Since the implementation of the NHL’s new collective bargaining agreement, which lowers the free agency age thresholds and otherwise encourages teams to sign players sooner, University of Denver coach George Gwozdecky hasn’t camouflaged his irritation when some players have left his program to sign pro contracts or switch to major junior.
Gwozdecky could live with Paul Stastny signing with the Avalanche and Matt Carle leaving to sign with San Jose. He understands the intertwined relationship between NCAA hockey and the NHL, and even takes advantage of it as a recruiting selling point.
But there is a delicate balance, and Gwozdecky has seen some NHL organizations display what he believes to be an old-school disparagement of the NCAA game.
Defenseman Brett Skinner left on the verge of his senior season – and a captaincy – in 2005, to sign with the Vancouver Canucks and begin a minor-league indoctrination in the North American pro game. Two years later, he is with his third organization, the Boston Bruins, and still in the American Hockey League, with Providence.
Defensemen T.J. Fast and Keith Seabrook, both NHL draft choices, left the program during and after last season to go to major junior and the Canadian Hockey League, with the stipends the NCAA says makes them professionals and with pro-length schedules and pro-type rules.
To be fair, it isn’t always NHL organizations that shove players out of college programs. Some players find that college isn’t for them, or parents are hot that their young sons – already drafted by the NHL – aren’t on the ice for 25 minutes a night from the moment they hit the college game. Even Avalanche draft choice Nigel Williams, a 19-year-old defenseman with major junior’s Saginaw Spirit, played one game as a freshman for Wisconsin in 2006-07 before leaving Madison.
But NHL programs can set the tone, and if the tone is that stereotypical, tired, gotta- play-major-junior (where gloves can be dropped) attitude, it’s counterproductive.
“There are certain teams that have become more predatory and they go against every idea of development,” Gwoz- decky said. “There are teams that do their homework and do a terrific job. Our local NHL team is a great example of that. … There are certain teams and managements that really don’t give a darn about college hockey. They really feel that major junior is the way to go. They promote that. They promote that at the draft, they promote that before the draft, and they promote that to all the players they have drafted. I think it hurts terribly the development of these young players, and in the long run it hurts their franchises.”
Pioneers captain Andrew Thomas, still only 21, is on track to graduate next spring. The Washington Capitals, who also had taken Seabrook, took Thomas in the 2004 draft. The Pioneers’ top remaining prospect, junior defenseman Chris Butler, went to Buffalo in 2005. But both are back.
“The Capitals have been very supportive of me being in college,” Thomas said. “They understand the relationship I have with the coaching staff and the experience I have had here at the university, and how much I have enjoyed it. I think my development is really a tribute to the coaching staff and the games I’ve played and the competition we play.”
All that said, I’m not one of those who subscribes to the ridiculous theory that the college game – in any sport – is sacrosanct, and that it’s abominable when players move to the pro game before finishing up their eligibility. One reason is the notion that athletes (or anyone else) can’t read books and continue self-education after leaving school, which is absurd. Even a year or two on a campus, experiencing the collegiate and academic atmosphere while playing a sport, is an education in and of itself.
The smart franchises don’t just tolerate NCAA hockey. They embrace it.
And trust it as a development mechanism.
Overtime. There’s not much to say about ex-Rockies defenseman Rob Ramage being found guilty last week of serious charges involving impaired driving in Newmarket, Ontario, as a result of the 2003 crash that killed ex-University of Denver and NHL star Keith Magnuson. Not much, except how sad the entire scenario was – and is. … Flyers enforcer Jesse Boulerice received a 25-game suspension Friday for his cheap shot on the Canucks’ Ryan Kesler two days earlier. The league has to continue its crackdown on hits to the head, and this incident provided another opportunity to build precedents.
SPOTLIGHT ON …
The late Bill Wirtz and the Wirtz family
When longtime Blackhawks president Bill Wirtz died in September, it was natural to wonder how much the family- owned team’s operation – often derided for falling and remaining behind the times – would be affected.
So far, there have been two significant changes:
Bill’s son Peter, who had been considered the favorite to become the most powerful figure in the operation after being involved in many team decisions in recent years, stepped aside from a vice president’s role, citing his duties in the family food service business. Now another son, Rocky, is the major Wirtz figure in the hockey operation, assuming the chairman’s title.
Longtime club executive Bob Pulford, the former coach and general manager who had been a team senior vice president, essentially was nudged out of the hockey organization into a Wirtz Corporation position.
When Bill Wirtz was serving as chairman of the league’s board of governors, a position he held for 18 years, he was helpful and courteous to me in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was badgering him about what might happen to the always-troubled Colorado Rockies. He was a hard-nosed, ruthless businessman criticized for his thrift with the hockey franchise, yet was a major contributor to charity. As years went on, his archaic attitudes on how to run the team were bad for hockey in Chicago and for the league. So if his son leads a revitalization of the Chicago market, the ripple effect will be great for the league and the sport.
