The Main Event: The CHL, the NCAA, NIL Legislation, and the Changing Face of Hockey – October 2025 Update
The face of hockey changed in November of 2024. This we now know. The decision by the NCAA allowing major junior players to play Division 1 hockey is a little over a year old. The repercussions have come in waves. The initial wave saw a number of players immediately jump around junior leagues. Major junior […]
House vs. NCAA
The House v. NCAA case, which took effect on July 1, has changed how college athletes can be paid. It wrapped up three anti-trust lawsuits that claimed the NCAA unfairly blocked players from making money off their name, image and likeness (NIL). Two big changes came out of this: 1. Schools can now pay athletes […]
The Biggest 10
Bang! That was the sound of the shot across the bow of the entire hockey world when 2026 NHL draft top prospect Gavin McKenna announced that he would be playing the 2025-26 season for the Penn State Nittany Lions of the Big Ten, the highest-profile hockey conference in the NCAA. And with all due respect […]
Confronting CTE in the Game We Love
There was a story that caught my eye recently. Early last year—March 18, 2024, to be exact—former NHL enforcer Chris Simon took his own life. This has been a far too common occurrence in the last handful of years. Whether it is Steve Montador (whose story was behind the initial founding of SkateGuard), Wade Belak, […]
The Rapid Ascent of Women’s Hockey
We need to talk about women’s hockey again. The momentum that the sport is experiencing right now cannot and should not go unnoticed. At SkateGuard, we wrote a two-part series back in 2023 chronicling how after years—decades, if we’re being fair to many of the early ambassadors of the women’s game—of very well-intentioned efforts to […]
What to Look for in a Hockey Coach
Whether you are a big-name NHL free agent trying to decide where to sign on July 1, or a junior hockey player trying to decide which NCAA program to commit to, or a 13-year-old trying to decide where to play AAA hockey next season, there is one common factor underlying all of these decisions: the […]
The Aftershock: Update on the CHL, the NCAA, NIL Legislation, and the Changing Face of Hockey
Remember the whole Lenin quote that we put at the top of our first blog post on this subject? About weeks where decades happen? Well, that has certainly come to fruition. Much has happened since the NCAA announced that it would no longer prevent major junior hockey players from competing in Division 1 NCAA men’s […]
Early Tremors Part 4: The downstream impact of an NCAA reversal
The likely reversal of the NCAA’s ban on Canadian major junior hockey players will revolutionize the hockey environment in North America. In previous posts, we’ve discussed how we think this will play out for Canadian major junior leagues, NCAA teams and the USHL. In this entry, we’ll turn our attention closer to home: to the […]
Early Tremors Part 3: A watershed for U.S. hockey
In previous blogs in this series on the likely reversal of the NCAA’s long-standing ban on allowing Canadian major junior hockey players, we looked at the impact on player choice and on Canada’s Tier 1 leagues. In this blog, we’ll turn our attention to how an NCAA reversal will impact the U.S. hockey ecosystem. How […]
Early Tremors Part 2: Canada’s major junior leagues may never be the same again
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about the seeming inevitability that the NCAA will reverse its long-standing ban on allowing in hockey players from Canada’s major junior leagues and about how that will open up new paths for aspiring young Canadian players. But the ripple effects will be felt everywhere in the hockey […]