College Sports
Hockey to Get Decision-Making Autonomy From NCAA : College Hockey News
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Regional Format One of Many Topics Discussed at Coaches Convention
by Adam Wodon/Managing Editor (@chn-adam-wodon)
The NCAA will soon allow individual sports, including hockey, to have more autonomy over their own rules and guidelines. That news was conveyed to coaches and conference commissioners by NCAA president Charlie Baker at the recent annual Coaches Convention in Florida.
Baker said the new structure will be unveiled in July.
Instead of an Ice Hockey Committee and Hockey Rules Committee that reports to higher NCAA bodies, hockey would only have to answer to a general hockey committee.
The upshot would mean that any changes the hockey community wants to see, such as changes to the recruiting calendar, recruiting regulation, rules, NCAA Tournament structure, and so on, would only need approval by itself. For example, the recent rule change that allows Major Junior players maintain NCAA eligibility, had to approved by a series of bodies that had members with few, if any, relationship to a hockey-playing school.
Of course, one of the issues discussed in the course of the meeting with Baker was the structure of the NCAA Tournament, which is currently held at four neutral Regional sites before meeting at the Frozen Four. A contingent of coaches are pushing to change that, and move the Regionals to home sites. Under a proposed change championed by Denver coach David Carle, the teams would play a single game one weekend, then play second-round games at the four highest remaining seeds on the next weekend, and then go to the Frozen Four.
That topic has been discussed endlessly, heating up again in the last couple of years, and has been well-chronicled. But under the new governance structure, the hockey group would make its own decision without NCAA intervention.
Any change on that couldn’t come until at least 2029, with Regional neutral sites already scheduled through 2028. In a survey of college coaches taken last year, 75 percent wanted to keep the status quo.
“Hockey getting its own governance, it’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” Hockey East commissioner Steve Metcalf said. “That is the big takeaway. The (rest) was a side skirmish.
“If coaches want to change the recruiting calendar, if people want to decide the right roster size, they can. “If it’s something championship-related (in the past) it would have to go through an NCAA body to approve it, and not a single person on that body knows what the Pairwise is. The (Major Junior) issue, the only reason the (NCAA) Council got so informed is because hockey people called them.”
Most of all, perhaps, college coaches are hoping to change the transfer portal window. Currently, the window opens just after NCAA Regionals and lasts for 45 days. This year, 300 players entered the portal, and around half have found a new team, with more player still trickling in. Most coaches would like to see that change to 30 days.
That new proposal, however, would not address when the portal opens, which currently happens while games are still taking place; not to mention the issue of there being “unofficial” communication taking place throughout the regular season, when it’s not technically supposed to be.