On the changing state of the CHL and college hockey

Some thoughts on some pretty big news that came across last week.

Six months ago the Sioux City Musketeers drafted Luke Lalonde in the 16th round of the USHL Draft.

When that happened, it might have been a foregone conclusion that Lalonde would someday end up in the USHL. His dad, Detroit Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde, is a former USHL head coach and GM with the Green Bay Gamblers and coached college hockey.

While there’s no certainty in hockey, someone from the Lalonde family likely would have gone with the route that best kept them on track to play in the NCAA and protected that eligibility.

Then everything changed last week when the NCAA made it official that players from the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), would now retain their NCAA eligibility as long as they hadn’t signed an NHL entry-level contract.

Players like Luke Lalonde are getting calls from the CHL, and the USHL now longer holds the trump card that it can protect NCAA eligibility.

Speaking more as a dad than a hockey coach on Monday, Derek Lalonde addressed the new reality.

“It’s an unbelievable landscape,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can see where it’s going right now. I don’t think anyone has a crystal ball to see the big picture of how it plays out.“

In the short term, the USHL and Junior A leagues in Canada have been impacted since the news. Players that otherwise would have stuck with the USHL have jumped ship to play in the CHL, and one USHL coach told me he was worried about losing more players the “next time a CHL team has a major injury.”

USA Hockey saw this coming, and has already started to normalize USA-CHL relations, notably including the upcoming prospects challenge between a CHL All-Star team and the American Under-18 National Team Development Program.

It seems likely that the next step, assuming it fits in the CHL schedule, is more games between the NTDP and Major Junior teams. It’s hard to imagine, for example, the Windsor Spitfires and NTDP not playing at least an exhibition or two against each other.

For NHL players that had to choose one route of the other in the past this development is fascinating. I spoke to Red Wings forward Joe Veleno on Monday about the news, he’s a former QMJHL player and noted, “honestly, I might have tried to play college hockey during my draft year if that was an option for me.”

Veleno noted that one of the challenges for the QMJHL, as opposed to the WHL and OHL, will be the a potential language barrier. While Veleno himself grew up speaking primarily English, he said many of his Junior teammates likely would have struggled with the idea of going the NCAA route simply because of the language.

All of this has also added more money changing hands, both above and below the table. According to one source I spoke to, teams in the OHL — those with more money — are willing to pay certain prospects or USHL teams to get them to cross the border.

Overall, it’s a place with more questions than answers right now. From a personal front, I’m fascinated to watch how it impacts where I went to school, Bowling Green.

Bowling Green is a mid-level program at best, but also has a coach in Dennis Williams who has coached in both major junior and the NCAA. How does that play in the recruiting process? And can it be an edge that helps some hockey mid-majors move into that grey area right below the traditional blue bloods in the Big Ten or Hockey East?

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On a programming note, I’ll have something from Stars-Penguins tonight. Not sure if it’ll be a 20/20 or a different type of piece, it just depends on how the evening goes with some family things and how closely I can watch.

Until then, thank you for reading, and if you haven’t already, double-check your settings to make sure you are set to receive the emails from Stars or Red Wings if you want those in addition to general Shap Shots columns like this.