There’s a lot of talk about money in NCAA hockey this season thanks to one player, Penn State freshman Gavin McKenna.
The 17-year-old forward, projected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft, announced July 8 on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” that he’d be a Nittany Lion this year. While the stage for McKenna’s news was newsworthy itself, so was the timing of the announcement, which came one month and two days after a ruling in House vs. NCAA, the class action lawsuit that paves the way for schools to share revenue from media deals with student-athletes.
Also newsworthy: McKenna is reported to have received $700,000 to commit to Penn State.
That sum was first published by Mike McMahon of “College Hockey Insider” and run by most major sports news outlets, including ESPN, SI.com and here at USCHO, although confirmation of that figure has been difficult to find.
It was also reported that Penn State’s offer dwarfed that of one made by Michigan State, purportedly between $200,000 and $300,000.
These are enormous figures to be associated with men’s Division I college hockey, a sport with 63 teams, some of which play at institutions whose NCAA presence is relatively small. That doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that college hockey players will suddenly find themselves wealthy.
“For the most part, I don’t think any of this is truly life-changing money,” said Brock Sheahan. “For the most part.”
After all, not everyone’s a Gavin McKenna.
Sheahan, in his first year as Notre Dame’s head coach, said that this new landscape in collegiate sports needs to be taken in context.
“It’s all football, basketball driven,” said Sheahan. “I think it’s all economies of scale from an NIL standpoint.
“If you look at the NFL and NBA, just at the numbers and what guys’ contracts are and what that world is, and then you put NHL contracts in relation to that, they’re different. You’ve got players who don’t play much in the NBA making as much as NHL superstars.”
That framework of professional hockey helps to shape the discussion of how revenue sharing and other money – like NIL, the shorthand for licensing agreements athletes make regarding name, image and likeness – may impact men’s college hockey, especially related to the Big Ten.
As per the terms of House vs. NCAA, each individual school may share as much as $20.5 million with student-athletes in 2025-26. The Big Ten has more financial resources available to it than any other college hockey conference by far, but that doesn’t mean that B1G Hockey teams will benefit more than teams from leagues that aren’t as flush.
In fact, the opposite may be true. Big Ten Hockey member schools and Notre Dame, a guest member, have football and basketball programs in which they’re heavily invested. As Sheahan pointed out, there are scales of economies at work here.
According to Big Ten Ice Hockey Commissioner Adam Augustine, there are a couple of ways to look at how these monies relate to Big Ten Hockey.
“I think what you need to keep in mind is that one of the signatures of the Big Ten and our schools is broad-based programming,” said Augustine. “When you look at Big Ten schools, there are prominent football teams, and men’s and women’s basketball programs, and volleyball, wrestling. Each campus has its own assortment and collection that they prioritize.
“I think what this system does is it gives each school the flexibility to kind of step back, evaluate all its programs, and decide where to invest this money.
“I think on the one hand, yes, there are resources at our institutions, but it’s not an automatic that hockey programs will benefit the most from that.”
Augustine said that some schools without programs like football and basketball may be “in an intriguing position” in terms of recruiting high-end players with advantages that don’t seem immediately apparent.
“A school without football, for example, your total pot for the athletic department might be nowhere near as big, may not be able to get close to the $20.5 million that’s available this year, but you might be able to prioritize hockey in a way that some of our schools aren’t able to right now.”
Augustine added, “We have a good starting point for sure and possibilities for hockey are certainly there, but it remains to be seen how each school chooses to utilize those funds.”
“We’re not even in the same stratosphere as football and basketball,” said Minnesota coach Bob Motzko, who cautions that everything surrounding revenue sharing as well as some new rules regulating NIL is in a state of flux.
That’s because of the date of the House vs. NCAA ruling, said Motzko, and the formation of the College Sports Commission (CSC) shortly thereafter. The CSC is an independent body that, according to its website, will “facilitate revenue sharing in college sports to ensure that name, image and likeness (NIL) deals between student-athletes and third parties are fair and comply with rules.”
The CSC has set up NIL Go, an online portal to evaluate third-party agreements that student-athletes propose to enter. CSC has published criteria for evaluation, but both Sheahan and Motzko said that coaches aren’t often privy to the details of deals made by individual players.
“It’s hard in this world to truly know what is going on,” said Sheahan. “From our perspective as a coach, you don’t know exactly how much players are getting, whether it’s in rev share, NIL, combination of both, depending on how a school’s operating.”
Motzko said that there is “hearsay, rumors” and other talk that may or may not be true, most of which comes from how recently everything has come together.
“What effect is it really having on college hockey?” Motzko asked. “No one’s sharing anything, but a year from now we’re going to have a way better understanding of where it’s at.”
There are other factors impacting the monies that may come to student-athletes, like potential regulation on a state-by-state basis. In a statement released by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) June 9, three days after the House vs. NCAA ruling, at least 35 states “have passed legislation to address student-athlete compensation since 2019.” The NCSL said that in some cases, state law may conflict with NIL and revenue sharing agreements.
Right now, “Every school’s going about it their own way,” said Sheahan. “That’s what I think is interesting.”
Sheahan said that players have been getting compensated in a variety of ways previously acknowledged, including cost of attendance in the form of scholarships, adding that people are having to see that what’s unfolding now is not new, but different.
Said Motzko, “I do believe that players should be able to make money off of name, image, and likeness. The premise of all of these new rules is right on. It just needs guidance and governance to how it’s done, and that’s starting to happen.”
“There are opportunities for a lot of programs,” said Augustine. “It’s a new system that creates opportunities and challenges for all of us in different ways.
“The real winner in all of this is the student-athletes. To take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of them and some of the resources that can now go their way, that’s fantastic and a good thing and continuation of some very long trends.”