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New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

giwan said:
So the NHL teams can give any age kid they want the MOST a great contract to move on to the pros at anytime but somehow keep picking these older people they are complaining about?
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I'm not trying to be flippant, but I guess I'm not sure what you're getting at.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Bale said:
And for me, that's the rub. We don't necessarily KNOW that kids are beino pushed back in most cases. That's the assumption made by the proponents because that's what they are doing when the have older kids (as Jackson admitted in his interview). The number that were thrown out earlier in this thread seem to fly in the face of that argument. It seems like we're all arguing something (coaches included) in which we don't have a full set of facts. We're still arguing what the facts are. Things like, how often are kids being pushed back versus how often are kids being recruited late and how many players would actually be affected are essential information to come to a logical conclusion. Maybe the anecdotal evidence is actually coming from the proposes side, we don't really know at this point.

I agree that if we're talking about 100 kids per class fall into this category and there are 400+ kids at any given time that are affected by this and a majority of them are being pushed back, then there is a real problem. Unfortunately, we have no idea on whether that's true or not.
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The fact is that a lot of this is tough to judge because potentially alot of this could be more about the perception of trends for players currently committed versus players already on rosters. One of the things I definitely noticed was while MTU's current roster doesn't have many of these players, there are some guys committed that depending how the next year or 2 shakes out could skew things more towards this rule hurting MTU and changing the average length of commitment for 21yo frosh on MTU.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Wisko McBadgerton said:
Of course again, that's from my Badger view of college hockey. One thing this thread has made me realize even more is that my own perception of what college hockey is at it's best (15,000 screaming fans in the house every night, 20-25 NHL picks and top prospects on the ice) is vastly different then say a fan of a smaller eastern program like St. Lawrence playing at historic Appleton arena. It would be hard to imagine we're talking about the same sport if interviewed separately, I'd guess. It's just very different, so naturally we're going to have widely differing views on issues.
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And that is precisely the problem.

widely differing views are fine and well. we can all chit-chat on this for the next three months, maintaining the convenient illusion that St. Lawrence's opinion matters.
But when April comes around, St. Lawrence's view (as well as that of 20+ other hockey schools) will not be represented in the vote.
meanwhile...reps from Kentucky, Texas Tech, Miami (FL), UCLA, and Northwestern have their votes on this hockey legislation weighted x4. By my count, the Big 12 actually has 6 votes on the Council (Texas Tech x4, Big 12 Conference x1, and Iowa State x1). UNC-Charlotte, Texas State, Longwood, NC Central Univ., and Nicholls St. each have more voting power on the issue than the following hockey schools combined:

Mercyhurst, Bentley, RIT, AIC, RPI, St. Lawrence, Clarkson, Union, Merrimack, St. Cloud State, Minnesota Duluth, Colorado College, Minnesota State, Michigan Tech, Ferris State, Northern Michigan, Alaska, Alaska-Anchorage, Bemidji State, Alabama-Huntsville, Lake Superior State

But by all means, let's all keep sharing views on the topic. ;-)
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

bothman said:
So you are saying that Harvard staff definitively pursued Olson and not the other way around?

Harvard has acquired talent and lost talent due to the players having change of hearts (either about the school, a coaching change, or the fact that they were going to be parked in JRs for 1-2 years) . Some have even gone over to Yale and vice versa.

Anyone who believes that a 17-18 year old pledge (or even a 15-16 year old pledge) is made out of concrete either doesn't have children or is delusional.
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I'm saying he verbally committed to Michigan Tech in May 2014 and in November 2014, he flipped to Harvard. Who instigated the switch is anyone's guess but Mel Pearson did not have very nice comments about Harvard and what happen in this situation on one of his radio shows.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Shirtless Guy said:
I'm saying he verbally committed to Michigan Tech in May 2014 and in November 2014, he flipped to Harvard. Who instigated the switch is anyone's guess but Mel Pearson did not have very nice comments about Harvard and what happen in this situation on one of his radio shows.
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If a player has the chance for a free ride (may or may not be the case, irrelevant though) to play hockey in Boston or the same deal to play hockey in the middle of Nowheresville, UP, where do you think he's going to play?
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

St. Clown said:
If a player has the chance for a free ride (may or may not be the case, irrelevant though) to play hockey in Boston or the same deal to play hockey in the middle of Nowheresville, UP, where do you think he's going to play?
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Thats fine and dandy during the recruitment period but we're talking about Harvard not upholding the gentleman's agreement. The fact remains that a player committed to MTU and changed to Harvard less than 6 months later...that is an indication that Harvard's staff does not follow the gentleman's agreement.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Shirtless Guy said:
Thats fine and dandy during the recruitment period but we're talking about Harvard not upholding the gentleman's agreement. The fact remains that a player committed to MTU and changed to Harvard less than 6 months later...that is an indication that Harvard's staff does not follow the gentleman's agreement.
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I get that it sucks, but I think at some point the Gentleman's agreement is going to die completely. With no NLI's it's open season on the Ivy's players for teams already not following it. This case aside, from their point of view it's hard for them to stick to it I think.
Figure out what to do there. Figure out how to not have 13-16 year olds committing, while somehow still being able to fight off the CHL. Maybe do something with the age thing, but recruiting has plenty of issues that aren't good for kids or schools.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Wisko McBadgerton said:
I get that it sucks, but I think at some point the Gentleman's agreement is going to die completely. With no NLI's it's open season on the Ivy's players for teams already not following it. This case aside, from their point of view it's hard for them to stick to it I think.
Figure out what to do there. Figure out how to not have 13-16 year olds committing, while somehow still being able to fight off the CHL. Maybe do something with the age thing, but recruiting has plenty of issues that aren't good for kids or schools.
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Actually they did create a document to assists schools like the Ivy League or RIT/Union. I can't remember the name, but they have the ability to "sign" players.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

St. Clown said:
If a player has the chance for a free ride (may or may not be the case, irrelevant though) to play hockey in Boston or the same deal to play hockey in the middle of Nowheresville, UP, where do you think he's going to play?
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Yeah who would want to live in a smoggy, sooty and congested city. Except for people with delusions of grandeur. Obviously the smarter choice would be Houghton.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

giwan said:
Yeah who would want to live in a smoggy, sooty and congested city. Except for people with delusions of grandeur. Obviously the smarter choice would be Houghton.
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A Houghton 9 is a 4 outside the UP. Just sayin'. The rest of the world has attractive things to offer. It doesn't have to be Boston (a city where the lady undergrads outnumber the guys) or any of the other big city schools, just a school that's not locked away from civilization and buried under 15ft of snow every year.

From a recruiting standpoint, the average guy isn't going to choose MTU over a school of identical stature in a more accessible part of the country, let alone a step up in school recognition such as Harvard.
 
Both of these pieces just reinforce to me that that the objective is to make college hockey more like football and basketball - A feeder system for the NHL, NFL, and NBA. The argument to make hockey fit closer to the "traditional college model" is BS. At the big time college level those players are far from students.

The impetus behind all of this is summed perfectly up by Jeff Jackson wondering why ND lost to Alaska-Fairbanks his first year. The best excuse he could come you with was that they were older? But this isn't about tipping the advantage toward the "real DI" programs. :-{
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Shirtless Guy said:
I'm saying he verbally committed to Michigan Tech in May 2014 and in November 2014, he flipped to Harvard. Who instigated the switch is anyone's guess but Mel Pearson did not have very nice comments about Harvard and what happen in this situation on one of his radio shows.
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If this were anything other than sports related, it'd be obvious what happened. He found out he got in to Harvard.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Slap Shot said:
How many of them are athletes?
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For a hockey team, 8 of the players dressed would have to be 25 or older to represent the student population as a whole. So saying that all freshmen should be 18, 19 or 20 "because it's college hockey" is a canard from the start.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

St. Clown said:
For a hockey team, 8 of the players dressed would have to be 25 or older to represent the student population as a whole. So saying that all freshmen should be 18, 19 or 20 "because it's college hockey" is a canard from the start.
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100% of all D-1 freshman college athletes are 18 or 19, or very occasionally 20 outside of hockey and skiing. It's not a canard, college hockey is an anomaly.
 
Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

Wisko McBadgerton said:
100% of all D-1 freshman college athletes are 18 or 19, or very occasionally 20 outside of hockey and skiing. It's not a canard, college hockey is an anomaly.
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Yet the age of college hockey players more closely resembles the student population as a whole. Ironic, isn't it, that the abnormal sport has the more normal students?

ETA: And now that the Ugly Helmets so severely ***** slapped the Gophers tonight, what new rules with tDon put through to help his team win in the future against teams in his own league?
 
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Re: New age restrictions for NCAA hockey

St. Clown said:
Yet the age of college hockey players more closely resembles the student population as a whole. Ironic, isn't it, that the abnormal sport has the more normal students?
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To be fair, it's probably not right to compare hockey player average ages to the nationwide average. I suspect that the nationwide average age is dragged upwards by a lot of the "Central Western Valley State University at Podunk" type schools whose missions are entirely different (still valuable, mind you) from Cornell, for example. The average age of freshmen entering Cornell this year is 18, so a 21-year-old freshman is definitely not the norm. I'm sure that's true at most schools playing D-1 hockey, which tend to be toward the higher end of the academic range.
 
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