The WCHA and CCHA were quick to issue statements after Penn State’s news conference Friday.

Here’s WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod:

“Any time we receive news like this we are all excited, and on behalf of the entire membership of the WCHA, we welcome Penn State to the world of college hockey and wish them all the best.

“It is an affirmation of the strength of our game that such a prestigious institution would choose to add a program at this time and it is indeed a great day for hockey. The institutions that make up the WCHA are committed to the future of college hockey and the addition of Penn State is another positive step in that direction.

And here’s CCHA commissioner Tom Anastos:

“We are excited to hear that Penn State has decided to launch Division I men’s and women’s hockey and will be making such a substantial commitment to the sport. The CCHA and our entire membership welcome them to the college hockey family and look forward to supporting their transition into Division I hockey over the next several years.

“The CCHAs formation 40 years ago was based on the development of emerging programs and, as we set our sights on our next 40 years, we look forward to working with programs such as Penn State and hopefully others, in providing leadership that will increase the profile of college hockey and foster continued growth.”

Here’s the text of the Big Ten’s statement in reaction to Penn State’s announcement that it’s adding men’s and women’s hockey:

The Big Ten Conference is excited about Penn States recent announcement regarding the establishment of NCAA Division I mens and womens ice hockey programs set to begin competition in the 2012-13 academic year. Our institutions have longstanding relationships with Division I, Division II, and Division III college hockey programs that have benefitted both our institutions and the entire national hockey community.

For many years, we have had five institutions sponsoring Division I mens ice hockey programs Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. Big Ten rules allow for a championship whenever there are six institutions sponsoring a program in any given sport. This leads to the presumption that there will be a Big Ten Mens Ice Hockey Championship at some point in the future. A decision of that nature, however, cannot be made without a significant amount of discussion both internally with conference chancellors, presidents, administrators and coaches, and externally with the hockey community as a whole. Whatever we do, we will communicate in a respectful and responsible way as we endeavor to balance all of the unique interests in play.

We congratulate Penn State and wish them well as they continue to provide the most broad-based opportunities possible for their student-athletes.

You may have heard lately that the NCAA is considering a Division I proposal that would prevent schools from officially offering scholarships until July 1 of the year between their junior and senior years of high school.

And, yes, it has college hockey implications.

The proposal wasn’t making the rounds at the time of the coaches’ convention in late April, so there wasn’t any consensus gathered at that point. But conference commissioners are looking into how they could get hockey exempted from the proposal.

Why is that important? Many in college hockey would argue that the proposal would further weaken their game in relation to the competition with Canadian major juniors. The National Letter of Intent that is the first official level of recruiting confirmation can’t be signed until a prospect’s senior year in high school anyway, but by that time an elite-level player that would enter college directly after his senior year probably has plenty of offers on the table under the current format.

College coaches likely would argue that, by the time they could officially make an offer to one of these elite players, he would have been scooped up by the major junior system.

Just something to keep an eye on going forward.

The NCAA’s news release — and the story I wrote for the USCHO news section — highlighted the head contact crackdown from the proposed rules changes, but it’s clear from the Twitterverse and on the story’s comments what the real talker is out of the list unveiled today.

It’s what I’m going to call always-on icing. Teams skating shorthanded will no longer be able to send the puck down ice without an icing call if the rule changes are approved next month by the NCAAs Playing Rules Oversight Panel.

I won’t go through every comment I’ve seen today, but let’s just say that I haven’t seen one in favor of that change yet.

This change isn’t coming out of the blue, however. This is from an USCHO story from last month about the potential changes, with the quotes coming from rules committee chair and Alaska athletic director Forrest Karr:

The question people always ask is, why is it that you commit some type of infraction and you are actually rewarded and allowed to do something that you arent allowed to do normally? Karr said.

More than half of those surveyed were against a change there, Karr said. But the committee will hear from NHL Central Scouting director E.J. McGuire, who routinely relays whats likely coming down from the top level in terms of rule changes.

This would be one where if theyre looking at it and other people around the hockey world are looking at it, that we would look at it, too, Karr said. Obviously, thats a dramatic change.

In case you’re wondering, Karr, who played goaltender for Notre Dame from 1995 to 1999, is supremely tuned into what goes on in the hockey world. So he gets the benefit of the doubt from this chair.

Apparently, USA Hockey has experimented with the rule, with some success.

“We wanted to see defensemen handle the puck and make plays,” Kevin McLaughlin, USA Hockey’s senior director of youth hockey, told USA Hockey Magazine.

“So far it’s lived up to our expectations by creating better puck-handling defensemen, and more offensive opportunities for the shorthanded team because theyre not able to just fire the puck down the ice when they’re under pressure.”

Maybe it’s an idea worth trying. My initial reaction, however, is that it’s a reach.

Either way, I get the feeling we’ll be talking about this in a little more depth over the next month.

To get your name on the Stanley Cup as a player on the winning team, you have to have played at least 41 regular-season games or at least one game in the Stanley Cup Final.

If we have this right, that means six former college players will get their names on the Cup this season as members of the Chicago Blackhawks. They are:

– Jonathan Toews, the Blackhawks captain and Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoffs MVP. He played at North Dakota from 2005 to 2007.

– Duncan Keith, who played at Michigan State in the 2001-02 season and in part of the 2002-03 season before leaving for major juniors.

– Patrick Sharp, who played at Vermont from 2000 to 2002.

– John Madden, a NCAA title winner at Michigan in 1996 as part of a four-year collegiate career that ran from 1993 to 1997.

– Jordan Hendry, a four-year player at Alaska from 2002 to 2006.

– Adam Burish, who captained Wisconsin to the 2006 NCAA title in his senior season.

UPDATE: In addition to the players, we’ve been informed that Blackhawks assistant coach Mike Haviland played at Elmira in 1989-90.

Are we missing anyone? Let us know.

It’s no secret that those involved with College Hockey Inc. covet the California market. Yes, we’ve seen executive director Paul Kelly talk about the potential for Division I programs in the state, but the more immediate challenge is getting the increasingly fertile ground for players to become even more of a recruiting target for current college programs.

So it’s no surprise to learn of a USA Hockey Collegiate Summit scheduled for this weekend in Valencia, Calif.

Four WCHA coaches are scheduled to attend: Wisconsin’s Mike Eaves, Denver’s George Gwozdecky, North Dakota’s Dave Hakstol and Colorado College’s Scott Owens. It’s billed as an event to educate about the benefits of college hockey and not about those coaches doing some free recruiting, which is an important distinction to make under the NCAA umbrella.

Boston University associate head coach Mike Bavis and Notre Dame associate head coach Andy Slaggert are also among those scheduled to attend.

There has to be a better way, right?

When you look at the attendance numbers from this year’s NCAA regionals and consider the less-than-impressive atmosphere at some of the venues, it’s natural to try to come up with a tweak — an improvement that will make things right.

One such proposal emerged at last week’s American Hockey Coaches Association convention, according to Brad Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald. Read his story for the full details (he deserves the pub and his paper’s site deserves the click), but in a nutshell, a popular idea is to make eight best-of-three series at campus sites in the first round, with the winners proceeding to one of two regional sites where single-elimination games will determine the Frozen Four field.

On the surface, it sounds like a decent idea in the interest of overall attendance and atmosphere. Nothing will be better than a home rink for fostering an intense, interested setting, but the NCAA has also realized there are overwhelming advantages to playing at home, and we’ve seen in recent years a move away from campus sites for the regionals.

I’ll list a few other problems I have with this proposal below, but here’s my main one: Doesn’t this just push the same problems onto another weekend?

So you play the first round on campus. Fine. The eight teams that remain get divided into two regionals, where each will play one game with a spot in the Frozen Four on the line. I can see the same problems we’ve seen in the past (crowds not big enough, not loud enough, not interested enough) still happening. If you have a regional in Worcester, Mass., for instance, you’re going to have two games, and what’s to say that the Boston College fans that show up to watch their team play in the first are going to stay around for the second, or vice versa? Even if your overall attendance number looks better, does that make it better that the second game is played in front of a half-empty arena?

If you’re going to go to home sites for the first round, I think you have to do it for the second round, too.

Other issues:

* How do you make television work? It’s not great right now, but at least SOMEONE is televising all of the games as the system stands. That becomes a lot tougher when you add games, sites and the potential for third games when the networks won’t know for sure they have it until the day before.

* Taking last year as an example (more on that later), Bemidji State would have hosted a first-round series, and it would have been at the Glas Fieldhouse, capacity 2,500. I don’t doubt the Bemidji fans’ ability to make that a championship atmosphere, but could that building really have been a championship site? How do you get TV produced there? (I’ve seen it tried; it isn’t pretty.) I know this is a moot point as far as Bemidji is concerned because of its new arena, but there are rinks across the country about which you could ask the same questions. You never know when they’re going to be a one or two seed.

* The NCAA has to have some financial guarantees when it comes to the postseason, and it is a lot tougher to make those when you’re awarding the hosting privileges to schools a week in advance.

I’ll give those who came up with this idea full marks for effort. I just don’t think it’s the way to go.

But in the spirit of playing along, here’s how the 2010 tournament may have looked under this format, if you went straight down the bracket 1-16:

Alabama-Huntsville at Miami

RIT at Denver

Vermont at Wisconsin

Alaska at Boston College

Michigan at North Dakota

New Hampshire at St. Cloud State

Northern Michigan at Cornell

Yale at Bemidji State

There are a lot of teams traveling a long way in that scenario, and unless the NCAA suddenly is OK with that under this proposal, I’m guessing they’d move things around. I’m no Jayson Moy, but my guess is you’d actually see something like this:

Alabama-Huntsville at Miami

Alaska at Denver (although this would have been really unfair to the Pioneers)

Vermont at Wisconsin

RIT at Boston College

Michigan at North Dakota

Northern Michigan at St. Cloud State

New Hampshire at Cornell

Yale at Bemidji State

Do you like the new proposal? Let us know in the comments.

Think about all Chris Kreider has seen this season, and then put the situation the Boston College freshman will be in today in context.

Kreider scored a goal in the gold-medal game, helping the United States win the World Junior Championship, then two days later returned to Boston to play in front of 38,472 at Fenway Park.

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He scored a big goal as BC won the Beanpot with a victory over Boston University in front of 17,565 at TD Garden.

He scored a goal in a national title game witnessed in person by 37,592 at Detroit’s Ford Field, then celebrated with his Eagles teammates as NCAA champions.

Combine the attendance of the two biggest games (76,064), and you still don’t get to the size of the crowd they’re expecting when Kreider and his U.S. teammates open the World Championships on Friday at VELTINS-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The crowd is expected to be 76,152 — a world record, at least until the game next season at Michigan Stadium.

That’s a lot of eyes watching you play. At least he should be prepared.

Contributing: USCHO national columnist Dave Starman

We probably shouldn’t be surprised that Chay Genoway is coming back to North Dakota, like he announced Thursday afternoon.

He said at a news conference that he hasn’t yet been cleared to play competitively after his bout with post-concussion syndrome, an injury that cost him all but nine games of last season. Genoway is a special talent, but you can understand why pro teams would be hesitant to commit (or maybe commit enough) to the free agent at this point.

There also has to be a little of the unfinished business angle to the decision. Genoway had the kind of start to the season that, had it continued on that path, would have launched him into Hobey Baker Award consideration and launched his team into more solid ground.

With his decision to return for a fifth season on a medical redshirt, he has to be considered among the top handful of contenders for the 2011 Hobey, and the Fighting Sioux may be among the handful of favorites for the 2011 national championship.

Even without Genoway in the lineup, North Dakota was considered one of the most dangerous teams in the nation toward the end of last season — until that first-round NCAA flameout against Yale.

From that group, the Sioux lost leading scorer Chris VandeVelde and third-liner Darcy Zajac, for a total of 24 goals and 60 points. With a good freshman class coming in, the incoming team looks stronger than the last.

We’re a long way out from seeing which teams will look like contenders, let alone from deciding which ones will be in the title hunt down the stretch in 2011. And there have been some good-looking teams that haven’t lived up to their potential.

In his news conference Thursday, Genoway talked of the high level of motivation for the Sioux this offseason. Many other teams could say the same. I tend to think, though, that with Genoway, it’s off the charts, and that’s why you have to think he and the Sioux will be right in the mix next season.

Just a quick note here that the annual American Hockey Coaches Association Convention begins Thursday in Naples, Fla. The interesting bit to me is that it’s the first one that will be attended by the newly formed College Hockey Inc.

So this is where we might to see some lines being drawn. The mission of College Hockey Inc. is to promote the game, but to do so, it’s going to have to help improve the game.

In Detroit, we at USCHO heard from people saying it was time for college hockey to address some big issues instead of squabbling about little ones. Today’s agenda includes a 90-minute meeting with Paul Kelly, the executive director of College Hockey Inc. With Kelly’s group positioned as the mouthpiece of college hockey in a lot of circles, that meeting may be the place where some of those big issues are put forward.

This is not to say that heavy issues have never been discussed before at the convention. It, in fact, is the place where great dialogue takes place in regard to rule changes, recruiting issues and the like.

With College Hockey Inc. in the mix, however, add another voice to the debate. And to date, that particular voice has proven to be one that’s not afraid to touch on touchy subjects.