Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Not that weird.
For one, outside of Penn State and a couple other programs, the influx wasn’t huge on a team to team basis and was spread out through the vast number (64) Div I teams across all conferences (roughly 3-5 per team, but that’s including programs that brought in 7 like Penn State, or 10 like Bowling Green).
Two, it’s not as though the influx was solely or even primarily focused on the best of the best CHL players. Many players were undrafted 19-21 year olds.
Three, when considering “how difficult the league is to play in” in the context of players like McKenna who already completely dominated the best of the best in the CHL, it’s the size, speed, and physical maturity of the players causing the most difficulty, not the talent. An undrafted 21 year old in the CHL is not automatically more talented than an undrafted 21 year old in the NCAA, but the NCAA player is more accustomed to playing against older, more physically mature players, which is the reason you see CHL players struggle, not because of the talent influx.
If the CHL talent influx made that much of a difference in the difficulty of the league, you might not expect the top 14 scorers to have all played NCAA last year. Nor would you expect the most dominant CHL player by far to sit 17th in NCAA scoring, and 2nd among CHL imports.
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You're not wrong about the size and maturity factor, but 325 CHL players declaring for NCAA absolutely has an effect on the overall talent pool as well, it's impossible to say that it doesn't. Those 325 players wouldn't have been accepted into NCAA programs if they weren't better than 325 other players that would have been in the league if not for the influx of CHL players. That overall talent across the entire league increases.
If Macklin Celebrini were playing in the NCAA this year, all other things the same except with 325 additional CHL players replacing 325 lesser-skilled NCAA players, does he score more points, less points, or the exact same? There's 1,834 Div 1 NCAA hockey players so 17.7% of the league is replaced. I would argue less just given the increase in competition across the board.