The recruiting landscape in college hockey these days, and in American college sports in general, isn’t what our parents grew up with. The NCAA rolling out the transfer portal in October 2018, letting student-athletes move freely from one school to another, made sure of that.
Seven years later, the recruiting scene in NCAA Division I men’s hockey is different to what even our older siblings would recall.
Last November, the NCAA announced rule changes that, for the first time in over 45 years, allowed players from Canada’s three major junior hockey leagues to play for NCAA programs. And it’s harder to find coaches of American college teams that haven’t kicked the tires on potential recruits from the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League than it is to find NCAA coaches that have.
Fifty-one of the 63 NCAA Division I teams brought in recruits from Canadian Hockey League — an umbrella organization representing the WHL, OHL and QMJHL — ahead of the 2025-26 season. A third of this year’s college hockey freshman class previously played CHL hockey, and 16.5 percent of players transferred from schools that compete in USports, Canada’s answer to the NCAA.
Omaha coach Mike Gabinet, whose family’s history in Canadian college hockey runs deep, believes he has spotted a gap in the new-look market.
Gabinet and his staff brought in seven USports transfers, more than double what any other NCAA program harvested, and each of those new Mavericks also have experience at the CHL level. On top of that, first-year Omaha forward Spencer Sova came to Nebraska directly from the OHL’s Brampton Steelheads.
“When the CHL opened up, that was something that was intriguing to us to look at those leagues that are in the CHL, and if you look at USports, those are all the same players that were just there a year ago,” Gabinet said. “It just made sense that we included the USports players in that pool of new recruit-eligible players, and we thought maybe that would be something other schools weren’t looking at doing. It was nice to be able to combine the two, whether it’s seeing new players in the CHL or also looking at the USports league.
“Some of those kids that we recruited, we had also previously recruited when they were younger. That was kind of Step 1 for us, that a lot of these guys we initially recruited were maybe 15 or 16 years old, then decided to go the CHL route, and there was a preexisting relationship there, so connecting with those guys felt like a smart thing to do early on with the rule change.”
It still does. Four games into the new season, Omaha’s first, second, fifth and sixth-top point producers are USports veterans.
Maxime Pellerin, who previously played for McGill University in Montreal, has a team-best four goals and six points on nine shots. Aidan de la Gorgendiere, one of four former University of Alberta players now on Omaha’s roster, also has six points with four assists. Brett Hyland and Sean Tschigerl are fifth and sixth on the leaderboard, respectively.
Before returning to his alma mater to succeed former Omaha coach Dean Blais, Gabinet coached at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in his hometown of Edmonton. His grandfather, Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Clare Drake, coached at the University of Alberta for nearly three decades. Hyland and Tschigerl were previously Alberta’s top forwards, and de la Gorgendiere and fellow new Omaha defenseman Mark Lajoie were top blueliners with the Bears.
Drake, who led Alberta to six Canadian national championships and 17 Canada West conference titles, died in 2018 at the age of 89. His passing narrowly predated the NCAA’s transfer portal, but going back even further, Gabinet was plenty familiar with Canadian college hockey and its potential future overlaps with the American system.
“When I was going through college, I had a lot of buddies who played for the Bears, and a lot of guys I knew from the summertime and stuff,” Gabinet said. “I always knew how good that team was and how good that league was, and a lot of those guys, if they didn’t want to go pro and they wanted to use scholarship money, they went the university route. Right off the bat, I thought of the guys I played with back in the day, and that’s one of the reasons I value the guys who play in that league.
“And anytime there’s change, you have to look at it strategically, adapt the methods you’re using and try to find best practices that will help your program and team get better. That’s something we always do: looking at the landscape that’s currently the landscape, and trying to navigate that the best way possible and doing the work.”
Coming into NCAA hockey, Sova already knew plenty about the American game. Before the Ontario native played in the OHL for Brampton and the Erie Otters, he played Triple-A hockey in the United States with the Belle Tire, Little Caesars and Honeybaked programs.
“When I was little and I had the opportunity to move to the U.S., it opened my eyes to the whole college landscape,” he said. “Being from Windsor and watching so many (Windsor) Spitfires games, my heart at the time was set on going to the OHL, and now that this opportunity presented itself, that’s huge for me to be able to come here now and further develop.
“As for style of play, (American) college is a lot more pro-like in terms of not having a lot of time and space, and it’s very, very structured and you can’t take a shift off. Off the ice, the whole school aspect is a huge change for me, but it’s good to have a schedule and it’s good to have something else to do other than just playing hockey. That’s been sort of an escape, but as far as coming here and having those outside things to do, I think I’m handling it pretty well and it’s been great.”
Omaha senior alternate captain Tyler Rollwagen, a Bloomington, Minn., product, previously played prep hockey for Shattuck-St. Mary’s (Minn.) and then for Cedar Rapids and Fargo in the United States Hockey League.
“At Shattuck, we always played against some Canadian teams, and you could see a difference,” Rollwagen said. “The game is bigger there and they’re always under some bright lights, so when we would go to Toronto or something, we were blown away by some of the pressure they might have early in their careers.
“(Omaha’s former CHL and USports players) have done a great job of coming in and being open to what we do here. I’ll give the staff credit, because they’ve done a lot of homework on these guys, and they’re great people who want to work and get better.
“When you have like-minded people like that, it’s easier for us to lay the foundation of what we’ve learned and pass it onto them, and I don’t really see a difference between recruits or whatnot, comparing USHL to OHL or WHL guys or whatever, but at the end of the day, these guys helped make our training camp much more competitive. I don’t see them as different people, but they’ve made our development rate a lot higher.”
Whether the influx of former CHL and USports players to American colleges will continue at its current pace is yet to be seen. But In Omaha’s case, so far, Mavericks old and new are fully on board.
“Like with anything, with six seniors this year and some of the returning guys, we felt like a minority of the team when we first got here, so it was a little bit eye-opening to put yourself in some of these new guys’ shoes,” Rollwagen said. “This is the first time they’re moving far, far away from home and they’ve got to get a class schedule and a new apartment, so we’re open to the fact that this is all new to them.
“I think our leadership guys have done a great job of making these guys feel comfortable, and the faster they feel comfortable playing the game and knowing why they were recruited here, that’s only going to help us here in the long run.”