In NCAA men's hockey this season, more than 250 NHL draft picks and a handful of players with professional experience were eligible to play. In NCAA women's hockey, even declaring for the PWHL Draft will end your collegiate career. It's harmful inequity for women.
If you’re a man playing NCAA hockey, you can be selected by an NHL team in the draft and maintain your NCAA eligibility. In fact, this season there are several players competing in NCAA men’s hockey who have played professionally in the ECHL and AHL.
In women’s hockey, if an NCAA women’s hockey player declares for the PWHL Draft, she immediately forfeits her NCAA eligibility.
It's inequity at its finest limiting career opportunities and professional preparation for women in NCAA hockey, while allowing men freedom to choose their own pathway.
For many NCAA women's hockey players, the benefit of being able to maintain eligibility and enter the draft is huge. First, for those NCAA players, they are missing development, mentorship, and coaching opportunities they could have sooner with a PWHL team who is invested in their continued development and future.
It would also allow some players to plan for their future better. The inability to fully know, and have confidence in a future in the PWHL, keeps many women from looking for opportunities overseas, or choosing alternative career paths until they’re behind the game. If an NCAA player could declare for the PWHL Draft following their junior season, and maintain their eligibility, it would give them two chances to be picked. For players who are passed over twice, signing in Europe may be the next step. For a player who is picked, particularly if they were picked as a junior and allowed to communicate with their PWHL team throughout their senior season, they'd have a better grasp on their status entering camp.
For a player on the bubble who declares with a year or more of eligibility remaining, they could get clarity, or find motivation to continue training and working for a second chance at the draft the year after.
In men’s hockey, scouts continue to follow players beyond their first year eligible, and that’s the same way it could and should be for NCAA women’s hockey players.
On the NCAA men's side this season, several players including Mats Linggren, Connor McClennon, Hudson Thornton, Graham Sward, and Jack Beck all returned from AHL and ECHL time to the NCAA. The NCAA also recently changed their eligibility rules related to players coming from the Canadian Hockey League, which the NCAA once deemed professional. Players previously would love NCAA eligibility for even attending an OHL, QMJHL, or WHL tryout for more than 48 hours on their own dime. Now, top players are readily jumping from the CHL to the NCAA, including NHL draft picks.
Jack Beck is the quintessential example on the men's side. Beck spent five seasons in the OHL with the Ottawa 67s and Soo Greyhounds from 2019-2024. In 2021, Beck was selected in the sixth round of the NHL Draft by the Calgary Flames. Following his OHL career, Beck turned pro playing 40 games split between the ECHL and AHL in the Pittsburgh Penguins' system. After his pro season, after the OHL, after being drafted, Beck committed to play NCAA hockey for Arizona State, and was deemed eligible.
Women are not permitted to even see if professional hockey is in the cards for their careers by declaring for the PWHL Draft. The simple act of filling out an online form that takes five minutes to complete, and having their name appear on a draft eligibility list would end their NCAA career, while men can be drafted, play professionally, and then go to the NCAA.
This unequal treatment of women in collegiate hockey diminishes development opportunities, and forces NCAA women's hockey players to make potentially career altering decisions with less information and opportunity then their men's counterparts who are now free to move between top development routes, and even play professionally. Without the ability to choose when they turn professional like men who have been drafted, the career earning potential for women in professional hockey is also being limited by the NCAA's differing rules for men and women.
This season in NCAA men's hockey, there were more than 250 NHL Draft picks. This season in NCAA women's hockey, there were zero PWHL drafted players.
The NCAA will vote this year on whether players should be allowed a fifth year of eligibility. If it passes without opening eligibility for women's hockey players however, it will be another move that
With the NCAA continuing to make allowances for more men to become eligible to play and open pathways to the NHL, the decision to close doors for women to play professional sport, and restrict the pathways of women is not simply unfair and inequitable, it is verges on discriminatory.