Myers: Conference changes just a part of college hockey's crossroads

As if the events of the past eight months weren't upheaval enough all across the world of college hockey, things got even more interesting early this week.

To recap, the announcement of a Division I hockey program at Penn State allowed for the formation of a six-team Big Ten hockey conference last March. That means that at the end of next season, Minnesota and Wisconsin will no longer be part of the WCHA, after spending a combined total of more than 100 years there.

That alone would have been enough change, but the Gophers and Badgers deserting the WCHA turned out to be just the beginning. In the summer, five more teams (Colorado College, Denver, Minnesota Duluth, Nebraska Omaha and North Dakota) announced they were bolting from the conference and establishing their own league, along with Miami (Ohio) from the CCHA.

The newly-formed National Collegiate Hockey Conference (the official press releases insist on calling it "the National" - a nickname that is slow, at best, in catching on) still wasn't done, and before the current season started, plucked two more as St. Cloud State and Western Michigan accepted invites to join the NCHC starting in 2013-14.

The myriad changes eventually will mean the end of the CCHA, as the remaining schools in that current 11-team league are all headed elsewhere. The two NCHC defectors are joined by a trio (Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State) going to the Big Ten. Notre Dame was highly coveted by the NCHC but instead made the decision to look toward the sunrise for the future, joining Hockey East in 20 months or so. The five remaining CCHA teams will all join what's left of the WCHA in the fall of 2013.

That means where currently the five Minnesota-based college hockey teams play in one conference, they'll be spread across three conferences soon. The Gophers will be in the six-team Big Ten. St. Cloud State and Minnesota Duluth will be in the eight-team NCHC. Bemidji State and Minnesota State, Mankato will be in the WCHA, which for now going to be a nine-team league. That too may change soon, with rumors of Alabama-Huntsville or a new program at Minnesota State, Moorhead becoming the "new" WCHA's 10th team.

Detractors howl about increased travel and the loss of traditional rivalries, while supporters of the changes talk about boosting the North American profile of the game, especially in terms of getting more games on national TV.

We're less than two weeks from the end of the current regular season, but there was still time for even more upheaval on Monday. Since 2009, Paul Kelly - the former NHL Players Association executive director - had been running College Hockey Inc. The organization was formed at the behest of college hockey coaches and administrators to promote the sport.

While growing up and playing for the Gophers is the dream of countless kids throughout Minnesota, and there's little need for selling the college game here, talented players as young as 14 in places like western Canada and the eastern United States are bombarded with calls to play major junior hockey (thereby permanently forfeiting their NCAA eligibility). College hockey backers promote the value of a four-year education. Major junior teams counter with an offer to put money into an educational fund that promises to pay for one year of college for every season a player spends in juniors.

Minnesotans going the junior route has always been a rarity, but a recent Star Tribune story highlighted a trio of top-level local players - Cody Corbett from Stillwater, Travis Wood from Hill-Murray and Ben Walker from Edina - who all passed up both the high school and college options available and are instead toiling, for a modest paycheck, in places like Edmonton and Calgary, hoping to raise their hockey status prior to the NHL draft.

The biggest problem this presents for college teams is the fact that it's a one-way street. College players can and occasionally do change direction and head to the junior ranks - most commonly due to academic struggles. But once a player chooses the junior route, the door to college hockey is closed, forever. And players committing to play college hockey does little to dissuade the major junior recruiters, who have intercepted players bound for North Dakota, Michigan and elsewhere in recent years, often just weeks before the college hockey season begins. That leaves colleges scrambling to fill holes, and Kelly's efforts had strong support among the nation's nearly 60 D-I coaches.

But Kelly got caught trying to serve two masters, and ran afoul of college hockey's five conference commissioners. There was quiet grumbling about the salary being paid to Kelly, and when he proposed College Hockey Inc. taking a more hands-on role in the overall administration of the sport (allegedly with the blessing of the coaches), the commissioners reportedly offered Kelly a Hobson's choice on Monday: resign or be fired. Kelly chose the first option.

On Tuesday, Nate Ewell was named the interim executive director of College Hockey Inc., and in an interview with 1500 ESPN vowed that the mission of promoting college hockey, to the betterment of those 14-year-olds who are being asked to make life-altering decisions far too early, will not change.

"In the end, certainly we're looking out for college hockey's best interests, but we want to make the situation more civil for the kids who play," said Ewell, a Princeton grad who helped start InsideCollegeHockey.com a decade ago and most recently was vice president of communications for the NHL's Washington Capitals. "These kids have to make a tough decision at a young age, so the less stress that we can put into the process, the better."

Kelly, and now Ewell, also are pushing a fundamental change in the equipment college players are required to use. College Hockey Inc. has been one of the staunchest backers of a proposal to allow collegians to wear NHL-style face shields on their helmets, as opposed to the full facemasks that have been standard NCAA equipment for roughly 30 years. It has been noted that college hockey is the only level of the sport in the world where players over the age of 18 are required to wear a full facemask, and certainly some backers of major junior hockey use that as a recruiting incentive.

In other words, just as the makeup of college hockey's conferences is changing, so may what covers the players' faces. Time will tell, but if all of it means that talented players look to Minneapolis and Mankato as a first option, and to Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat later, the game's internal and external upheaval may be worthwhile.