Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
Ed: Jim, last week on our USCHO Spotlight podcast, Rensselaer coach Dave Smith answered our question about how he was dealing with the transfer portal. He summed it up by saying that they are building a team through “draft picks and free agency.”
On first blush, it’s a pretty apt analogy.
However, when you think about it a bit more, there are some parts of the comparison that fall apart.
The first one that came to mind to me was the salary cap. In the NHL, teams are currently limited to $88 million with a floor of $65 million. While college hockey has a limit of 18 scholarships, there may soon be a lot more disparity between teams. If the House v. NCAA agreement results in allowing 26 scholarships for teams that opt in, that also comes with revenue sharing with athletes. Couple that with name, image and likeness money, that could mean a huge gap between well-funded teams with big NIL programs and smaller schools with 18 full rides and maybe some NIL money from t-shirt sales.
Are we headed into an era of “haves and have nots?”
Jim: I will admit that you get that feeling about there being two tiers in college hockey. There will be teams that want to invest heavily in college hockey – both men’s and women’s – and thus you may find a distinct division in the level of talent that is recruited.
But then I look at recent years and wonder why we won’t still have some breakthrough teams. In the last two decades, we have had teams like Yale, Union, Providence, Minnesota Duluth and Quinnipiac win national championships. Denver won last season, and though they have the most national championships with 10, no one confuses the size of Denver and its athletic department for Michigan or Minnesota.
Will there be a need to invest more in college hockey in order to be successful? Probably. But does that exclude smaller schools from finding a way to fundraise to make sure that their team remains competitive? No.
My biggest concern is if smaller programs out there don’t see a road to building a competitive program and they might decide to drop hockey. That would make the recent expansion with the additions of schools like Stonehill, LIU, Augustana and St. Thomas seem less significant if the overall number of programs drops back below the 60-team plateau. To me, that is the biggest issue.
Ed: That 60-team plateau has ebbed and flowed a bit over the last 20 years, even as there is talent enough for 80 D-I men’s teams. I agree that teams throwing in the towel could be an issue.
You mentioned Union’s championship, which was a great achievement by a team that didn’t have scholarships at the time. But would that program have had the success it did under today’s climate? I think it’s more than likely that several stars of that team could have been lured away to more prominent and resource-rich programs via the transfer portal. I’m sure several teams would have loved to have had Shayne Gostisbehere on their roster, let alone some of the other names that it was fun for me to go back and look at.
I don’t think it’s going to be like it was in the 2013-14 season for Rick Bennett’s Union team ever again.
Last week, Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett made a tearful retirement announcement at the age of 55, saying he wasn’t the right coach for this era.
“I think it’s right for student-athletes to receive revenue. Please don’t mistake me,” he told media at a press conference. “The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change, and it’s not going to go back. I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way. That’s who I am.
“It’s going to be closer to a professional model. There’s got to be collective bargaining. There has to be a restriction on the salary pool. There has to be transfer regulation restrictions. There has to be some limits on the agent involvement to these young guys.”
And I guess that’s where the issue of a salary cap came to mind for me.
Is Bennett’s situation going to be the case in college hockey? Will we see a turnover of coaches as things evolve?
Jim: I think it’s difficult to tell how something like House v NCAA will work. I still have never seen any official draft of the proposal. But programs like Union, the Ivies and any other school that may remain that doesn’t technically award scholarships could see a negative impact.
As it has been explained to me by coaches at these non-scholarship school, coaches at those institutions typically have to resort to providing grant-in-aid to the student athletes. The negative to that is that the student-athlete has to qualify for such aid. The positive, as it has been explained to me, is that you can have players on financial aid and there is no limit to how much aid you can distribute. Whereas coaches at schools with scholarship are capped at 18 scholarships and any financial aid awarded to student-athletes counts against those 18 scholarships.
When we arrive at 26 scholarships and possibly the associated roster limits, how will the Ivies and others treat financial aid? Also – and again, I haven’t seen the final House v NCAA proposal – coaches have told me that there may be some required revenue sharing associated with the settlement that may or may not apply to each and every program.
It’s messy. It’s difficult to negotiate and I don’t blame coaches like Bennett at Virginia. I won’t got into specifics, but current NCAA Division I coaches have certainly expressed to me that the current NCAA isn’t what they signed up for. Some are older in age and close to retirement, which is a different situation than Bennett at Virginia. But we 100 percent to not want to see good, younger coaching talent leaving the NCAA for, say, the NHL or some sort of junior level would be just tragic.
You have your ear to the ground as much as I do, though in a different league (Atlantic Hockey vs. Hockey East). Are there rumblings around AHA that concern you?
Ed: What I hear is a lot of wait and see. There’s a lot of uncertainty and many differences of opinion about what will be good for smaller schools.
Why? There are just too many moving parts right now.
Coaches are still figuring out the transfer portal, which itself will change with the end of the COVID fifth year. Canadian major juniors haven’t been settled, and academic eligibility may be a sticky issue for players who haven’t planned for the NCAA. Twenty-six scholarships would be a significant impact for a small school. Smaller programs don’t have revenue to share (and athletes are not going to share in the deficits). NIL is still in its infancy for many institutions.
And all of this requires the involvement of university presidents, boards of trustees, athletic directors, and major donors.
How about in Hockey East? I’d imagine there are haves and have nots even there?
Jim: I think you just nailed it. Most people I speak with in Hockey East don’t know how to react because so much of what could, may and, in most cases, will happen still hasn’t been well communicated at the institution level. Even not every conference commissioner seems to have a grasp on what will happen at the NCAA level.
To me, there seems to be a disconnect somewhere.
I have been around this game for a long time – 33 years. And the one thing I have learned is that communication is key. If there will be massive changes that occur at a level higher than the conference level (i.e. NCAA legislation, settlements, etc.), you can’t just spring it on coaches and administrators and not expect some sort of backlash.
It could be losing great coaches. It could be losing programs with incredible histories.
Moreso, though, for fans you don’t want to blame a lack of organization and communication at the top level as a reason we lose some of the best hockey talent in the world. Everything has been headed in such a good direction for the last 20 years. Now doesn’t seem like a good time to take a step back.
