RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 The NHL and NHL Players\u2019 Association are against the\u00a0potential change\u00a0by the NCAA that would give athletes\u00a0five years of eligibility\u00a0from their high school graduation or 19th birthday, whichever comes first.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not in favor of the change, and we\u2019ve made the NCAA aware of it,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly\u00a0said Tuesday\u00a0prior to Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. \u201cWe and a number of other hockey organizations throughout North America \u2014 the three junior leagues in Canada, the USHL, USA Hockey, the college coaches association \u2014 all have raised concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hockey is different than other high school-to-college sports like basketball, baseball and football because players are often older after first spending time at the junior level or at a prep school. Daly spoke last week to\u00a0NCAA President Charlie Baker, who had some ideas that might solve the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did stress that he doesn\u2019t like sport-specific solutions and felt there may be a number of other sports, college sports, that would be able to make the same argument,\u201d Daly said. “We\u2019ll see where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sport is already dealing with a\u00a0major change to the developmental landscape\u00a0after the NCAA allowed players who played in the junior Canadian Hockey League to play college hockey. Adding the wrinkle of the so-called \u201cfive in five\u201d rule would cause all sorts of complications.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that a one-size-fitting-all solution, which disadvantages some sports over others, isn\u2019t the way they go because I think that would be unfair to us,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said.<\/p>\n
NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey, who played college hockey at UMass-Lowell before reaching the NHL, acknowledged the union was removed from the conversation but wants to make clear it also opposes the possibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen that comes forward, it\u2019s incumbent upon us to at least make an impression on how that will affect the entire hockey ecosystem,\u201d Hainsey said. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to try to impress upon them how the whole system would be in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n
His boss, former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, has a prior relationship with Baker, who was governor of Massachusetts. Walsh has not yet spoken to Baker but plans to have a conversation about the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have concerns,” Walsh said. “So, we\u2019re going to continue to monitor that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. \u2014 The NHL and NHL Players\u2019 Association are against the\u00a0potential change\u00a0by the NCAA that would give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-711738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}