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Franko Backs Out on Bemidji

by WCHBlog on Aug 31, 2010 10:19 PM PDT Comment 8 comments

(Side note: First Bemidji news item since they joined the WCHA? You've made it, baby, in the smallest possible way.)

For the past couple of days, I was watching with raised eyebrows as Bemidji recruit Zach Franko was in attendance at the Kelowna Rockets tryout camp. Franko, a speedy forward out of Winnipeg, was a second round draft choice of the Rockets two years ago, and at one point, was gung-ho on playing for the Rockets, until he realized that at a generously-listed 5'10", he was probably better off getting a college education before taking his shot at pro hockey and committed to Bemidji State. But apparently in the past week, Kelowna has convinced Franko, who was reportedly very impressive at the camp, that size is nothing but a number, despite strong statistical evidence pointing otherwise, and Franko has committed to play in the WHL.

Franko was scheduled to play in the USHL this next year for Cedar Rapids, who selected him with a first round pick this past spring. It's a tough loss for Bemidji to lose one of the first big-time recruits they pulled in since being admitted to the WCHA, and it will be interesting to follow Franko's progress over the next couple of years in the WHL.

8 comments |

Eddy, Leitner Academically Ineligible

by WCHBlog on Aug 30, 2010 4:57 PM PDT Comment 0 comments

On the surface these stories are almost exactly similar: a state school in Minnesota loses a high-scoring forward from California due to academic problems. The only difference is what the ending will look like for each.

St. Cloud radio station KVSC--your sound alternative--has reported last week that St.Cloud sophomore forward David Eddy would be academically ineligible for the first semester of the season. Eddy had an impressive 12 goals and 11 assists in his freshman campaign, but St. Cloud returns one of the deeper groups of forwards in the WCHA, and should be able to absorb.

Meanwhile, I mentioned about a month ago that Matt Leitner's name on Minnesota State's roster was a positive step, towards his ongoing eligibility issues. That meant it was very bad news when his name disappeared from said roster last week. Shane Frederick confirms that Leitner is academically ineligible for this season, but will stay enrolled in school and hopefully begin playing next season. Leitner, whose 1.22 points per game last season in the USHL put him among the best in the USHL, was one of the most likely candidates to help carry an offense that lost 53% of the goal scoring output from last year's offensively-challenged team. It's a pretty devastating blow to a team with marginal hopes of success to begin with. On the plus side, this frees me of the burden of hours upon hours of driving this year. I may take up scrimshaw as a hobby.

0 comments |

Me at FTR

by WCHBlog on Aug 30, 2010 4:07 PM PDT Comment 0 comments

Mike Chen of SB Nation's From the Rink blog asked me a couple college hockey questions, and as is the style, I provided him with answers.

There's some stuff in there about the CHL, fighting, free agents,and expansion that's worth checking out.

0 comments |

Linkorama

by WCHBlog on Aug 25, 2010 10:46 AM PDT Comment 6 comments

Barely tolerated Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox highlighted the chasm between print media and newer forms of media in pretty unique ways on two consecutive days. On Monday, he penned a column saying Jose Bautista's surge in home runs this year should lead to questions about whether or not he's using steroids. The question is innocuous enough, if not for the fact that a Philadelphia Phillies blogger spent the better part of a week last year being a mainstream media whipping boy for daring to make the same suggestion about Raul Ibanez. There's perhaps a lesson to be learned from that, even beyond that nobody really cares what you write if you do it in America Jr.

Anyway, the next day, Cox penned this article about Paul Kelly and the Canadian Hockey Summit that is going on this week in Toronto. On first glance, it's about as shallow of a look into the NCAA/CHL debate that you can take. But then again, that's not so much an indictment of Cox, as it is of his medium. His column clocks in at just a smidge over 700 words, and I doubt he had that much more space to work with, compared to the 2000 words I spent on it last week--not counting linked reference material that adds a lot of depth--and I could have written more if I had wanted. Both forms have an audience they serve.

The article also mentions Indiana University potentially starting a hockey team. Commence the latest round of Big Ten Hockey Conference panic.

Next on my list of dubious sources, Tim Staudt took a break from his federal courthouse vigil for Jeff Smoker and wrote a Hartman-esque treasure hunt for a few valuable hints of information amidst a bunch of stuff that makes no sense. The stuff you may not have already known: 2014 is mentioned as a possible start date for Penn State, and the vote to keep shootouts just barely passed.

It also actually raises an interesting scenario with Notre Dame. If the Rapture came and all of the Big Ten schools ascended to heaven, would Notre Dame want to stick around in the CCHA? There'd potentially be openings in the WCHA, but is the WCHA still that much more attractive without Minnesota and Wisconsin? North Dakota and four Minnesota schools still gives you the opportunity for a fairly profitable league tournament. But if the issue is name brand opponents, people have at least heard of Miami of Ohio and the other Division I MAC schools in the CCHA. There wouldn't be a team left in the WCHA that your average potential Notre Dame hockey ticket buyer has heard of.

This ends up further down the page than it should have been, but former St. Cloud State assistant coach Eric Rud is the new head coach of the Green Bay Gamblers in the USHL, replacing Jon Cooper, who continued his meteoric rise up the coaching ranks by taking an AHL head coaching job. Rud was a pretty highly respected assistant coach, and had been in the running for some head jobs. As seems to be the trend, taking over a USHL team should give him some of the executive experience college teams seem to look for when hiring a head coach.

6 comments |

Making a Partnership Work--An NCAA Rules Guide

by WCHBlog on Aug 20, 2010 11:59 AM PDT Comment 33 comments

So if the CHL is really serious about forming some kind of partnership with the NCAA(stick with me here), and because I'm still amazed at the amount of confusion that I see over this, I decided it would be wise to trudge my way through the NCAA's Division I manual, specifically through Bylaw 12, which deals with amateurism to see just how much distance there is.

In an unnecessarily long 444-page tome filled with all sorts of confusing lawyer language("final non-certified certification") the NCAA is remarkably clear on the CHL, giving it it's own sub-sub-sub-sub-section:

12.2.3.2.4 Major Junior A Ice Hockey. Ice hockey teams in the United States and Canada, classified

by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association as major junior A teams, are considered professional teams

under NCAA legislation.

That's fine. We all obviously already knew that. But what if that rule disappeared from the rulebook?

The most commonly cited rule--and why it's the most commonly known is beyond me--is what is known as the "playing with pros rule." Here's what that rule actually looks like:

12.2.3.2.2 Professional Player as Team Member. An individual may participate with a professional on a team, provided the professional is not being paid by a professional team or league to play as a member of that team (e.g., summer basketball leagues with teams composed of both professional and amateur athletes).

Basically, it's not so much that the player's teammates are professionals, as that the player's teammates were assigned by a professional team to play there. This answers one of the more frequently asked questions I get about why it is okay for college players to play with pros at events like the World Juniors.

The CHL's relationship with the NHL is a little too close for the NCAA's comfort in terms of amateurism. This is a pretty huge sticking point, because as unlikely as a partnership between the NCAA and CHL seems, having the CHL and NHL end their partnership is a million times less likely. It may not seem like a big deal, but that partnership essentially makes the CHL the low, low minor leagues in the NCAA's eyes.

There's a couple other issues I've come across in looking over the rulebook.

I'm sure you're surprised this is banned:

12.1.2.1.1 Salary, Gratuity or Compensation. Any direct or indirect salary, gratuity or comparable compensation.

I've always said it would at least be interesting to have an investigation into some of the rumored under-the-table payments made to players that go beyond, "Do you super-swear you didn't cheat, Dale Hunter?"

I was kind of hoping that lawsuit against Jeff Jackson would go into it, but we're now at one year, five months, and four days since Kitchener and Windsor threatened their lawsuit, and shockingly, nobody in Canada has bothered to write anything about it since the original story(which is now so old it has disappeared from the internets). Great follow-up, guys!

Here's an interesting one:

12.1.2.1.3.2 Educational Expenses from Outside Sports Team or Organization—After

Collegiate Enrollment. Educational expenses provided to an individual after initial collegiate enrollment

by an outside sports team or organization that are based on any degree on the recipient’s

athletics ability [except as specified in Bylaw 15.2.6.4-(h)], even if the funds are given to the institution

to administer to the recipient. (Revised: 1/10/95, 4/25/02 effective 8/1/02)

That would make any potential education package earned by playing in the CHL void, upon entering college hockey, and the CHL obviously loves loopholes that get them out of having to pay education packages they've promised.

If you ever wondered why CHL teams were so intent on getting players to sign documents that were in no way legally binding due to the players age, it's because of this rule:

12.2.5 Contracts and Compensation. An individual shall be ineligible for participation in an intercollegiate sport if he or she has entered into any kind of agreement to compete in professional athletics, either orally or in writing, regardless of the legal enforceability of that agreement.

Yep, they're the totally cooperative good guys in all of this.

Any gifts, trip, etc. that teams sometimes get after making the Memorial Cup, or doing well in the season are banned:

12.1.2.1.5 Payment Based on Performance. Any payment, including actual and necessary expenses,

conditioned on the individual’s or team’s place finish or performance or given on an incentive basis, or receipt

of expenses in excess of the same reasonable amount for permissible expenses given to all individuals

or team members involved in the competition. (Revised: 4/25/02 effective 8/1/02)

Section 12.4 has a lot of complicated stuff I won't bother copy-and-pasting on players using their name, reputation, photo, whatever, to sell stuff. Suffice to say that you can't put yourself in a video game, sell jerseys or t-shirts with your name on it, and a lot of other stuff.

Could all of this stuff be worked around? Potentially, yes. There's even the possibility for a little quid pro quo in that if the CHL took care of the numerous steps necessary to be more amateur, the NCAA could maybe work something out in regards to the CHL/NHL relationship. But it's a long and difficult road, and whether that is in anyone's best interest in another question altogether.

33 comments |

More Dirty Tricks from CHL

by WCHBlog on Aug 19, 2010 1:04 PM PDT Comment 39 comments

Next week kicks off the Molson Canadian World Hockey Summit in Toronto--with heavy emphasis on Canadian, not so much on world. Oddly though,the big issue that everyone seems to be talking about, is one that likely won't be discussed much.

The original plan for Hockey Canada and the CHL heading into this thing was to sit down with the NHL and remind them of who their real friends were, in regards to Paul Kelly saying mean things about them. And privately, that may still be the case. Publicly, however, there's been a drastic shift in tone from "smug aloof asshole" all the way over to "smug pretending-to-be-conciliatory asshole".

There's been a flurry of articles printed the last couple days, like this one, which feature lots of Jeff Jackson lawsuit-esque statements that prove the gaping chasm between words and actions, such as:

It doesn't mean players don't have the option to go NCAA. We certainly aren't saying negative things about NCAA.

...from Hockey Canada president and CEO Bob Nicholoson. Hockey Canada, of course, once printed a manual for all players that contained this:

All levels agree that should a player not be capable of competing in the top level of the Canadian system- the CHL, it may be fitting to keep open all his avenues of opportunity.

Not to mention multitude of quotes you could dig up like the ones last week with London taking shots at Notre Dame. Of course, there is a very simple solution to all of this, if the CHL is serious about this, and it really is "all about the kids," as Regina Pats president Brent Parker says:

I don't think it's fair to them. They have tough enough decisions as it is. That's where our league has really tried to take the high road through all of this. We recognize it's not the right way to go about it in terms of getting into running down each other's programs.

If you want to take the high road, the WCHA, like most other leagues, has a gentleman's agreement that says once a player makes a commitment to a school, nobody else will talk to them and try to recruit them. I'm sure they'd have no problem with the CHL joining in on that gentleman's agreement.

That's all that needs to be done. All this other silliness about NCAA hockey becoming a professional league like the CHL is just never going to happen. For anyone that thinks, "Just because they're playing with pros doesn't mean they're pros! We can work this out!" I'll point out that this week also marked the release of the demo mode of the new NHL '11 video game, in which you were to play with both the name of likeness of OHLer Tyler Seguin.(That the CHL, negotiating on Seguin's behalf, made sure Seguin gets absolutely nothing out of the deal would be Tyler Seguin's problem, not the NCAAs). I'll say it again, since it doesn't seem to have caught on, but there's a huge difference between an amateur athlete, and a professional that gets very poorly paid.

Personally, I don't buy into the panic about players choosing the CHL over the NCAA much anyway. Earlier this week, I read this quote from Yahoo's excellent Buzz the Net CHL blog(I'm know I'm usually sarcastic about all things CHL, but they truly do a nice job over there):

The NCAA's aim is to stop having, what five or six Cam Fowler-like cases for every player such as Chicago Blackhawks second-round pick Stephen Johns, who turned down the Ontario Hockey League to attend Notre Dame.

First, I'll question the math. Just looking at the draft eligible incoming NCAA freshmen, Adam Clendening, Nick Shore, Dillon Simpson, and Patrick Koudys all had ample opportunity to play in the CHL, which would get us up to 20-30 Cam Fowlers, a number that hardly seems right.

The other problem is classifying most of the kids that go to the CHL as Cam Fowlers--or any other successful CHLer for that matter. By my count, there should be at least 15 Pat Kanes coming out of the CHL for this year's draft.

The biggest reason I don't think there's that much reason to panic is that most of the same people exclaiming that these players jumping to the CHL is the death of NCAA hockey are the same people that were saying that it was death of NCAA hockey when players like Tyler Murovich, Josh Bemis, Beau Schmitz, and Josh Unice backed out on college commitments and jumped to the OHL. As it turned out, all of those kids are going to end up needing a four-year college degree a lot more than the NCAA ever needed them. Incidentally, Unice seems likely to be the only one to get that education from the CHL, as he was willing to give up playing serious hockey at age 20. Murovich forfeited his college deal by signing with an AHL deal this summer, and it seems highly unlikely either of the two, despite going undrafted twice now, will give up their pro hockey aspirations within the next year or two.

Which brings me to my final point about the CHL's Scholarship Program. This piece gets into the CHL's scholarship program in the most superficial way possible. It starts with the title, "CHL seeks truth..." apparently refuting Paul Kelly's claims about the CHL's scholarship program(though the article never bothers with what they are) and finishes with a quote from WHL commissioner Ron Robison saying, "You can't deny what the Canadian Hockey League has done in terms of its education programs, while never actually getting into what it's actually done. There you go. It's all so simple that you don't need any sort of evidence or numbers to know that the CHL is great and Paul Kelly is a lying liar. CHL 1 Reality 0.

I would say that's a monument to dubious journalism, except for the fact that the writer couldn't use any numbers, because such numbers don't exist on the CHL side. Sure, you'll see the occasional press release saying, "200 players are using CHL scholarships! 200 is a very big number!" without ever bothering to get into what percentage of the whole those 200 players are, or how many of those scholarships were going towards one health class. Or more shamefully, press releases that say, "This player's mom is an American apple pie school teacher, and she thinks this scholarship program her son will never use is fantastic!"

The real truth is, while the NCAA maintains publicly available records about exactly what percentage of their athletes are in good academic standing and on pace to graduate within a certain time frame, you'll never see anything close to that from the CHL, because the numbers are embarrassing. As of last year, only about 32% of CHL players were tapping into the scholarship program.

Like I said, this "Hey, we're the good guys" tactic may all be part of the CHL's plan to get the NHL's development money taken away from USA Hockey, and by extension, College Hockey Inc. But it's comical to see how far from reality some of these statements get.

39 comments |

CCHA Sticks with Shootouts

by WCHBlog on Aug 17, 2010 1:32 PM PDT Comment 0 comments

The CCHA announced today that they will continue using shootouts at the end of tie games during regular season conference games.

Once the league went to a more logical 3-point per game system--which the NHL desperately needs to do--I didn't really have a problem with the shootouts. The league handles the shootouts in pretty much the right way.

There was some talk of college hockey going with a uniform overtime/shootout policy, but since the only effect shootouts have is on conference standings, there's really no need for everyone to be the same.

The league is also adopting a uniform timeout policy, similar to what the WCHA instituted last year, where there will be three one-minute breaks every period.

0 comments |

Michigan Tech's European Vacation

by WCHBlog on Aug 16, 2010 9:32 AM PDT Comment 1 comment

Though we're still in the dog days of August, the college hockey season has already started for one team. Michigan Tech is taking advantage of a rule that allows NCAA teams to travel overseas to play once every four years, and competing against some German and Austrian pro teams. It sounds like a fun trip, and it's something Michigan Tech plans on doing once every four years, so every player that goes to Tech gets to make the trip.

The Huskies are maintaining a blog dedicated to the trip, so you can follow their progress there.

Yesterday, the Huskies wrapped up competition in the four-team Joker Cup, where they finished in third place with a 1-2 record, which all in all, isn't that bad considering the competition they were facing. John Kivisto was named the tournament's MVP, and in true German fashion, was given a giant bottle of booze for his efforts. The Huskies beat ESV Kaufbeuren in their first game 3-0. ESVK plays in the second level of German pro hockey. They lost 2-0 in their second game to Black Wings Linz, who plays in Austria's top pro division, and has former collegians Reid Cashman and Pat Leahy on their team.

Their final game came against Augsburger Panther, who plays in Germany's top pro division, and was the tournament's top team. Tech had the game tied 2-2 heading into the third period, before Augsburger scored three times in the third period, including two from Northern Michigan alum Darin Olver, to win. It's a pretty impressive result when you look over the Augsburger roster, which features former All-Americans and NHLers Grant Stevenson and Noah Clarke, former collegians Justin Fletcher, Barry Tallackson, Sean Bentivoglio, and Mike Radja, and former Minnesota Wild schlub Kyle Wanvig.

The Huskies will close out their European trip against the Vienna Capitals, who play in Austria's top pro league. The Capitals have former Bowling Green goalie Jordan Sigalet and Wisconsin Badger Dan Bjornlie on their roster.

1 comment |

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