DANKOCHIK’S DRAFTINGS: NCAA vote gives some much-needed clarity to junior hockey

Finally.

After years of speculation, opinion and concern, the NCAA ripped off the Band-Aid and voted to allow major junior hockey players into their schools.

In my opinion the rule forbidding major junior players was flawed from the beginning, based on the idea that if you play against an NHL-signed player, you yourself are a professional. That reading of the NCAA rule ignores any Team USA players that play in international competitions like the world juniors.

While the logic was flawed, the rule was the rule — at least until the NCAA’s Division 1 committee formally voted to allow major junior players Nov. 7.

At the end of the day, I think teams will settle into the new normal quickly, at least in the lower tiers of junior A. The big losers appear to be the B.C. Hockey League, which left Hockey Canada to try and strike it big as a NCAA prospect factory, the United States Hockey League, who will lose plenty of high-profile Canadians and Canadian universities, which will now have to fight with the NCAA for top tier players too old to play junior.

In Manitoba, there will be an impact. How much so is yet to be seen.

More high quality players could choose to go to the Western Hockey League as opposed to playing out their younger seasons in junior A. But for every player that decides to go that route, another player will be cut from a WHL roster.

The importance of the rule change is it will remove speculation. For years, leagues have been trying to plan around this elephant in the room, without knowing what the elephant even looks like.

The vote gives junior hockey the ability to live in reality, as opposed to a future of complete guesswork.