Vancouver player agent Ross Gurney: ‘I’m all for more opportunities for players and extending the development timeline for the late bloomers’
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These could be the best of times for young hockey players, with the NCAA seemingly closing in on offering scholarships to members of Western Hockey League teams and other major junior league squads.
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The NCAA has been loosening its regulations across the board the past few years. There are the transfer portals in all sports, which promote so much player movement at times that pro sports free agency can look tame by comparison. There are the Name Image Likeness (NIL) deals, too, which have collegiate athletes bringing in millions of dollars in personal sponsorship contracts.
There was ample talk last winter about NCAA hockey following suit and curtailing stipulations. They have long banned players from the WHL, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, reasoning that they’re professionals due to the few hundred dollars a month they received from their junior teams for living expenses.
Vancouver Giants owner Ron Toigo told Postmedia News last February that he thought the WHLers and others getting a chance to play in the NCAA was “inevitable.”
Now there’s a class-action lawsuit that was filed Aug. 13 in Buffalo to open up scholarship opportunities to major junior players. And last week Regina Pats forward Braxton Whitehead, 20, announced on his social media that he’s committed to play next season for the Arizona State University Sun Devils.
The Alaska native, who’s in his final year of WHL eligibility, is the first player from a major junior team to make a public push to go to the NCAA since the lawsuit, and it’s easy to wonder if he’s the start of a trend.
There’s no timeline on when things might open up. But it’s worth staying tuned.
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“I’m all for more opportunities for players and extending the development timeline for the late bloomers,” said Ross Gurney, a Vancouver-based player agent who represents several junior-aged players.
“If and when it gets approved it will be a great opportunity for players. All the best western Canadian players would certainly want to play in the WHL, playing best-on-best hockey for players their age 16 to 19. For those that don’t have an immediate professional opportunity after their 19-year-old year, they would get the benefit of an extended development timeline playing in the NCAA and or U Sports (Canadian university ranks). They’d be furthering their hockey, with a chance of still pursuing it as a profession and furthering their education.”
The walls are coming down. Several NCAA head coaches have told me to expect former CHL players in the NCAA as soon as next season. https://t.co/NcVO5WvWlz
Should the scholarships open up, there’s a plethora of possibilities.
NCAA teams aren’t merely going to wait for players to graduate from junior. They’re going to keep recruiting. It’s going to give 18- and 19-year-old players options. It’s going to give them leverage, and maybe in the middle of a season.
It wouldn’t be surprising if junior teams and NCAA ones created alliances as a result. They could share information, they could steer players back and forth.
There’s the NHL presence in this too. The NCAA skews older. What’s stopping an NHL team from suggesting their first-round pick who just had a banner season in the WHL at age 18 move onto the NCAA the following year to face more seasoned competition?
For what it’s worth, Giants forwards Kyren Gronick and Aaron Obobaifo were asked after Vancouver’s 5-2 pre-season win over the Kelowna Rockets on Sunday in Ladner about the NCAA talk and both said it’s not a major topic among their team.
“The dream all along for us has been to play in the WHL,” said Gronick, 20, a centre. “I think it will be a good option for guys down the line but it’s not a conversation in our dressing room.”
Obobaifo, 17, a winger, added: “I think it’ll be good when it happens but it’s not something that’s really in my head right now.”
With @john_wawrow, our story on the first CHL player making an NCAA verbal commitment since the lawsuit challenging college hockey eligibility rules for junior players: https://t.co/jH5M3aKyo6
Junior A leagues have long been the main feeder loops for NCAA programs, and the BCHL has been this country’s most successful for some time. The 21-team circuit listed 292 players last season with an NCAA commitment.
Penticton Vees general manager and head coach, Fred Harbinson admits that “the landscape is changing.” His league would lose players under such a change in format, but Harbinson thinks the BCHL could pick up disgruntled WHLers looking for a place to play on their way to landing an NCAA deal too.
“At the end of the day, you have to be able to show that you can develop players,” Harbinson said. “If you can do that, you’re still going to get guys to come to your program. We, as a league, have to make sure that every team is putting the same effort in to make sure you have the right development model.
“But, yes, there’s going to be way more options for players than ever before.”
The lawsuit in Buffalo was filed on behalf of Rylan Masterson, 19, a defenceman who lost his NCAA eligibility in 2022 when he played in two exhibition games for the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. The complaint refers to an “illegal conspiracy in violation of the U.S. antitrust laws,” and names the NCAA and 10 universities as defendants.
The WHL website refers to players receiving “a very modest monthly stipend,” and lists it as “spending money that they cannot earn in part-time jobs due to the time commitments of school and hockey.” An Associated Press report last week had the stipend at “no more than $600 per month.”
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