When Gavin McKenna made his recruiting visit to Penn State University in July, coach Guy Gadowsky ensured the Nittany Lions made their best pitch for college hockey’s top recruit.
They toured the campus, getting an especially close look at their Pegula Ice Arena and its plush facilities. McKenna was very interested in the nutrition and strength and conditioning program, Gadowsky said, so they focused on that. They talked about Penn State’s run to the Frozen Four in April — stunning for a team that had gone on a six-game losing streak earlier that season, snuck into the national tournament, and had only been a Division I program for a dozen years.
They even played ping pong (Gadowsky still says he has the upper hand).
“He’s got a lot of work to do,” Gadowsky said, smiling.
McKenna made visits to Penn State and Michigan State, and did a video call with the University of Denver staff, before picking Hockey Valley. McKenna’s “gut feeling” in January about Penn State (who said they didn’t actually reach out to him until the end of his season with the WHL-champion Medicine Hat Tigers), his visit and last season’s sudden success all played a role in his momentous commitment.
So, no doubt, did a record Name Image and Likeness package that was reported to be $700,000 USD.
Gadowsky strongly pushed back on that figure — “that’s not an accurate place to get your information,” he said.
Still, backed by a strong and motivated alumni base, Gadowsky and Penn State are now one of the colleges unafraid to dive into a new world of college hockey recruiting.
“A very smart man, an old AD of mine, once said, ‘Play the game, change the game, or get a new game,’” Gadowsky said. “And we’re going to play the game.”
It’s hard, too, to put a price on what it will mean to see Penn State’s logo plastered across ESPN when McKenna presumably is the 2026 NHL Draft’s No. 1 pick.
“McKenna’s a good example. He’s got a very large following. Originally in Canada. Since he’s come to Penn State. This is a very recognizable brand. We have been ranked the most powerful college network for a reason,” Gadowsky said. “There’s a bunch of companies that want to work with the Penn State brand and he’s a very marketable student-athlete. So it makes a lot of sense.”
Not everyone is playing the NIL game, at least in the same way, however. In recent weeks, The Athletic spoke with more than a dozen Division I men’s college hockey coaches about the changing landscape.
Western Michigan coach Pat Ferschweiler said the reigning national-champion Broncos may be the last team in a major college sport to use “zero NIL dollars.”
Coaches like Minnesota’s Bob Motzko and Michigan State’s Jared DeMichiel said college hockey is not in the “same stratosphere” as college football or football when it comes to NIL.
Hockey programs have also found it harder to secure NIL deals, which are logged and submitted through NIL Go, an online platform run by the College Sports Commission and overseen by Deloitte.
“I think we could fit about 15 Munn Arenas into Spartan Stadium,” DeMichiel said. “It’s just totally different.”
Motzko said he has players who’ve started a hockey school under their name. Things like that, he argued, are what NIL should be about.
“The true NIL is, in its purest sense, for athletes to have the ability to make money off their name, image and likeness, which they couldn’t do before. And the powers that be are trying to put that back in the box and make sure that happens versus just ‘you have unlimited checks just to give a player,’” Motzko said. “The NIL space is there for players to have the opportunity. It wasn’t there for boosters. The intent wasn’t just for boosters to give money to go buy players. It was so Caitlin Clark could do commercials for an insurance company because she had value to that company.”
Schools like Michigan State and Penn State, which have prominent football or basketball programs — or, better yet, both — have really benefited from revenue sharing. (In July, following a settlement in the House v. NCAA case, colleges which began opting into revenue sharing could share their money with athletes up to a cap of $20.5 million for the entire athletic department. Some schools have elected to share a portion with their hockey programs.)
MSU’s hockey program is optimistic that the school will continue to fund them “really well,” but their share of the pie is still small, relatively speaking.
“NIL has definitely changed recruiting for some of the higher-end prospects for sure. That’s where our sport is getting closer to pro hockey. (But) I would say for us, every single kid that’s on our team took less money to be a part of our team. We’ve missed out on some guys that have chased money,” DeMichiel said. “We’re trying to manage it the best that we can.”
Schools are also trying to balance how much of their pot they give to highly recruited freshmen and how much they assign for returning players, as well as how it’s rolled out (for most, in monthly payments which started in July and August to discourage players from spending it all at once and encourage them to save for their tax obligations at the end of the year).
“We’ve got some really good returners and they’ve put their dues in and we felt like some of them had earned the right to get something, and it’s not like a freshman should come in here and just take the first seat and be the highest-paid player,” DeMichiel said. “The NHL has established that, where your first overall draft pick doesn’t come in and make more than the veteran all-star.”
Though Western Michigan just started using a revenue-share program with players this summer and has a new arena and sports complex on the way, they haven’t yet handed out their pot to freshmen at all.
“Obviously we’re going to have to start to reward some incoming freshmen in the future. We haven’t done that so far,” Ferschweiler said. “Our philosophy is to recruit the player, let them know that I think we can be great for them and they can be great for us, present the opportunity that they’ll have to play and be successful here, and then once we both decide that that’s a relationship that wants to move forward then we can deal with dollars after that. … Not with the McKenna dollars but with the other dollars I think that we can be competitive with. We certainly want to never overpromise and underdeliver. You can’t get in that game ever.”
Denver’s David Carle said any one college hockey player getting six figures is “pretty damn rare.” Still, some colleges, including prominent programs like Denver and North Dakota, have hired full-time general managers to oversee recruiting and handle NIL and revenue sharing, shifting some of the recruiting responsibility away from their coaching staffs. Add in the opening up of NCAA eligibility to CHL players, and the programs are dealing with not one but two seismic shifts within college hockey simultaneously.
“We don’t shy away from the challenge of it,” Carle said. “Do I think it’s ideal? I don’t know. It’s a challenge, which is not a bad thing. Change isn’t always bad. For everyone to be like, ‘Oh, I wish it was how it used to be,’ I don’t think that’s the answer …
“Obviously the CHL rules, the transfer rules, have all changed. It’s a very complex marketplace that we’re all trying to adjust on. At least for us here at Denver, we’re trying to stay true to what we believe has given us success, but we also can’t put our head in the sand and fall behind.”
Carle himself says his involvement in NIL isn’t substantial because NIL is reliant on what businesses want to partner with the school and its athletes. He has focused more on trying to build out their revenue share base at a school that doesn’t have a college football program to pull from.
“We as Denver (are) never going to spend the max that you’re allowed to spend in the House settlement,” Carle said. “My hope is we can get very competitive in the numbers that we can support in the college hockey market. I think we feel comfortable with a floor that we’re at, but obviously we’re trying to understand the marketplace and maybe how high that number needs to be, knowing and respecting that we’re not going to be, nor do we necessarily want to be, the leader in this space. I still don’t really want people coming to Denver because we’re the highest bidder.”
DeMichiel also warned against schools leading with money.
“We’ve seen it happen in football and basketball. If you’re just buying people, it doesn’t build a great culture, and it’s just short-term gain without long-term success,” he said. “We’re trying to have long-term success and set Michigan State up for the future.”
Both DeMichiel and Carle also said that when players, their agents, or their families lead with NIL in their first couple of questions, it puts them off (though while Carle said the money of it all has been a bit more of a conversation in recruiting, he said it has “not been in a distasteful way” by and large).
“We can’t lose who we are,” Carle said. “Like if I were to offer you $25,000, you’d be excited, you’d take it, but you’re not gonna sit here and ask me for $25,000, you know? … I had an agent say the other day, ‘my kid (isn’t) going to pick a school that he doesn’t really want to go to for $10,000 a year over a school that he really wants to go.’ Like it just doesn’t make sense. In college hockey, there’s 64 programs. The schools are all so different, so unique geographically, size, conferences. And so kids are still looking for the experience.
“That could change. We could be on this evolution where that becomes less of a factor. But that’s what I think is keeping college hockey a little bit more grounded in all of this rather than some of the other sports.”
Gadowsky was quick to point out that the new rules, where any NIL deals go through a clearing house, have brought it back to the original intent: of college athletes, in any sport, being able to benefit from their name, image and likeness, their marketability, not necessarily a “pay to play.”
So while Penn State has a billionaire like Terry Pegula, owner of Buffalo’s Bills and Sabres, as a large financial backer and his surname now on their arena, Gadowsky said it doesn’t play into NIL, at least in its current form.
Coaches are also still trying to figure out how far-reaching NIL, which is still very much in its infancy in hockey, is from program to program — and where it’s going to go.
“That’s the thing. I don’t have a clue,” Gadowsky said. “No one knows what anyone is doing. It’s funny because you hear things through the internet or hear this and find out it’s not even (true). There’s so much misinformation out there that you really, now we got to the point where we don’t trust any of it. Things you think are absolutely true turn out to be not even close. It’s very difficult to get a gauge about what anybody’s doing.”
Some coaches aren’t convinced that NIL is yet having an outsized impact on recruiting, either.
“I don’t think it’s playing as large a factor as people maybe make it out,” said Providence assistant coach Joel Beal, whose Friars successfully recruited Ducks top-10 pick Roger McQueen for this season.
“I don’t think Roger goes to come to Providence because he’s getting some NIL money. I don’t think (Porter) Martone chose to go to Michigan State because he’s getting NIL money. Does it help? Yes, but I think it’s part of the calculation. I think it’s the same part of the calculation as facilities are, as the head coach is, as the league is. I just think (NIL) adds to the allure of coming to college. I don’t think it’s at the top of the list for almost any player. Especially guys in the top 10 picks. Those guys are likely to make money playing hockey. I don’t think they need the NIL that we’re giving them now to survive.”
Bryn Chyzyk, North Dakota’s new general manager, made waves when he landed Victoria Royals teammates Keaton Verhoeff, one of the top prospects in the 2026 NHL Draft class, and Cole Reschny, a 2025 Flames first-rounder.
You’ll never see him behind the Fighting Hawks’ bench. It’s his job to hit the road, find new players and build future rosters.
He says he has yet to encounter a situation where a player has chosen a school because of the NIL.
“Kids fall in love with a program, and kids choose a school. Is the NIL a thing? Absolutely, but it’s kind of a secondary conversation of what you can provide on the side to make them feel whole or make them have a little bit of extra cash in their hands while they’re being a college student,” Chyzyk said. “I think we’ll continue to find kids that want to be a part of our program for the right reasons and continue to grow our NIL hopefully, and be a part of it all.”
At a place like Colorado College, a small liberal arts school of a couple thousand students that still managed to recruit a strong freshman class for 2025-26, coach Kris Mayotte knows he can’t pay players as much as some of his competitors.
“We’re going to be structured in a way where I don’t think you’re going to choose us because of the money, but we’re also not going to lose you because of the money,” Mayotte said. “Once you’re here, we’re going to be able to keep you, but we’re not going to bid for you on the open market either.”
For others, like Notre Dame, the changing landscape is a welcome opportunity to leverage the achievements and history of its athletic department to compete in hockey’s now-titanic Big Ten conference. Coach Brock Sheahan left pro hockey to chase that with the Fighting Irish.
“This place is unique in that it can compete at the highest level athletically, yet it can attract people who understand what Notre Dame is and is going to set them up for life whenever they’re done playing,” Sheahan said. “I’m here because I think this is an elite program with the potential to win at the highest level.”
That’s part of his pitch. Every program has always had its own.
Now some have more sweetener — or thousands of them — than others.
They all agree on one thing, though: Nobody really knows where it’s going.
“In all honesty, I think that there’s a lot to be determined in how this functions over the next whatever, three, five, 10 years,” Sheahan said.
