Jeff Marek stated this week his belief that NCAA Div I will expand and become the main development path to the NHL. I believe that opinion is asinine, and that contraction will occur before expansion. Here's why:
1) Costs.
a) Tuition, Room and Board at AIC is ~ $60k USD. A hockey roster of 25 brings the academic costs alone to $1.5M. A public university (e.g., Michigan Tech) may be moderately lower for in-State athletes, and a private university (e.g., Clarkson) moderately higher. Unless you have an established endowment to cover those costs, like Michigan, that's prohibitive. $1.5M annually requires an endowment gift of ~$40M
b) Arena. Conservatively, it's $100M to build a new one. Mullet (ASU) cost $134M, the new OHL arena in Brantford is $140M.
c) Coaching / Travel. Easily $1M unless you can bus everywhere. Endowment of ~$25M
To fund a new program, from scratch, you're looking at an up front cost of nearly $200M, with ZERO chance of profit to the individual donors. It's entirely an ego project.
2) NHL Draft.
With the CHL Eligibility rules, every top NA prospect is going to the CHL, and zero top Draft Picks will come from the NCAA. All the top players will miss the NCAA entirely, and it will become a slow-burn development league with an education upside. The cachet of watching Eichel and Celebrini will be gone.
Moreover, NHL teams will avoid drafting players they think are going to the NCAA because they will no longer have those players' rights for 4 years.
3) Revenues.
NCAA teams have a capped game schedule. Their revenues are restricted as a result. Entrepreneurs who want to invest in hockey will start a CHL franchise with 70+ games, bigger crowds, and no tuition overhead.
4) Title IX. Per-player, ice hockey is more expensive than any sport other than Football. Universities that want to cut will eliminate DI hockey and fund female sports instead to meet their Title IX requirements.
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