The New NHL

When the NHL finally signed a new collective bargaining agreement in July, people were unsure of the effect it would have on college hockey. One part of the new agreement that people were particularly interested was the fact that drafted college players became free agents on August 15th of the year that their class graduated college. It wasn’t really clear if this change would have a positive or a negative effect on college hockey, but now that the rule has been put into practice, it’s starting to look like it has had a negative effect on the college game.

If NHL teams decide to let players stay in college all four years, that only gives them a couple of months to get their draft picks signed before they lose them to free agency. This has put greater emphasis on pro teams to try and get their college draft picks to sign early rather than risk losing them to free agency after graduation.

It was bad news for college hockey when the Boston Bruins, easily the cheapest(and not just in terms of payroll) franchise in the NHL, were willing to shell out the rookie maximum to Bowling Green defenseman Jonathan Sigalet in order to get him to sign a pro contract. The new CBA also seemed to be the motivation behind the surprise signings of Michigan forwards Jeff Tambellini and Mike Brown these past two weeks.

Overall, I think this will have a negative effect on college hockey. There were six college hockey players taken in the first round of the draft, and I’d be very surprised if any of them ever saw their senior year of college. So while the NCAA has been working courageously to protect Native Americans from something they don’t really mind, they’ve now let two out of the four major pro sports sign collective bargaining agreements that diminish the likelihood of players staying all four years and graduating, which is an issue that the NCAA has only paid lip-service too. Granted, the list of college hockey players leaving after 2 or 3 years won’t be as bad as number of one-and-gone college basketball players that declare for the NBA draft early.

If the NCAA would have had their priorities straight, they would have left poor Chief Illiniwek and Osceola alone and spent this summer lobbying the NBA and NHL to sign agreements that made sense for colleges as institutions of learning and not just minor league pit stops on the way to the big show.