Brock
Registered User
I was just thinking today, with the North American draft age raised to 21, will this spell the end (for the majority) of the NCAA UFA? Because if you think about it, the players who get signed as UFA's can often be guys who were late bloomers, or didn't recieve much playing time in their draft year, or whatever the circumstance was that prevented them from being drafted in the first place. Now teams will have a couple extra years to check out these college players, and by a players junior year, you can usually tell what type of prospect he could be.
I mean you can still get the players who come to the NCAA late on scholarship (20 year old freshman), and put up awesome numbers and eventually get signed, or the players who break out in their senior season.
But I would suspect that most of the talent in the NCAA will now be scooped up in the draft, rather then kids skipping by the radar and eventually being signed by NHL teams. I guess not that it really matters in terms of kids in the NCAA getting their chances because if they get drafted, its the same as being signed essentially. But I just thought it to be interesting none the less.
I mean you can still get the players who come to the NCAA late on scholarship (20 year old freshman), and put up awesome numbers and eventually get signed, or the players who break out in their senior season.
But I would suspect that most of the talent in the NCAA will now be scooped up in the draft, rather then kids skipping by the radar and eventually being signed by NHL teams. I guess not that it really matters in terms of kids in the NCAA getting their chances because if they get drafted, its the same as being signed essentially. But I just thought it to be interesting none the less.