(Raiders General Manager Curtis Hunt speaks during the 2024 Raiders Awards Banquet. (Mark Peterson/Prince Albert Raiders)

By Nick Nielsen

NCAA lifts ban on CHL players

Raiders GM Hunt shares thoughts on NCAA rule change to allow CHL players

Nov 8, 2024 | 12:54 PM

The NCAA has never allowed athletes who have ‘competed at a professional level’ at any point in their career to compete in collegiate athletics, and hockey players who have come through the CHL have always been considered professional hockey players in the eyes of the NCAA.

After a number of changes in the NCAA that see football players and gymnasts making money off their likeness while competing at the collegiate level, the NCAA on Thursday voted to remove the professional distinction from CHL players and now allow them to play in the NCAA.

While a lot of the specifics will have to be ironed out, Prince Albert Raiders General Manager Curtis Hunt sees nothing but positives coming out of this, particularly for the players.

“This is for the players, I think just an incredible thing that they’ve done to remove those restrictions. First off, there’s always been tension with players wanting to come to our league, we are the best development league in the world. I think we stand alone that way and I think we’ve put pressure on those kids because of this rule, and that’s the only thing that’s kept kids from ‘Do I sign? Do I not sign? Do I come to the league? I don’t want to lose my scholarship or my eligibility’. But now, this is going to drive every junior player in North America to the CHL, to our training camps.”

While there are a lot of changes to come because of this, most of them won’t affect the CHL. Before the rule change, just one regular season game in the CHL was enough to ruin a player’s NCAA eligibility. The biggest change affecting the CHL will likely be the level of talent going up in the bottom of the lineup as players who may have been stars in Junior A and set for the college route, they will now be more likely to come to the CHL because it won’t hurt their NCAA eligibilty any longer.

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One rule that will change that could have an effect on the CHL is centred around how players enter the NHL.

“There’s a rule at the NHL level that a drafted player out of the CHL has two years to sign, and then they go back into the free agent market, whereas if you’re drafted out of the NCAA you have four years to sign. So there’s got to be some kind of blending there, you see lots of players now get drafted at 19 out of our league, so how are they going to figure that out if they didn’t sign right away and decided at 21 they wanted to head to the US. So that’s an NHL issue I guess, but for us, no, we just continue status quo. We’re going to have probably a few more scouts in our buildings now.”

Going through college to get to the NHL is not a brand new concept.

Despite being drafted in the QMJHL, Tampa Bay Lightning legend and current Montreal Canadiens Head Coach Martin St. Louis never cracked a CHL roster and went on to captain the University of Vermont for two seasons from 1996-98 before signing as a free agent with the Calgary Flames. Former Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews was drafted first overall by the Tri-City Americans, but he chose instead to play with the University of North Dakota from 2005-07 before he was drafted third overall by the Blackhawks.

Since then, the college route to the NHL has become more prominent. In more recent examples, Colorado Avalanche star defenceman Cale Makar played his junior hockey in the Alberta Junior Hockey League with the Brooks Bandits, where he was drafted by the Avalanche and went on to play his 19 and 20-year-old seasons at the University of Massachesetts. Even this year’s first overall pick in the NHL, Macklin Celebrini, decided not go to the Seattle Thunderbirds after being drafted first overall and instead went to Boston University last year as a 17-year-old where he’d get to play against 24-year-old men.

With players wanting to go to college more and more in today’s game, Hunt sees this move as a positive for players who want to come to the CHL and develop against the best talent in the world. While only time will tell if players will head out of the CHL to college more often, the fact that the option is available now is nothing but good for the players.

“That’s a hard one to speculate. I think when a when a player is drafted, they’re projecting to 22 years old. When they graduated under the Western Hockey League or the Canadian Hockey League, I think the option will be the American Hockey League for them under the guidance of their own coaches, their own organization, the ability to recall them or bring them up. In some cases like we do here, get younger players into practice and feel the culture and get a feel of the pace, so I don’t really see that, but you just don’t know.”

The change comes after Regina Pats forward Braxton Whitehead made the commitment to play at Arizona State next season, making the announcement before that was even allowed. While Whitehead brought a lot of eyes to the conversation, Hunt believes this has been in the works for much longer.

“Arizona State became very proactive after a litigation started from a player in Ontario, he’d played a couple exhibition games in the OHL and had gotten calls to go down to the NCAA. As soon as they found out he played that game then they said, ‘you know what, you can’t come’, and so it became an antitrust law or an antitrust suit in the US. I’m not a lawyer and don’t claim that I understand it, but basically they’re limiting the ability of an athlete to pursue his particular education and/or academic and his sporting goals.”

Overall, the future of hockey looks like it got a lot brighter because of this move. In a world where it is already incredibly difficult to make it into the pros, this move takes a major decision away from young athletes that could have had a major effect on the future of careers.

Instead, this decision allows them to focus on playing hockey.

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Nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com