Craig Custance wrote an article for the Sporting News that is drawing a lot of discussion about the NCAA vs. CHL battle. He adds way more fuel to the growing fire of the CHL illegally paying players to recruit them. The Kitchener Rangers are going to pretend sue soooooo many people after reading this. If you're tired of this argument, Custance at least brings a new perspective that hasn't really ever been explored, which is the NHL's reaction to some of their development money possibly being used for these illegal payments.
Along those lines, The Pipeline Show had a very interesting interview with CHL/OHL commissioner David Branch that was a very interesting listen. It gets into some issues of a conflict of interest with Branch as both CHL head and OHL leader, and the paying players issue may be one of them. What is the motivation for CHL commissioner David Branch to enforce the league's rules when no one has benefited more from the buying of high-end players than OHL commissioner David Branch? It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone more impartial were in charge of investigating these claims.
Also from The Pipeline Show, the topic of a series between the Memorial Cup champion and USHL Clark Cup champion was raised. USHL president Skip Prince reached out today and said the USHL is ready to do it, in an absolutely must-read open letter. There are just miles and miles of distance between how well the USHL runs its league and how the NCAA does.
Speaking of which, the Secondary Six is looking for their first commissioner. I don't know much about the search, other than that the Goldwater Group is heading it, so it's going to be expensive. I heard someone along the way speculate Colorado College athletic director Ken Ralph's name, but since he's on the search committee, I'd guess he is out. If Bobby Flay does end up being the father of January Jones' baby, I'd vote that kid gets the job.
Shane Frederick does an excellent job of running down how the WCHA, despite it's many, many flaws deserves to be commended for doing what is best for college hockey. That's maybe the big takeaway from this summer. When a situation arose where it become clear that not everyone would be happy and priorities would have to be made, some put their own personal interests at the top of that list, while others put the best interests of the sport at the top of that list.
I joked on Twitter today that if Bowling Green and Western Michigan join the WCHA, the league would be left with 11 teams, a number that Bruce McLeod once maintained was absolutely mathematically impossible to schedule around. The two names for a 12th team suggested to me were Minnesota State Moorhead and Alabama Huntsville.
I'd love to see UAH get an invited, but the WCHA's geography is already extended way farther than I think most would like it. UAH has a great program, but I have a tough time seeing the WCHA being able to fit them in.
As for Minnesota State Moorhead, we've reached the halfway point of the three-month deadline they set for themselves, and there hasn't been much news since their initial announcement. If they keep that pattern up, David Branch might try luring them to the OHL. About the only news I've seen is this brief interview with athletic director Doug Peters who now says MSUM would like to get this taken care of in "the next 3-6 months". There certainly hasn't been anything to decrease my initial skepticism about ever seeing the Dragons play Division 1 hockey.
Back to OHL sleaze, OHL training camps have started, meaning Max Domi could officially be considered a no-show, allowing Kingston to earn a compensatory pick and trade him away to London. Yes, it's incredibly shady, but it's not like we got any new information that we haven't had since the day after Kingston first picked Domi. On one hand, some of the outrage over Domi seems a bit overblown since he's playing the same game scores and scores of other players have before him, but he still seems like a clown for the way he so publicly lied throughout the process. And it seems silly that Kingston's compensation for not being able to sign their draft picks is more draft picks. Maybe they'll be able to use one of those picks to draft a very talented player that they can then trade to London for three future draft picks.