New NCAA rule could change Minnesota hockey at high school, college levels – InForum

Three years ago, Justen Close was within an overtime goal of joining a short list of goalies to lead the Minnesota Golden Gophers to a national championship. The soft-spoken puck-stopper was a classic “late bloomer” who came to Dinkytown from Saskatchewan after three seasons of junior hockey in his native country.

By the time he took over the Gophers’ crease, Close was 23. He backstopped a pair of Big Ten titles and two trips to the Frozen Four while earning a college degree. His final collegiate game came a little more than a month before Close turned 25. Three years later, Close retired from playing after a lone season in professional hockey and now works with the goalies at Gustavus Adolphus College.

Under a new proposal that the NCAA’s Division I Cabinet may approve in June, stories like that will no longer be a part of college hockey. By the time he was leading the Gophers to within an eyelash of a sixth national title, Close would have been too old to play the game.

One of the proposed changes the national governing body for college sports is considering would institute what has been termed “5 in 5.” College athletes would have five years of eligibility, with the clock starting when they graduate from high school or turn 19, whichever comes first.

In a sport where top recruits can choose between schools in Alaska, Arizona, New England and places in between, very little unites the college hockey world. But opposition to 5 in 5 has been as close to unanimous as you might find in men’s college hockey.

“I’ve never seen a group more adamant against something in 32 years,” said Minnesota Duluth coach Scott Sandelin, adding that the proposal was the primary topic of conversation at the annual college hockey meetings in Florida in late April.

“You know hockey,” he said. “We’re never in agreement on many things, but this was great. Our commissioners have done a lot of work in a short period of time to try to put a more realistic proposal together.”

Don Lucia, who coached the Gophers to their two most recent NCAA titles in 2002 and 2003 and is now commissioner of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, noted a rule that works for college sports such as basketball, football and volleyball — for which athletes generally go directly from high school to college — does not fit within the unique structure of men’s college hockey.

With few exceptions, Minnesota, Michigan and New England are the nation’s only places where real high school hockey even exists. And even in the State of Hockey, a year or two of juniors is now the rule for Minnesotans looking to play in college.

Sandelin noted Wyatt Kaiser — now playing defense for the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks — went from Andover High School to the Bulldogs after only 11 games in juniors and was the last player in the UMD program to do so. That was six years ago.

With that in mind, a coalition of college coaches, administrators, junior hockey officials, USA Hockey, and even the NHL last week asked the NCAA to make an exception for college hockey. Under their proposal, the 5-in-5 regulation would be changed by exactly one word, to “high school graduation or age 19, whichever comes later.”

There is little optimism that the NCAA will approve a hockey-specific exemption, despite the starkly different route most athletes take to the college rink.

“It’s a completely different model,” Lucia said. “So, we tried to articulate our stance, and talking to some people on the Division I Cabinet, they read our proposal and they talked about it for 20 minutes, but the ship had kind of sailed.”

It is worth noting that among the 20 people on the Division I Cabinet, just one of them — Michigan State deputy athletics director Jennifer Smith — represents a school with a varsity hockey program.

Smith did not respond to an email from the Pioneer Press requesting an interview regarding the 5-in-5 proposal and how it might impact schools like hers.

The proposal, meant to apply to all sports at all schools, is seen as an attempt to end the days of college athletes playing for much longer than the four years that was traditional before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the NCAA to grant an additional year of eligibility.

Some have cited the case of Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss as emblematic of the problem. Chambliss will be playing his sixth season of college football next fall at age 24 after successfully suing the NCAA.

The quest for a DI scholarship — and the money that comes with it in this new era of play-for-pay — is leading some parents to have their children repeat eighth grade in hopes that they will be older, bigger and stronger when they finish high school. Concerns about that trend, primarily in football, would affect every other college activity with the blanket application of 5 in 5.

“All the other sports are just collateral damage,” Lucia said.

In the world of women’s college hockey, the impact of 5 in 5 does not look to be as dramatic. There are currently no junior leagues for women’s hockey in either the U.S. or Canada, nor is there a National Team Development Program like USA Hockey runs for the men. Athletes going directly from high school to college is generally the rule in the women’s game.

“I don’t know how much it really impacts us. To be honest, if anything, it probably cleans some things up on the women’s side just because it erases the whole, ‘Does she have another year? Do you have to fill out a waiver, etc.?’” said new Gophers women’s hockey coach Greg May. “When you talk about recruiting, I guess we don’t know yet. … But, in general, I don’t know that it impacts us too greatly.”

May did say that any notion of establishing women’s hockey junior leagues in North America will likely be put on hold as a result of the new rule, which means most college athletes will age out by 23.

As much as the rule change might have an impact on men’s hockey at St. Cloud State, North Dakota and Augustana, there also is concern in Minnesota that the rule will hurt hockey at high schools such as Edina, Moorhead and Warroad. While high-level players in other states commonly leave home to play junior hockey during their final two seasons of high school, Minnesota high school hockey is considered a top development track, and the lure of earning a trip to the state tournament is the ultimate goal for most local kids.

That means that many of Minnesota’s top-end prep players are apt to play prep hockey until high school graduation, then go to the junior ranks for a year or two. If the 5 in 5 rule means the clock is ticking on their college eligibility as soon as they’re handed a high school diploma, more Minnesota kids are likely to leave the prep ranks early.

Lucia noted that it’s not uncommon for kids to graduate from high school at 17, depending on their birth month, meaning they could have a notably shorter college eligibility runway under this rule before even setting foot on campus.

College hockey already is negotiating a tumultuous era. Over the past five years, coaches have been introduced to the relaxed transfer portal, NCAA revenue sharing, NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) and the new eligibility for athletes from the Canadian major junior ranks. While they certainly don’t like it, some are resigned to now adjusting to 5 in 5 becoming the law of the land.

High school coaches across the state already are getting calls from concerned parents.

“Really, since COVID, the kind of traditional pathway for a Minnesota hockey player has just been thrown in the blender,” said Jon Ammerman, who will try to coach the Moorhead Spuds to a state title three-peat next season. “There are pathways here in Minnesota where a kid can stay home, live with his family, live a somewhat normal life and still get a good hockey experience and have an opportunity to grow.”

Ammerman cites the example of former Moorhead star Will Borgen, who stuck with high school hockey and progressed quickly from preps to St. Cloud State to Team USA for the World Juniors and finally to the NHL, where he now has nearly 400 games on his résumé.

“Now, seven, eight, nine years later, I don’t know if we’ll ever see that,” Ammerman said.

Despite their steadfast opposition to the change, most in the college hockey world are resigning themselves to a likely new reality. There is an anticipation of a logjam of players in the coming season or two, as the clock starts ticking on the eligibility of 19-year-olds, and their desperation to join a college roster grows.

“I think we’ve got to brace for it going through,” said Wisconsin coach Mike Hastings, who took the Badgers to the NCAA title game in April after doing the same at Minnesota State Mankato in 2022. “The rules that are being considered are not for us, but they are because we have to abide by them.”

Hastings said the proposal, as challenging as it might be for college hockey, is being written with higher-revenue games like football and basketball in mind and little regard for other NCAA sports. It takes Hastings back to the family dinner table when he was a kid in Crookston.

“It’s almost like when mom and dad cooked green beans, and you don’t like green beans. But if you want to eat, you’ve gotta eat the green beans,” he said. “I think what we’re realizing is that we need to be as nimble as we can, because we’re not at the top of the food chain.”