In THN’s Future Watch from last year, there was an article in which some scouts pointed out that college can be the right move for a certain type of player. According to them, the sort of stereotypical player who would benefit more from college than the CHL is one who potentially has NHL-level skills in some areas, but has flaws in other aspects of his game. In particular, they pointed to players that aren’t as physically mature or naturally strong. If a kid’s major weaknesses are in strength and conditioning, playing 80 games a year isn’t going to help him. Time in a weight room will. According to the scouts interviewed, the lighter scheduling of the NCAA allows this. Brian Burke has also expressed this viewpoint.
A lot of this feeds into the fact that an NHL team drafting a college-bound player retains their rights without signing them for the four years the player is in college. This gives the kid two extra years to mature and develop their game before the team has to make a decision. But don’t take my word for, just ask Detroit’s assistant GM:
“The new CBA forced us to change our philosophy,†Nill said. “Before, if we were going to roll the dice on a player, it was going to be a European. Now, it’s college kids. We want to get the most development time for a player before we have to make a decision on him.â€(From THN’s Future Watch 2011)
Hmmm. Sounds to me like you’re more likely to be drafted by Detroit if you choose the NCAA (provided you’re not one of those rare elite talents like Taylor Hall).
Remember, the idiotic rules that prevent CHL players from playing in the NCAA force a kid to make this decision as early as age 16, and they certainly don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. By this point in their life, their parents have invested tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours in his hockey career. Could you blame parents for steering their kid towards the NCAA, especially if they’re offered a place at a named brand school?