NHL
EAST LANSING, Michigan — Munn Ice Arena has seen just about everything.
Built in 1974, the old college hockey barn at Michigan State University has seen national titles and Hobey Baker winners. It has seen legends of the sport both on the ice and behind the bench. And most importantly, even with the bells and whistles of a 2022 renovation — most visibly at the South Entrance, where fans walk in through the program’s new Hall of History — it still has the charm of a building that has been around for 5o-plus years of college hockey.
Advertisement
It’s fitting, then, that Munn will be right at the center of this college hockey season, in which old will meet new on a grand scale.
Adam Nightingale, Michigan State’s head coach, grew up in Cheboygan, in Northern Michigan. An hour to the north was Lake Superior State University. A few minutes past that, across the Canadian border, the Ontario Hockey League’s Soo Greyhounds. Both have storied hockey programs, with the Lakers winning the NCAA Tournament in 1992 and 1994, and the Greyhounds winning the 1993 Memorial Cup as Canadian Hockey League champions.
Until recently, though, those two teams also symbolized a very real fork in the road for young hockey players.
NCAA rules governing amateurism previously deemed CHL players to be professionals, and thus ineligible for U.S. college hockey. As a result, players were forced to choose at 15 or 16 whether to set off for major junior hockey, or to ply their trade in lower divisions (or move to American junior leagues) in order to preserve their amateur status.
That all changed last November, when the NCAA’s Division I council voted to make CHL players eligible — and in the process, opened the door to a sea change moment in the sport.
“I think it’s great, honestly, because it gives more kids time to develop in different leagues,” said Cayden Lindstrom, a former CHL forward who will play this season at Michigan State. “You can still get that Canadian junior experience, and also a college experience. And I think that’s great for everyone. I think having multiple options will help a lot of young players kind of reach their full potential.”
Lindstrom, the fourth pick in the 2024 NHL Draft by the Columbus Blue Jackets, didn’t watch college hockey growing up in British Columbia, but he had seen enough YouTube videos that he had always wanted to experience it. Then he got drafted to the Western Hockey League, and took a visit to Medicine Hat, Alberta, and was impressed by the team’s coach, Willie Desjardins. He even watched the team play a game in Calgary’s NHL Arena, the Saddledome. Having seen the prominence of junior hockey in Canada firsthand, he liked the idea of playing in the CHL, too.
Advertisement
So, shortly before he turned 16, Lindstrom signed with Medicine Hat — which, at the time, would have ended any thoughts of playing in college.
Both paths have long been viable routes to the NHL. In 2025, 90 CHL players were selected in the NHL Draft, including 21 first-round picks. And as of 2022-23, 32 percent of players on active NHL rosters had played college hockey — up from 21 percent in 2003. But it was always an either-or proposition.
Now, in an instant, the stage is set for a surge of new talent flowing into college hockey — with the real first wave set to hit this season.
“I think it’s a great thing for college hockey,” said Western Michigan head coach Pat Ferschweiler, whose Broncos won the 2025 National Championship. “I think anytime you say ‘Here’s (61) more teams of potential players that you can pick from to improve your product,’ I think you’d be crazy to not think it’s a great thing.”
While the CHL track record for producing NHL players is impossible to deny, college hockey can offer players a host of developmental opportunities even beyond what they get from the university experience. The competition tends to be older, and thus bigger, stronger and faster. The schedule — with games mainly on weekends — can mean more freedom for players to push themselves in the gym during the week.
And while the number of games is smaller, that can also up the competitive stakes.
“Essentially every game is like a playoff game,” Nightingale said. “I know we have playoffs at the end, and it’s single elimination, but like, you actually watch our games, the intensity of the buildings you get to play in, I mean, there’s not much time and space. And I think (the NHL is) the league that all these guys dream of playing in, that’s how it is. You don’t have the same time and space.”
Advertisement
That’s one reason a player such as Lindstrom might choose to play college hockey as a way to help bridge the gap from the CHL to professional hockey.
Nightingale is quick to acknowledge that not every CHL player will want to take the college route, or even that it’s the best for everyone. But for the ones who want that bridge, this new option is a big opportunity for both players and teams alike.
“We’ve got to do a good job now, right?” Nightingale said. “Like we’re getting some of these guys, and not just Michigan State, but I think college in general, we’ve got to show that we can do a good job of helping guys get better.”
Joining Lindstrom at Michigan State this season will be 2025 No. 6 pick Porter Martone, adding two premier CHL talents to what was already one of the top college teams in the country.
Down the road in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan has welcomed in 2025 first-round pick Malcolm Spence from the OHL’s Erie Otters and goaltender Jack Ivankovic, who played last year for the OHL’s Brampton Steelheads before leading Canada to an Under-18 World Championship.
And elsewhere in the Big Ten, Penn State, which prior to 2012 competed in the lower-level ACHA for ice hockey, has the biggest new name of all: Gavin McKenna, the likely No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, who played with Lindstrom last season in Medicine Hat.
That all said, having top talent in college hockey is not new, even from north of the border. In 2021, Michigan had four of the top-five picks in the NHL Draft on the same roster, with two of them — No. 1 pick Owen Power and No. 5 pick Kent Johnson — coming from Canada. In 2023 and 2024, the NCAA’s Hobey Baker award — given to the country’s top college hockey player — went to Canadian freshmen, Adam Fantilli (Michigan) and Macklin Celebrini (Boston University).
Advertisement
What’s different is that those players had to forgo the CHL to do so, even as elite Canadian talents. Now, players such as Lindstrom, Martone, McKenna, Spence and Ivankovic may be forging a new path to the NHL that includes stops in both the CHL and NCAA — coming in perhaps even more polished and prepared, and with the chance to elevate their games even further.
“Everyone’s going to need to re-educate themselves a little bit to a new workflow,” Ferschweiler said. “And I believe the NHL is already starting to really come around to that, going: instead of sending this guy we’ve signed, right away, back to the CHL where he had 140 points last year, we’re going to send him to play against older players in a more competitive, tighter-checking situation in college hockey and have him try to succeed there. And then when he does, OK, now it’s time to get him signed, now it’s time to bring him into our (NHL) organization. Because he’s ready for a pro career, not just a pro contract.”
There will surely be some growing pains as that new pipeline snaps into place, and the CHL will be loath to lose top players such as Martone and McKenna for their final year (or two) of CHL eligibility, which in most cases spans ages 16 through 20.
On the flip side, though, those teams will also gain access to a new player pool that once would have had to skip them altogether. Perhaps elite Canadian prospects such as Fantilli, Power and Celebrini would have spent their age 16 and 17 seasons in the OHL or WHL, instead of preserving their NCAA eligibility by playing for the USHL’s Chicago Steel. More college-bound American prospects may choose to spend a year or two in Canada at 16 or 17, too.
“I think it’s a win-win for both leagues,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato said. “The CHL may become younger, but like, every high-end guy’s going to go there. It’s great for college. There’s going to be more guys here.”
That represents a huge opportunity for college hockey.
In addition to a potentially raised level of play with all the new talent, the growing number of top prospects in the sport should attract more attention from NHL fans, who want to watch their team’s top prospect as he progresses.
Advertisement
Unlike in football, basketball or baseball, hockey players can be drafted at 18 but delay signing their entry-level contracts, allowing them to play college sports (or junior hockey) while a professional team retains their rights. Having more of those prospects in college could bring in more fans and more money, allowing the sport to grow.
“We’re excited for the overall interest, for sure,” Ferschweiler said. “And as people see the talent continue to increase, and I think the depth and therefore the competitiveness increase, I just think it’s going to draw more and more eyes every year.”
But as college sports have seen with the emergence of Name, Image and Likeness deals for the players, and recent rules allowing players to transfer schools more freely, changes to the status quo — even seemingly common sense ones — can sometimes have unintended consequences.
With coaches now having even more options to rapidly turn over a roster, will there still be the same kind of continuity in the sport? Will depth players be willing to stick it out three or four years before getting a major role? What will winning rosters look like? And how do you preserve a winning culture in this new world, especially when some of these top players could spend just a year in college before moving on to the NHL?
These are all questions these schools will be grappling with in the coming years.
At Michigan, one thing the Wolverines added this year was a team breakfast twice a week, looking to foster extra bonding between players.
“It’s not about the meal,” Naurato said. “It’s about them, two times a week, having breakfast together. Telling stories and joking and shooting the s—, and just like, being together.”
For all the ways college hockey could change in the years to come, that’s evidence of one thing coaches will try to keep the same: building a team, even more than just a better collection of players.
Advertisement
“I think college hockey is won by the players that are all in and invested in their team while they’re there,” Ferschweiler said. “And I think that’s what helped the Broncos win last year, is because our guys love being Broncos, and they cared about their team and their teammates every day. And if you can get the guys that come in and are 100 percent there, every day, invested in their success, and then they go onto their pro career, then I think those teams win.”
And if the influx of talent puts more attention on the sport than ever before, college hockey as a whole will win, too.
Just like Lindstrom, Ivankovic didn’t watch much college hockey growing up. But that started to change a year ago when his childhood friend, Michael Hage, arrived in Ann Arbor. Ivankovic checked in on the games to see how Hage was doing, and now he’s at Michigan too.
Now, with a potential superstar in McKenna leading the way, who knows how many new eyes will stumble upon college hockey? McKenna’s Penn State debut game against Arizona State — two schools that didn’t even have NCAA Division I hockey before 2012 — was carried live on Friday by NHL Network, and streamed on the NHL’s YouTube channel.
“I think it definitely should grow,” Ivankovic said. “Obviously, being a young kid before the rule changed, I’ve always dreamed of playing in the OHL. So I still think kids are going to be wanting to do that. But once the opportunity is here, like it is now, I think it’s a no-brainer to come to college.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Joe Camporeale/Imagn Images, Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA Today via Imagn Images, Dennis Pajot / Getty Images)
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle
Max Bultman has covered the Red Wings for The Athletic since 2018. He previously was a general assignment writer in Detroit and is a 2017 graduate of the University of Michigan. Follow Max on Twitter @m_bultman
Hockey News