to the individual school level. If a D1 school that now produces several NHL bound players annually suddenly produced no NHL bound players, would it matter to that school? If a D1 school that currently produces no NHL players suddenly produced many, would change that program or mean nothing? Again, the obvious answers are that having NHL bound players matter.
NCAA D1 Hockey is in a unique position compared to all other NCAA Sports in that all other D1 sports have no competition for the best players whereas D1 Hockey has a direct competitor for NHL bound players in the Canadian Hockey League.
The CHL is made up of the Western Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. The CHL is currently winning the battle for the best players with 48% of the players in the NHL coming from the CHL and only 30% of the players coming from NCAA D1 hockey.
The goal of the CHL is to recruit all of the elite 16-17 year old players in North America, keep them until those players are 20 years-old and send the best of this group to the NHL/AHL, bypassing D1 hockey. The CHL’s second goal is to send the players not good enough to make the NHL/AHL at 20 to NCAA D1 and rid themselves of the financial responsibility of paying for their education, which currently stands at somewhere between 14-18 million dollars.
This CHL plan would give the CHL the ability to reallocate these funds would give the CHL even more of an advantage.
Back to our original hypothetical: If elite players decide that the CHL is the better option for development, and D1 hockey begins to lose the elite talent, D1 hockey would find itself struggling - and we will continue to explore the ways that might happen.
D1 Hockey does have the ability to secure the future crop of NHL bound players with the right plan and the successful execution of that plan. We’ll lay out the plan we believe NCAA D1 Hockey should follow over the next month and a half with short essays released every Monday and Thursday.
Until Next Time,
Bob Turow
Hockey 101
Hockey 101 has discussed the plan on the Hockey 101 Podcast that can be found on the Dan K YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@OfficialDanKShow.