Earlier this month, in response to the fear of losing upcoming lawsuits due to the ever-increasing professionalization of Division I college sports, the NCAA Division I Council recently ruled (in a seismic decision) that the vast majority of some 800 Canadian Major Junior hockey players (aged 16-20) will now become eligible join NCAA Ice Hockey Division I programs starting in 2025-26.  Major Junior players had been mostly banned from NCAA hockey since 1980, as the NCAA had considered Major Junior hockey to be professional hockey.

This new ruling is seen to be a huge benefit to NCAA programs (and to the Major Junior programs) and especially helpful for all elite prospective players, who now have more player development options from which to choose. 

DU Hockey is likely to specifically benefit from this new development for several reasons that I will explain later in this article.

But first, to better understand this complicated issue, it helps to understand what Major Junior hockey is, as well as how it differs from NCAA hockey, as well as providing some historical background – and how intertwined DU was with the ruling – as to why Major Junior players were not always welcome in NCAA hockey.

Major Junior hockey is the pinnacle of youth hockey development in Canada (and even has a few northern US franchises, too) and is still the largest feeder system to NHL rosters. It promises a pro-like development experience where teenage players play a 60+ game schedule (3-4 games per week), plus training camp and playoff games.

Most Major Junior players are either drafted by the junior team, win a roster spot in a team’s training camp, or are invited to play for franchises (mostly located in smaller cities). They receive a small monthly living stipend from the club during the season (typically around $600) and typically live with host families (called billets), who provide room and board. Players typically attend the local high school where their team is located and can take college courses, or forego post-secondary study after high school. In short, while Major Junior does offer some college tuition support for players, it places greater emphasis on hockey development than on education, as Major Junior teams are all run as for-profit businesses. 

Also, there is a handful of drafted NHL players in Major Junior who have already signed NHL pro contracts but who were returned to Major Junior by their parent NHL teams earlier this fall for more development. These players will still be deemed to be professional players by the NCAA, and are not included in those Major Junior players who will be eligible for NCAA play.

Today, Major Junior players now play in the national umbrella named Canadian Hockey League (CHL), which is comprised of three regional Major Junior Leagues – the Western Hockey League (with teams located mostly in Western Canada and five teams located in the US Pacific Northwest), the Ontario Hockey League, (OHL) with most teams located in the Province of Ontario, along with two U.S.-based teams in Detroit and Erie, Pa.), and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), with all of its teams located in Eastern Canada. 

The USHL, NAHL, and other junior hockey leagues outside of the CHL in the US, Canada, and Europe are still producing NCAA-eligible players as they always have, and while not officially addressed in this new ruling, will all certainly be affected by it, as more NCAA roster spots are taken by CHL players in the coming years. Expect those leagues to adapt to the new landscape. For example,  some USHL franchises are now even considering departing the USHL to join the OHL.

In contrast, NCAA Division I hockey, on the other hand, is run by universities instead of private businesses and offers a 90+% college graduation rate as well as strong – and getting ever stronger – hockey development. Unlike Major Junior, there is a greater practice-to-game ratio in the NCAA, with a smaller, 34-36 game annual schedule and a shorter playoff window, with most games played on weekends.  This allows NCAA players to focus on their university coursework during the week, and to get more weight room time (due to less weekly travel), which can be very important to young players with developing bodies.  

A history of friction…

Major Junior players had been largely ineligible for NCAA play since 1980, when they were deemed to be professional hockey players by the NCAA, after many decades of strife over the issue. 

Much of the strife was personified by a battle of different recruiting philosophies between the University of Denver and the University of Minnesota back in the 1950s and 1960s. This battle fractured relations between the schools so badly there was a decade where Minnesota refused to even play Denver in regular season play in the 1960s, even though the two schools were league mates in the WCHA at the time.  As a result, the league played an unbalanced schedule.

Why? In the mid-1950s, when the sport of hockey was nowhere near as big as it is in the USA today, University of Minnesota coach John Mariucci had a dream to develop players in a home-grown way. Mariucci had the benefit of a flagship public university hockey program in a home-state recruiting area loaded with natural ice, plenty of community rinks, and full of hockey-playing high schools. He believed that recruiting 18-year-old Minnesotans as high school graduate hockey players was better for his Minnesota Gopher program (and for the development of American hockey) than legally importing Canadian Major Junior players, who had mostly aged out of Major Junior hockey at age 20.

On the other hand, before joining Denver as head coach in 1956, DU coach Murray Armstrong was the head coach of the Regina (Sask.) Pats — the world’s oldest continuously operating Major Junior hockey franchise which has been playing hockey since 1917. Armstrong believed that to be immediately nationally competitive against heavily advantaged schools like Minnesota in NCAA play, he could not wait for 30 years to grow an effective hockey feeder infrastructure in a Denver market where there were few ice rinks, no natural ice and no hockey-playing high schools at that time. Armstrong needed to recruit the best Canadian players he could, which happened to be former Major Junior players from Canada, who were 100% legal to recruit at that time.  Before 1980, ex-Major Junior players comprised much of the rosters of DU’s first five NCAA Championship Teams in 1958, 1960, 1961, 1968, and 1969.   

The Gophers, hating the Pioneers’ 1960s dominance enabled by the older and stronger Major Junior players, continued to aggressively lobby the NCAA for many decades for a ban on recruiting Major Junior players.  In the late ’70s, the impending Major Junior ban hurt DU in the eyes of the NCAA, as DU would not accept the NCAA’s ban plan, which called for DU (and other schools) to declare its legally recruited and rostered Major Junior players to be “ineligible,” in return for a “grandfathered” restoration of player eligibility, as Major Junior players were to be gradually phased out by the early ’80s. Since DU refused to call its own legally recruited players  “cheaters,” DU was slapped with NCAA recruiting violations and sanctions that hurt several DU teams in the 1970s.

Thus, for the last 45 years or so, promising young hockey players were forced to choose between the Major Junior route or the NCAA route at age 15-17.

What will happen now?

The million-dollar question is how will this ruling affect the University of Denver’s hockey program going forward?

While no one knows the exact answer for sure, the DU coaching staff is already preparing and will be well-prepared for this reality come next season.  To better leverage the new opportunity, DU has four major advantages right now over other NCAA programs in terms of recruiting major junior players to Denver:

1. Current Program Success: DU is the best program in college hockey right now — the reigning 2024 NCAA Champion and the most decorated program in NCAA history with 10 NCAA crowns, including an NCAA-best five since the turn of the century. DU has put some 85 players into the NHL over the years and is now setting new attendance records with sellouts every game in a modern arena with a #1 top ranking this year, and a 10-0 record as of Nov 13.  DU Hockey is also televised on Altitude Sports Network, the historical home of the Colorado Avalanche, plus other broadcast and streaming networks, including TSN in Canada. Those realities alone should open the doors for DU to pitch (and likely land) some of those high-level Major Junior players.
2. A 75-Year History of Recruiting Canada:  For 30 years from 1950 to 1980, Canadian Major Junior players comprised the majority of DU rosters, establishing a long DU recruiting presence, especially in Western Canada.  And while DU hasn’t had a Major Junior player on the roster since the very early ‘80s, DU’s Canadian recruiting pipeline is still healthy as ever, as DU usually has somewhere between 8-15 Canadians on every DU roster, recruited from the many junior leagues below the CHL. Lest we forget that two of DU’s last three captains – Justin Lee in 2022-23 and Carter King this year – are from Canada. In short, the Denver brand is already very well established north of the border, and there are now windows of opportunity to go beyond just the WHL to attract OHL and QMJHL players to NCAA hockey’s top program.
3. High-Level Coaching Staff:  DU Head Coach David Carle is already well-known among Major Junior players as perhaps the best young coach outside the NHL. From a Canadian perspective, Carle’s 2024 World Junior Championship gold medal last year in Sweden coaching Team USA and also coaching Team USA at the 2025 World Juniors this year in Ottawa is a level of global hockey prestige that is regarded to be even beyond winning the two NCAA titles Carle has won since 2022.  Add in Dallas Ferguson, a Canadian DU Assistant Coach, who was the former Head Coach of the WHL’s Calgary Hitmen in 2017-2018, a Major Junior team. Then there’s Tavis MacMillan, DU’s chief recruiter, who is also a native Western Canadian and is well-known as a scouting and recruiting force in Canadian arenas and living rooms.  These DU coaches are also already well-known to NHL GMs, NHL player development staffs, and agents throughout the hockey world.
4. Geographic Relevance:  Denver is one of the closest NCAA Division I programs to the fertile WHL recruiting grounds in British Columbia and Alberta.  Denver is also an NHL city, and  DU has a close relationship with the Avalanche and other NHL teams who often practice at DU before playing the Avalanche at Ball Arena. DU players are easily scouted with Denver’s airport providing non-stop air service to many cities around North America. The City of Denver is also quite attractive to the rest of Canada for those players who want a great school in a great, sunny destination city.  DU hockey is also one of the few NCAA teams that flies to most away games, including some charters, which certainly beats those long mid-winter bus rides between places like Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and Lethbridge, Alberta that Major Junior players must endure weekly.

Given DU’s many advantages, DU can use several strategies to attract and retain these Major Junior players. First, DU knows many of these Major Junior players already in the recruiting process as a result of watching players on youth and junior teams, summer showcases, National select team camps, youth world championship programs, internet scouting, video services, and master prospect list/databases that every program maintains. Those players will be likely scouted and evaluated against other CHL players, as well as those from lesser junior leagues who are already in the DU verbal commitment pipeline. With only 26 roster spots available on the DU roster, some of the guys in the current DU recruiting pipeline from lower junior leagues might get bumped for these new Major Junior players, if there are better upgrades to be secured by the coaches.

Additionally, since Major Junior hockey starts at 16 years old, (and DU cannot actually sign their scholarship players until their senior year in high school at the earliest), the Pios may lose some younger, highly talented recruits to Major Junior initially. Some of those players may later join DU or NCAA Hockey or stay in Major Junior.

Finally, getting new access to this talent pool is going to be big for other NCAA D-I programs, too, who will all have access to not only more talent but more seasoned young men who can and will make all NCAA teams bigger, faster, stronger, and more competitive.

Of course, this Major Junior window is also happening as the NCAA transfer portal and NIL money are also reshaping the recruiting process, too, giving players more options than ever to join (or leave) a program.

All in all, don’t expect big numbers of CHL players to jump to the NCAA in year one, but it’s reasonable to expect the number to rise dramatically in coming years as the scouting improves. We may also experience further changes in the NHL’s relationship with the CHL, as a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is expected to be signed next year with the NHL Players Association. Some of the NHL changes that have been bandied about include raising the NHL Draft age from 18 to 19 as well as changes to NHL signing windows.

Puck Swami is the internet moniker of a long-time DU fan and alumnus.  He shares his views periodically here at LetsGoDU.