Steinke: it’s hard for CHL teams to compete against NIL money
By Darren Steinke
Stanks On Sports
The WHL and by extension the CHL won’t be able to avoid the storyline of who is not here.
A year ago at this time, superstar left-winger Gavin McKenna was envisioned as the face of the WHL and the CHL for the 2025-26 campaign. Due to the fact his birthday is December 20, 2007, McKenna wasn’t eligible for the NHL Entry Draft held this past June 27 to 28 in Los Angeles, California.
In what appeared originally to be a bonus for hockey’s major junior ranks, McKenna was going to play an 18-year-old season as a member of the Medicine Hat Tigers. The phenom helped the Tigers win the WHL championship last season and appear in the Memorial Cup tournament’s title game falling to the OHL’s London Knights.
He is tabbed as the consensus pick to be selected first overall in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft. When his draft selection happens, he will not be announced as a member of the storied Tigers but the NCAA’s Penn State University Nittany Lions Men’s Hockey Team.
McKenna officially committed to joining the Nittany Lions on July 8. Had McKenna turned 18-years-old on or before September 15, he would have been eligible for the NHL Entry Draft held this past June. He would have been selected first overall and would be playing in the NHL this coming season.
The direction McKenna was heading in changed on November 7, 2024 when the NCAA Division I Council voted to abolish old rules that classified CHL players as professional. Starting on this past August 1, players from the CHL’s three major junior circuits in the WHL, OHL and QMJHL were eligible to play for NCAA Division I teams. Basically, CHL players will maintain NCAA eligibility as long as they have not signed an entry-level contract with an NHL team.
Since 2021, the NCAA’s guidelines regarding name, image and likeness (NIL) changed, and athletes were now able to make money through NIL deals. In July, ESPN reported McKenna’s NIL money for attending Penn State is “in the ballpark” of US$700,000. When you look back in the 2024-25 season, there was no doubt NCAA hockey teams were going to make a pitch for McKenna.
The Whitehorse, Yukon, product’s 2024-25 campaign with the Tigers was sensational. In 56 regular season games, McKenna, who stands 6-feet and weighs 170 pounds, piled up 129 points coming off 41 goals and 88 assists to go with a plus-60 rating in the plus-minus department.
He played in 16 games in the WHL Playoffs recording nine goals and 29 assists for 38 points to go with a plus-14 rating. In the four games the Tigers played at the Memorial Cup tournament, McKenna had three goals and three assists and a plus-two rating.
Thanks to those efforts, McKenna won the Four Broncos Memorial Trophy as WHL player of the year and claimed honours as the CHL player of the year. I even had one or two hockey observers tell me they thought McKenna was more NHL ready than phenom centre Connor Bedard was when he joined the Chicago Blackhawks as an 18-year-old.
Personally, I feel like McKenna is a better defensive player than Bedard was at the age McKenna is now. McKenna played with a Tigers squad that was strong defensively in their systems play, and he learned how to play his role in the system and trust his teammates. When the Tigers got the puck, McKenna knew where to go on the ice and the puck would come to him and away the transition rush would go.
All of what McKenna was able to experience in Medicine Hat on that front would directly make him that much more ready to play in the NHL.
Offensively, I would say Bedard was more ahead than where McKenna is now. The counter argument there is that McKenna knew how to trust his skilled teammates specifically fireplug and all-heart centre Oasiz Wiesblatt along with star right-winger Ryder Ritchie. With that said, the chemistry McKenna and Wiesblatt had together was undeniable, and you could see they played a lot together with Ritchie being a later addition to that dynamic after a trade with the Prince Albert Raiders.
McKenna was allowed to judge and pick his spots to do something offensively that came out of an EA Sports NHL hockey video game. The biggest example there was the short-handed goal he scored against the Prince Albert Raiders in Game 2 of a WHL Eastern Conference semifinal series at Co-op Place.
McKenna tied Raiders star defenceman Lukas Dragicevic in knots and proceeded to use Dragicevic as a screen to roof a shot to the top right corner of the Prince Albert net. That highlight went seemingly viral everywhere.
That type of exposure for the WHL and CHL is now lost. Had McKenna still been with the Tigers, he would have been shown regularly on highlight packages aired by TSN and Sportsnet.
His highlights were already a staple on both networks last season. Broadcasters on the WHL circuit were doing their best to create calls that added to the showcase of the highlights that were shown nationally.
Those highlights won’t completely disappear. McKenna will be back on those networks making highlights with the Nittany Lions. When world juniors come around, McKenna will be the star attraction for Team Canada.
There is a chance he will be on a line centred by Cayden Lindstrom with Ritchie taking up a spot on the right wing. Lindstrom is playing this season with the NCAA’s Michigan State University Spartans, while Ritchie skates with the Boston University Bulldogs. Originally, there were visions of McKenna, Lindstrom and Ritchie forming the top forward unit on the Tigers, which arguably would have been the best forward line in the CHL.
The NCAA’s championship game is set for April 11, 2026 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, and if the Nittany Lions are in that game, McKenna will be all over all Canadian media along with having heavy media coverage in the United States.
With McKenna in the NCAA, it basically sends the message that the NCAA is the place to be for players wanting to get ready to be in the NHL. He is the phenom, the best player for the upcoming NHL Entry Draft and he chose the NCAA route. Sportsnet has estimated the CHL has lost more than 150 players to the NCAA, but it looks like that number includes 20-year-olds from the 2024-25 campaign who have aged out of major junior hockey.
Still, the CHL and by extension the WHL will be home to lots of quality hockey and some outstanding players. But, the landscape has changed. All one has to do is look at a couple of quotes from Everett Silvertips general manager Mike Fraser in a Sept. 9 feature in The Athletic to see that.
In that piece, Fraser said, “I have a document that has three years (of roster projections) ahead of me, and I find that it’s almost a waste of time to have it now. And that’s a little bit scary and a little bit challenging.”
Fraser also said in the piece in the Athletic that he understands why players have jumped from the CHL to the NCAA.
“I don’t blame the players – if they’re getting money like that thrown at them, I understand,” said Fraser. “It’s a tough thing to compete against – if you want to call it competing.
“I can sit there and talk to a player about our track record and how we’ve been the best development league for 50-plus years, but if someone’s throwing $100,000 or more at them, and that’s what I’m up against, that’s a pretty tough sell for us.”
The economics and cultural impacts of sports in Canada compared to the United States are two different universes. CHL teams can’t anywhere near match what the NCAA offers financially. CHL teams that are owned by parent companies that have NHL franchises could match that, but those parent companies don’t want to pay out those types of dollars to players on their CHL clubs, who are there for usually at most five seasons.
ESPN is also reporting that the NHL and NHLPA have opened things up in the new collective bargaining agreement that is set to begin in 2026-27 to reopen talks regarding the NHL-CHL transfer agreement. It is possible rule changes on that front will further reinforce a space where drafted and unsigned players move from the CHL to the NCAA and NCAA hockey is used as the bridge to prepare for professional hockey.
To be honest with year round training that is common in the sports world, only about one or two 18-year-olds make the NHL in the current day after being drafted, and because of their age, they can’t be as physically developed as NHL veterans. Playing in a league that contains players aged mainly 18 to 23 will further help in that transition.
As for the Raiders this season, they are in a better spot than most CHL teams. They lost 19-year-old star forward Tomas Mrsic to the Colorado College Tigers Men’s Hockey team.
Three of the team’s stars in centre Aiden Oiring, right-winger Brayden Dube and captain and defenceman Justice Christensen are projected to be the club’s three 20-year-old players with gritty 20-year-old centre Harrison Lodewyk still on the roster as a failsafe. Oiring and Christensen are committed to the University of Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks, while Dube is committed to the Bemidji State University Beavers.
The new reality in the CHL’s and by extension the WHL’s place in the hockey landscape with the NCAA is still settling out. With McKenna at Penn State, there will be constant reminders this season the landscape has changed.
Darren Steinke is a Saskatoon-based freelance sportswriter and photographer with more than 20 years of experience covering the WHL. He blogs frequently at stankssermon.blogspot.com.
