You may have heard lately that the NCAA is considering a Division I proposal that would prevent schools from officially offering scholarships until July 1 of the year between their junior and senior years of high school.
And, yes, it has college hockey implications.
The proposal wasn’t making the rounds at the time of the coaches’ convention in late April, so there wasn’t any consensus gathered at that point. But conference commissioners are looking into how they could get hockey exempted from the proposal.
Why is that important? Many in college hockey would argue that the proposal would further weaken their game in relation to the competition with Canadian major juniors. The National Letter of Intent that is the first official level of recruiting confirmation can’t be signed until a prospect’s senior year in high school anyway, but by that time an elite-level player that would enter college directly after his senior year probably has plenty of offers on the table under the current format.
College coaches likely would argue that, by the time they could officially make an offer to one of these elite players, he would have been scooped up by the major junior system.
Just something to keep an eye on going forward.
