ncaa the death knell for chl? ohl commissioner crawford says college eligibility a boon for business
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brantford bulldogs forward caleb malhotra carries the puck into the niagara icedogs zone during ohl action at the td civic centre on sunday, march 8.
brian smiley
when the national collegiate athletic association decided to drop its long-standing, exception-free prohibition on major-junior hockey players back in the fall of 2024, it was presumed to be an existential crisis for the canadian hockey league.
‘twas just a matter of scale: even those possessing the most vivid of imaginations could not envision businesses like a team in communities like baie-comeau, owen sound or swift current competing for teenage prospects with major programs in the ncaa, which, across the panorama of sports generates $1.2-billion us in annual revenue. there are mismatches … and then there are mismatches.
so why is bryan crawford, the ontario hockey league commissioner, smiling?
it’s not simply that an ohl team, the kitchener rangers, brought home the memorial cup last week, an undefeated run for a history-rich franchise through the national championship tournament.
nor is it a matter of competitive balance. during the season there might have been concern that a brantford bulldogs team loaded with nhl first-round draft picks, the very epitome of an all-in, mortgage-the-future approach, might steamroll the league. back in november, spaces like this one were labelling it brantford an unprecedented concentration of talent. yet the bulldogs didn’t even get out of the eastern conference final.
no, ahead of the return to a live format of the ohl priority selection in kingston next week, crawford is encouraged by the state of the game in the league.
while the ncaa was radically changing its business models and practices on so many levels, the chl (comprised of the western hockey league, the quebec-maritimes junior hockey league and the ohl) sat tight.
the prevailing notion in the media and fear in the chl fan base was that the ncaa would bigfoot the major-junior ranks and scalp the best available talents. and that’s how it seemed to be playing out if you tracked only the headlines and narratives that popped up in the news cycles.
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hundreds of stories focused on the top-ranked teen eligible for the 2026 nhl entry draft, gavin mckenna, who opted out of a return to the whl’s medicine hat tigers to enroll at penn state university and grab a promised $750,000 windfall from nil (name-image-likeness) rights.
generating almost as much handwringing and media heat, there was the case of porter martone, who opted out of returning to the brampton steelheads after being drafted by the philadelphia flyers last june and landed with the michigan state spartans for the 2025-26 campaign. this spring, he skated for the flyers in the playoffs — a happily-ever-after ending for everyone except the steelheads, whose three seasons developing martone didn’t have the payoff they hoped for. and yes, brampton having the third overall pick in the ohl priority selection next week will feel like no consolation whatsoever.
so again, why is the ohl commissioner smiling?
crawford can make a compelling case that the stories of mckenna and martone are accounts of the exceptions — that a deeper dive will lead you to an entirely contradictory set of draw conclusions about the effect of the changes in the ncaa-chl dynamic. that is to say, the major-junior leagues will not see a player drain but a player gain.
“i think we saw an elevation of talent in the overall quality of the league,” crawford said. “we saw the addition of (players) who may not have traditionally played in the league. caleb malhotra is a great example of that.”
ok, malhotra will forever be a sore point for kingston frontenacs fans, having eschewed the team after it drafted him in the 2024 priority selection and opting to play in the british columbia hockey league for the 2024-25 season (ostensibly to maintain his ncaa eligibility under the old rules still in place in that time). but consider crawford’s point: malhotra, whose rights were moved to brantford, was named to the league’s first rookie all-star team, racking up 29 goals and 55 assists in 67 games with the bulldogs and accelerating the pace in the playoffs with 13 goals and 13 assists in 15 games. malhotra is projected to be a top-five pick in the coming nhl draft, possibly landing with the vancouver canucks, who own the third overall selection and recently hired his father manny as coach.
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it’s just math with live bodies and skillsets at this point: subtract martone, add malhotra.
“we lost seven players last season who had another year of eligibility before their 19-year-old season,” crawford said. “don’t get me wrong. we absolutely want to have porter marton play (in his age 19 year as a late birthday). it worked out for him. but last year we probably had 120-plus players who would not have played in.”
that would be on point with the frontenacs last year. doubtless, the kuzma brothers, overage centre andrew and 17-year-old winger robin, wouldn’t have given a look at the ohl. ditto for 16-year-old nolan snyder, a surprise to stick with the team after being picked in the seventh round of last year’s priority selection. ditto for goaltender matt minchak, a free agent walk-on committed to colgate, who played his way onto the nhl central scouting service’s consideration. for canadian players in their first year, it would also be up for discussion — no knowing exactly who might have been weighing a junior a holding pattern banking on ncaa recruitment if that were still the way of doing business.
“we’re in a very good place, attracting all the best 16-year-olds because this is the best league to develop their talent and pursue their goals,” crawford said. “that’s ongoing.”
the priority selection next week will be a good measure of the ohl’s draw on players, largely though not entirely u.s.-born or u.s.-based, who are at least open to committing to major junior if not determined to go that route. if anything, that number of 120 will hold fast if not grow.
if there is movement, mind you, it might be on the other side — it might be that the ncaa opportunities are more attractive as abstract prospects than in day-to-day realities, a proposition borne out by the 120 hockey playing student-athletes whose apparent dissatisfaction prompted them to enter the ncaa portal with the hope of landing elsewhere on the college circuit. the cautionary stories of recruiters’ promises being over-stated or not kept at all are lost in the coverage of mckenna and martone and sundry others, but they’ll get back to other players in the chl and at the grass-roots level by the grapevine.
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if you could be confident that the paradigm wasn’t going to shift again, you might imagine that the ohl would be considering expansion — that with a larger, deeper pool of talent, the quality of the game wouldn’t suffer with another two or four teams, but that’s a matter for another time. as quickly as the ncaa opened the door to chl players, it could again slam it, one would presume.
for now, at least, the commissioner can enjoy the moment.
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