For Players Like Justin Hryckowian, NCAA Rule Changes Open a New Development Path

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Justin Hryckowian (Credit: Andy Nietupski/Texas Stars)

Amid all the NHL and AHL news coming in the last month, the bubble finally burst last week on something that has been percolating for several years in the NCAA world. After pressure from players and a proposed class-action lawsuit from major junior player Rylan Masterson, the NCAA has finally relented on their stance that major junior players are ineligible to play collegiate hockey in the United States.

As a primer, the NCAA has strict rules about eligibility across all sports. In hockey, specifically, the athletics arbiter had previously held that any participation in the Canadian major junior system would make a player ineligible for collegiate play. Canadian major junior, which comprises 60 teams across Canada and the northern US and is broken into the Ontario, Western and Quebec Major Junior Hockey Leagues, is the primary development path for hundreds of NHL hopefuls every year. Typical first year players are 16 years old.

Of course, as the old NCAA ad says, most collegiate athletes go pro in something other than professional sports. To wit, many CHL players wanted the option to go to college in the US, get their degree while playing hockey on scholarship and graduate or perhaps go pro for a few years.

Take the case of Texas Stars forward Justin Hryckowian. Recently, I spoke with him about the fast start to his pro career and we discussed his choice to play collegiate hockey in the states despite being a Quebecer. Essentially for him, the choice came down to his education. His parents told him that he needed to put education first. Under the previous system, that meant Hryckowian picked up and left Canada to play in the US high school system in Connecticut before a year in the USHL and then Northeastern University in Boston.

Many players in Hryckowian's shoes (or skates) would have gone the QMJHL route at 16 and played out four years in their home province. The old rules meant that a single game, even just a preseason bout, killed any chance of collegiate eligibility. Now, there's another path.

There are about a million implications that we have yet to realize based on the decision. However, it is a move in the direction of greater player choice, which is a positive move in my opinion. It may impact the talent pool for NCAA programs and the recruiting strategies therein. It will certainly impact the talent pool for CHL programs, perhaps in both positive and negative ways. It may shift the competitive balance in the NCAA or, for that matter, the CHL. I'm not here to comment on all that.

But regardless, it opens another path for young kids who want to pursue their education and play hockey at the same time. Hryckowian already made his choice, though it wasn't much of a choice based on his educational goals. Future players like him should have a new way to make their hockey dreams come true while also setting themselves up for life after hockey.

And that has to be viewed as a good thing.

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