New Era of College Hockey: In The First Year of CHL Players Being NCAA Eligible, Bowling Green State University Has Used it To Land The #1 Recruiting Class in College Hockey
For the longest time, and still to a large degree, the best young prospects in hockey would play in one of three Canadian Hockey League's (CHL). This is especially true for Canadian born players. The CHL is comprised of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), Western Hockey League (WHL), and the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Connor Bedard, the current "next best player ever" Gavin McKenna, have all gone the CHL route. If you're ever bored, go to hockeydb.com and check out some of the best players in the world's junior league stats. Their points per game are always hilariously high.
Or just watch their highlights.
But American college hockey has slowly but surely been on the rise. They've closed the gap in a major way. NCAA hockey is now more than ever a viable route to take for even the best players in the world. In the 2024 NHL Draft, the top two picks, Macklin Celbrini (SAN), and Artyom Levshunov (CHI) both opted to play a year of college hockey. Talent wise, college hockey is in as good of a place as ever before.
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Not that comparing NCAA to CHL is apples to apples. You can play in the CHL years before your old enough to go to college. If you're an exceptional talent, you can receive special exemption to play major junior hockey as young as 15 years old. Hence why many players choose to go that route instead of playing in a different junior league, a league with maybe less talent (i.e. USHL, NAHL, BCHL, etc.) until they're ready to head off to college.
But for the longest time, the rules stated that if you at any point played in one of the three CHL leagues, you were no longer eligible to play college hockey. It was one or the other. You also can't play junior hockey past 20 years old. So you can see how that put some kids in a tough position. They had to decide if they were a good enough prospect to risk killing their NCAA eligibility, and never getting a chance to capitalize on a free education and an additional 4 years of playing college. Or alternatively, they could play junior hockey in a league like the USHL, who puts more of an emphasis on education and preparing players for college. Who at this point, now that college hockey has become so popular, is arguably on par with the CHL leagues anyways (Celebrini and Levshunov both played a year in USHL before college).
Elite Amateur Sports - Players in the USHL are typically scouted by NCAA Division I colleges, making it a popular route for those who prioritize pursuing a college education while honing their hockey skills. Notable NHL stars who came through the USHL include Adam Fantilli and Johnny Gaudreau. These players leveraged their USHL experience to secure college scholarships before making the jump to the NHL.
Players in the CHL are often drafted by NHL teams while still in junior, with many making the transition to the NHL directly from the CHL. Prominent NHL stars like Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby honed their skills in the CHL before becoming superstars in the NHL.
The USHL and the CHL offer distinct development pathways to the NHL. The USHL emphasizes education and a college route, whereas the CHL places a stronger emphasis on professional development and an accelerated path to the NHL. Regardless of the chosen route, both leagues have produced NHL stars who have left a lasting impact on the sport. The path to NHL stardom may vary, but the ultimate goal remains the same: making a mark in the world's premier hockey league.
But as of August 2025, for the first time ever, former CHL players will now be eligible to play in the NCAA. Which is a pretty massive deal for college hockey. All of the sudden, teams have a whole new pool of prospects to choose from. There's 60 new teams full of the best young hockey players in the world, who suddenly are eligible to play in the NCAA.
Enter my alma mater Bowling Green State University. Last year, Bowling Green hired an ex-player in Dennis Williams to take over their team. Dennis Williams was Bowling Green's interim head coach in 2009-2010, before moving to junior hockey where he climbed the ranks from the NAHL, to the USHL, to the Everett Silvertips of the WHL, where from 2017-2024, he had a record of 282-116-12 as their head coach. Additionally, he won two gold medals coaching for Team Canada at the World Juniors. One as an assistant coach in 2022, and one as head coach in 2023.
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Now Dennis Williams is at Bowling Green. Who has been a below average to middle of the road college hockey team pretty much my whole life. They have a solid history. They actually won a National Championship in 1984. In recent years they've upgraded their facilities a bit, which has certainly helped. And Bowling Green is a pretty solid college town when compared to the rest of D1-college hockey. But in general, they're an average program. There's nothing terrible about them, but nothing exceptionally exciting to write home about either. They've cracked the top 20 a handful of times in the past 10 years. They even made the NCAA tournament in 2019. But they've got a long ways to go if they ever want to be competing with college hockey's best.
But what Dennis Williams is doing with Bowling Green right now under the new CHL recruiting rules is pretty incredible. Heading into just his second season, as things currently sit, Bowling Green has the #1 recruiting class in all of college hockey. And he's doing it almost exclusively with CHL players. Of the 15 recruits they've landed so far, 10 of them are from the CHL. As far as number of CHL players recruited by the rest of college hockey, Bowling Green outpaces pretty much everyone by a wide margin.
Top 10 Classes:
1. Bowling Green - 10 out of 15
2. Boston University - 4 out of 13
3. Harvard - 1 out of 16
4. Merrimack - 2 out of 18
5. Maine - 6 out of 20
6. Northeastern - 3 out of 17
7. St. Thomas - 1 out of 19
8. Miami (OH) - 2 out of 18
9. Clarkson - 5 out of 16
10. Western Michigan - 0 out of 17
Other Highest CHL Numbers:
13. New Hampshire - 4 out of 14
16. Penn State - 4 out of 12
23. Arizona State - 4 out of 15
27. Bemidji State - 5 out of 12
31. Michigan Tech - 7 out of 13
Source: Neutral Zone Scouting (sorry it's behind a paywall)
Bowling Green put themselves in a unique and favorable position by hiring a coach straight out of the CHL as soon as CHL players became eligible to recruit. As other teams are still going through their traditional pipelines, Dennis Williams, who has been out of college hockey completely since 2010, but knows the CHL better than anyone, has managed to put together a #1 recruiting class almost strictly through utilizing his major junior hockey connections.
It makes since that the rest of college hockey, who has been working forever to build relationships with the USHL, NAHL, BCHL, whatever leagues players in Europe come from, etc., wouldn't be so quick to abandon their old recruiting practices. But for a school like Bowling Green who will probably always be behind the 8 ball when it comes to facilities, tradition, size of school, pro potential, and all the other things that makes a school an attractive destination for a player, why not dive head first into the major junior recruiting pool while the the rest of college hockey slowly dips their toes.
Who knows how it will work out for Bowling Green. Again, the USHL is pretty much on par with the CHL nowadays. It's not like the rest of these teams are recruiting slouches. It's just a whole new way of going about building a college hockey team. It marks a whole new way of recruiting that will change both college hockey and major junior hockey forever. Bowling Green may be the first team to fully commit to the strategy, but it's only a matter of time before the rest of college hockey starts doing the same.