The playoffs are in full gear across six conferences this weekend. Here is a look at the WCHA, ECAC Hockey, Hockey East and the CCHA. This is not a slight to Atlantic Hockey or the CHA, but I have only seen Army and Air Force in those conferences this season and do not want to evaluate what I have not seen. I have seen everyone else either live or on film — DS.

ECAC Hockey

Yale at Princeton: Yale can score with dangerous offensive weapons. Two sophomores sandwich two freshmen to lead the team in scoring. Sean Backman led the way with 18-8–26, followed by Broc Little, Denny Kearney, and Mark Arcobello. Little has displayed a unique nose for the net and is always in a scoring area. Goaltending is strong as both have proven they can win a game by themselves. Billy Blasé is the top guy. Princeton has Lee Jubinville and he was the Ivy League Player of The Year and posted a 1.41 points per game average. Princeton can move the puck, defend well, and open it up when they have to. Both teams are well coached by good tactical guys. Princeton has shown consistency all season and they get the nod here. The thing about Princeton is if you pull out some film on them, compare it to Gadowsky’s teams in Fairbanks, and his minor pro teams in the old WCHL, you can see the link. They skate, they attack, and they are focused on offense. However, if they underestimate Yale’s offense, it could be a tough weekend in New Jersey. Princeton is the choice here to make the trip to Albany.

Cornell at Union: Still getting used to seeing Cornell on the road in the second round, but Cornell is Cornell and they can win a game on the moon with the way they play. Great defensive team with solid goaltending, they don’t give up many chances and make it tough to get good looks at the net. Ben Scrivens can give up big rebounds but those aren’t much help when you can’t get to them. Colin Greening and Riley Nash provide offense and a presence on the rush and Topher Scott is a solid two way guy who always seems to be open. Raymond Sawada has always impressed with his work ethic.

Union is a scrappy team that works as hard as Cornell and that’s a compliment to Nate Leaman and his staff. They are your classic “find a way to win” team and those teams are dangerous. Defenseman Lane Caffaro has proven to be good on either side of the puck and adds a dimension of offense from the back line. He’s been more disciplined and that is a factor in his improvement. Junior captain Matt Cook has been the heart and soul of that team and leads a team that plays offensively and defensively as a team That’s tough to beat.

Only hangup here has been Union’s bad luck in the playoffs, especially in OT. There’s just something about Cornell, maybe it’s because they are Cornell. The tea leaves point toward the Big Red winning game three in this one.

Quinnipiac at Harvard: Love this matchup. It has everything. Size, strength, speed, skill, goaltending, contrasting styles, and good coaching. The Bobcats posses a team of big strong forwards who can own the offensive zone. They cycle well, protect the puck, and use that size and strength to muscle their way to scoring chances. They are an interesting team in that they can get swept by a team they should sweep but steamroll better teams.

Harvard is a great defensive team in addition to having goaltending in Kyle Richter. They are very hard to play against, the ultimate compliment to any team. Harvard has some dynamic faceoff guys in Jimmy Fraser Doug Rogers. Harvard can get the puck moving and can create offensively with guys like Jon Pelle and freshman Mike Biega, but their strength is how good they are defensively.

Can Quinnipiac’s big bodies on Harvard’s small ice get to the net consistently and generate offense? This one is almost too close to call but we’ll take the home team in the friendly confines of the Bright Center.

Colgate at Clarkson: I know I said I’d love to call Ferris State at Notre Dame this weekend, but I’d take this series also. Really like both programs. Clarkson can really move the puck and has big time high end weapons. Matt Beca and Steve Zalewski combined for 29 goals and 62 points and we haven’t gotten to Nick Dodge yet, who many feel is the team’s best player. Their forwards are very accountable defensively and get a lot of backside pressure against the rush.

Colgate has a unique factor in goalie Mark Dekanich. He’s streaky at times but when the streak is going well, he’ll throw up three consecutive shutouts. The feeling is that Clarkson, as good as they can be offensively, needs to score early in games before Dekanich gets his game into shutdown mode. Tyler Burton has been great his whole career and is very good at finding open space to get shots. Jesse Winchester is the third senior in this trifecta of experience and we all know winning takes good senior leadership.

I give Colgate a puncher’s chance here, but I was impressed enough with Clarkson in last year’s ECAC Hockey Final Four that they get my sentimental nod here.

Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, and Clarkson advance.

CCHA

UNO at Michigan: Bryan Marshall is every bit the Hobey Baker candidate that fellow CCHA stars Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik are in some respects. Love how Scott Parse and Bill Thomas are gone and Marshall is still a scoring star and a great captain. Like the aforementioned two, as well as Ryan Jones at Miami, he proves that coming back for your senior year is a pretty smart idea in terms of player development.

That being said, Michigan, despite Scooter Vaughn’s injury last weekend, is pretty deep. Kolarik seems ready to come back and even at 75 percent, he’s just fine for me. UNO is a good skating team that demands you match their intensity; they are very well-coached but Michigan might be too deep, too focused, and have too many intangibles. UNO is no easy out so Michigan earns this series the hard way.

Ferris State at Notre Dame: I’ll be honest, if I had my choice of series to broadcast this weekend this would be the one. It’s not a sexy series but it’s ripe for surprises. Notre Dame has gotten great goaltending from Jordan Pearce and Eric Condra, Ryan Thang, and Mark Van Guilder have been terrific. Brock Sheehan could play for me any day. ND is a great shutdown team but it seems that the more they play shutdown they less they create and that could be an issue against a Ferris State team that is opportunistic, enthusiastic, and playing with house money.

ND is 2-3-3 in its last four weekend series and while the goals against are low, so are the goals for. That’s a lot to ask of a rookie goalie in the playoffs. Jimmy Howard as a junior at Maine could handle that pressure. Same goes for Jeff Lerg at Michigan State or John Curry at BU, who I think might have pulled off a win or two in last year’s tourney if his hip wasn’t so bad. Mitch O’Keefe for Ferris has had some great moments at FSU and he might be on the verge of stealing a series. Since a loss to Northern Michigan on CSTV in January, he’s 4-1-3 with wins over Notre Dame, Miami, and Michigan. That’s pretty good!

If there is a first-round upset, it just might be here. This should be a great series.

Bowling Green at Miami: Miami doesn’t get the credit it deserves for being an elite NCAA team but this team is really good in every area. Well-coached, good speed, gamebreakers offensively, shutdown defensemen and goaltending. They have a great home-ice advantage at Steve Cady Arena, which is an awesome building. BG is an improved team that can compete with the big boys, but they are depth challenged. Derek Whitmore has been great with 27 goals and has been the consummate leader. Jacob Cepis has 15 goals including an OT game-winner that helped propel BG past Lake State and sophomore Todd McIlrath is showing signs of a big series. Nick Eno has been solid in goal.

That said, Miami is loaded. Jones, Miele, Davis, Cannone, Ganzak, Martinez, and Zatkoff power that engine and that is a lot of horsepower. Pat Cannone as a rookie center has been a stellar pivot on the top line and shows no signs of slowing down. Miami is a good rush team, does well getting pucks low and creating offense, has size, speed and skill. BG will have to be stingy in its end but I’m thinking Ricoville should have a bit to cheer about by Sunday night as the RedHawks prepare for the weekend at the Joe.

Northern Michigan at Michigan State: This is another good one because NMU swept MSU a month ago in Marquette. However, MSU responded the next game by blowing out Michigan at Munn. MSU has a major advantage in that they do not get rattled and have a champion’s swagger. They are never out of games and know what it takes to gather short-term focus in the national tourney.

Michigan State can run and gun but would rather control tempo. They can shut you down and make the neutral zone look like I-96 on a summer Friday afternoon. However, where they are dangerous is in transition as they are deceptively good at getting the puck moving offensively. In a conference full of real good goalies they have the best one, and there is probably no goalie in college hockey who serves as a better motivator to his team than Lerg.

Northern has some jump in their attack and is very tenacious, especially on the cycle and on the walls. They win battles in all three zones and that makes them a tough team to deliver a knockout blow to. When they get goaltending they become a confident team at the other end and have shown they can play an up-tempo game if encouraged to do so. Northern has been really competitive against the elite teams, and don’t fear playing on the road or playing good teams. MSU will have their hands full but will be on the winning side of the handshake line as they take the first step on the road to a possible repeat.

Hockey East

Northeastern at Vermont: Seen a lot of Vermont lately live and on film. Haven’t seen as much of Northeastern so let’s start with the Catamounts. Joe Fallon in goal has been very good in the second half, like lights out good. The final weekend of the season he was excellent in a split at UNH, robbing the Wildcats of a chance to become Hockey East’s first ever 20 game winner. Fallon’s confidence has allowed his physical play to reach the heights it has in the past. He looks composed and his economy of movement is great. Pucks find him now as opposed to earlier in the season when he was desperately looking for pucks.

Earlier this semester is when Vermont rescued its season. They were a young group that had trouble finding themselves, and after the Christmas break they had a team meeting to get their focus back. Then after being swept at BC in a weekend when head coach Kevin Sneddon felt they didn’t compete very well, the coaching staff brought every kid into Sneddon’s office and asked them if they were on board or not. The staff then got much more active in terms of demanding accountability and the Catamounts haven’t looked back since. They are the top shutdown team in Hockey East and their game is tailor-made for the playoffs. They have three solid lines but will need to find offense if they want to win Hockey East, which they probably need to do to gain an NCAA bid.

Northeastern, under Greg Cronin, is a solid team which had a better start than finish but might be the hardest-working team in Hockey East. Brad Thiessen won 15 games and five players have double-digit goal numbers. Ryan Ginand plays with as much heart as anyone in the conference and Northeastern can manufacture goals and win on the road. The last time Vermont started at home was when they were still in the ECACHL and hosted Dartmouth. The atmosphere was electric: expect that again. I like how Vermont has grown as a team, and feel they’ll outlast a good Northeastern team.

Providence College at Boston College: I would say if there is an upset brewing in Hockey East this might be it, but I don’t think it will happen. Having had a chance to see Tim Army’s team at the Great Lakes Invitational and also on film recently, you have to be impressed with their commitment to chase and battle for pucks and get shots on goal. Army likes a team in motion and they can quick up well, forecheck aggressively, and no matter what the score they never bail out, as evidenced in a 50-shot 5-0 loss to Michigan in December. Tyler Sims is solid in goal.

The Eagles have my two favorite players on their roster in Tim Filangieri and Mike Brennan, who I feel represent this team well in that they play hard, play with an edge, and compete like mean SOB’s. Their offense is as good as anyone and Nathan Gerbe is probably the best pure goalscorer in the game. John Muse has gone wire-to-wire in goal as a freshman, replacing Cory Schneider. That was no small task but as early as game one of the season, in the Ice Breaker against Michigan, you could see Muse was for real. Guys like Matt Greene, Pat Gannon, and Ben Smith symbolize the team’s grit factor and also can contribute offensively. Smith is the best kept secret east of Albany.

The Eagles will win this series, but keep an eye on Providence, which keeps getting better.

Massachusetts at New Hampshire: UMass had a great first half, and was No. 5 in the nation at one point. Then they played a home and home with UNH in early January. They were swept and haven’t recovered. UMass plunged into a 2-8-1 tailspin after that before winning against BU and sweeping Merrimack to finish the season. You have to like a three-game win streak entering the playoffs, but they are running into a team playing as well as anyone in the nation in UNH. This team is really good, has three solid lines, is stacked defensively, and has great veteran leadership. Mike Radja, Matt Fornataro and Danny Dries form an awfully good first line and Bobby Butler, James VanRiemsdyk, and Jerry Pollastrone are a great second line. They have depth up front and on defense and Joe Charlebois is excellent in his own zone. When it all breaks down, Kevin Regan holds down the fort and he is a legit Hobey Baker candidate.

UNH is on a mission and is in the right frame of mind. Lake Whittemore proves too much for the Minutemen and UNH advances.

UMass-Lowell at BU: Would this be a good time to admit that I miss having Maine in the playoffs? Ok, never mind that. BU is a great story because this is a team that went through its usual midseason drama, suspended its captain, and did what hasn’t happened in a long time and that was lose a Beanpot semifinal. I was convinced that was it for BU. Then what does Jack Parker do? He rallies the team and they finish second. BU was a team that couldn’t establish a goalie, couldn’t defend, and couldn’t score. Special teams, especially the penalty kill were off a bit. Yet here they are as the No. 2 seed in Hockey East and that’s pretty impressive.

Lowell is a lunchpail gang that works hard. Led by sophomore Kory Falite, who led the team in goals, Lowell brings a balanced attack with four double-digit goal scorers. Barry Goers and Maury Edwards are two defensemen that were responsible for 27 points and allow Lowell to add depth to the attack. Lowell will compete and this series won’t be easy, but Pete MacArthur wants to win a national title and that’s why he came back. He makes BU better, and they’ll win this series.

WCHA

Wisconsin at St. Cloud: The Badgers are an interesting team. They can look lousy but can also look very disciplined and systematic. They had an up-and-down season and some of their vets didn’t play as well as they needed to. That being said, they are a battle-tested team and there are a lot of players on that team that feel they have a lot to prove.

Look at their season results and you see nothing that really excites you. Look at their scoring and nothing really wows you. However, they are Wisconsin and I’d rate Mike Eaves among the best in the business in terms of winning short tournaments. Kyle Turris, Ben Street and Michael Davies were the only three to crack the 10-goal mark but Wisconsin’s strength is in their character. Patrick Johnson is a guided missile and plays on skill and emotion. Blake Geoffrion, Ben Grotting and Sean Dolan provide depth and grit and Ben Ford is a proud senior who has battled through a season of ups and downs. Jamie McBain is as good as any defenseman in the conference, especially offensively, and Kyle Klubertanz needs to make good on his final postseason in Madison.

St. Cloud is in high gear right now. They have lost once since February 9 (to Wisconsin) and have beaten some good squads as of late. Ryan Lasch, Garrett Roe and Andreas Nodl lead a potent offense and St. Cloud has shown it can be a rush team, a chip-and-chase team, and a gritty team They are solid in goal with Jake Weslosky, who seems to have the nod over Shane Connelly in goal, but I like Connelly’s gamesmanship. It might not be the popular pick, or even the smart man’s pick, but I’m picking Wisconsin to upset St. Cloud. Just a hunch.

Minnesota at Minnesota State: I know the Purple Bull had a great season. I know they have a good team. I know Minnesota had a subpar season and is a little outmanned for the first time in the Lucia era. Don’t care. I’m taking the Gophers. With the exception of a 4-1 Saturday night loss at Denver, the Gophers kept it a one-goal game most of the second half and for the first time since Robb Stauber I believe in the Gophers’ goaltending.

Anchorage at CC: CC will win this one. Went out on a limb here. Two players have impressed me all year in Richard Bachman and Chad Rau, but Rau has been good just about every time I’ve seen CC in my years at CSTV. Billy Sweatt is explosive and Steve Schultz has been a very good first-year player. There’s not much to say about CC other than they are really good, are a legit national-title contender, and play an exciting style. This will be a good tuneup for the Xcel Center and beyond. CC is like UNH; they have gone under the radar a bit but they should get picked up around the time they win a regional and show up in Denver. CC is in the Michigan-UNH-North Dakota neighborhood.

Michigan Tech at North Dakota: North Dakota was my favorite to win the whole ball of wax in the preseason but I hate picking against Tech. Jamie Russell and his staff have cultivated a very good team and a great culture at Tech, and the Huskies are a team on the rise. Loved their play at the GLI this season. However, NoDak is too deep and Jean-Phillipe Lamoureux is as good as any goalie in the nation if not better. Tech can pack it in and play very well defensively but NoDak will patiently pound you with their size and depth. I think Tech plays this very well but loses to a team that is just better.

Minnesota Duluth at Denver: Peter Mannino won a national title as a freshman and hasn’t been heard from much since. His play in goal has been fine, but Denver hasn’t gotten over the hump the past two seasons. This could be different. Despite losing Brock Trotter, and despite getting hammered by CC last weekend and splitting with Tech the weekend before, Denver is a good team and they are very well-coached. This series could go either way and I can see Denver losing. Really liked what I saw from Duluth on Saturday night in beating Minnesota at Minny on senior night. I’m staying with Denver.

Now that we’re heading into the next round of the playoffs, take a minute with me to salute a great group of coaches whom we at CSTV get a chance to spend one weekend per year with: the bench bosses of College Hockey America.

The AHA and the CHA do not get the ink that the “Big Four” conferences do, but as Robert Morris head coach Derek Schooley said Wednesday, “25 percent of college hockey is in Atlantic Hockey or the CHA. To ignore them isn’t good for the industry as a whole.” He’s absolutely right.

The CHA has some quality wins this season, and thanks to my play-by-play partner at CSTV, Matt McConnell, for doing the research. UAH beat Yale. Bemidji State knocked off Minnesota-Duluth and traditionally plays North Dakota pretty tough. Niagara beat CCHA teams in Bowling Green and Western Michigan twice, and also swept Quinnipiac. Robert Morris made news early with a win over BU and also beat Ohio State. Wayne State had four wins in beating Lake Superior, St Lawrence, and Northern Michigan twice.

(The CHA title game is on CSTV Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. ET. That game is usually a good one.)

However, here is the problem. As Dennis Miller said, I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but fans of Atlantic Hockey and the CHA get their knickers in a snit when their teams or conferences get slighted. I hear you fans, I get it. However, on a national level, what drives ratings is what gets the focus, and there is a reason national radio hosts talk a ton of pro football, golf and baseball, and college football and hoops. Not my rules, folks, but what keeps us in business on the broadcast and print side is covering the stories and teams you overwhelmingly ask for, and Sacred Heart lags a bit behind Michigan State on the depth chart. Even my six-year-old knows the “Go Green, Go White” chant.

In college hockey, the teams that drive the meter are the traditional powerhouses like (but not limited to) Minnesota, BU, BC, UNH, Maine, Wisconsin, Denver, North Dakota, CC, Harvard, Cornell, Michigan, and Michigan State. Former powers like Michigan Tech, enjoying a resurgence, also bring back good memories, as does Lake Superior State. Clarkson has always been good and schools like Yale and Northern Michigan have had their share of success.

You want to talk about Kyle Turris and James VanRiemsdyk, about Kevin Porter and Nathan Gerbe, about rookie goalie sensations like Jordan Pearce, John Muse and Richard Bachman. I admire Luke Flicek and Eric Ehn, Ryan Cruthers and Matt Climie, but first-round draft choices and future NHLers grab headlines.

The point being, while RIT is a good team, and Mercyhurst has a track record of success and a great coach in Rick Gotkin (who also might be the funniest man in college hockey), those schools don’t drive interest on a national level. They are followed passionately on a local level and that is great for them and their loyal fan base. However, I see those schools more at Eastern Junior Hockey League showcases than I do on TV.

The other myth that pervades the psyche is that other than the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team, name me one no-name underdog in hockey that was nationally cared about. Were you fired up about Carolina-Edmonton or Tampa Bay-Calgary in the NHL playoffs? The ratings said you weren’t even though the Hurricanes-Oilers series was just awesome.

Hey, I was very much on the Bemidji State bandwagon three seasons ago and was thrilled when the Beavers took Denver to OT in the Amherst regional, but for marketing and TV purposes, what sells better, a matchup between Bemidji State and UNH or one between the defending champion Pioneers and UNH? I pumped the Beavers’ tires right into their regional semifinal game against Wisconsin two seasons ago, but Wisconsin won that 4-0.

That set up Wisconsin-Cornell, two heavyweights, in a game that ended in a 1-0 triple-overtime marathon, won by the eventual national champs from Madison. Check those two rosters and see how many of the players in that game have already played in the NHL. Stars sell! Also, the game was in Green Bay, Wis., it was packed, and if Wisconsin wasn’t in that game, the TV audience would have been watching a regional final in a half-empty building. That’s just what the NCAA and its TV partners are trying to avoid like the plague.

Like I have said, I’d love to see Army in the national tourney, or Air Force. I think a CHA team in the tourney is terrific. Remember Holy Cross and its upset of Minnesota. How we all cheered the little school from central Massachusetts for KO’ing the mighty Gophers, in OT.

Pick your poison wisely because Minny, if it had won, would have played North Dakota in Grand Forks and those two teams might have played some of the most exciting playoff hockey this side of Colorado College-Michigan. HC and NoDak had all the juice of a Sly and The Family Stone reunion tour because the underdog doesn’t really draw ratings. Thank goodness the game was in Grand Forks and not Grand Rapids. Geroge Mason in the basketball Final Four two years ago had awful ratings for a story America was supposed to be in love with.

I still stand behind my original thought of three years ago in that the CHA and Atlantic champs should play a play-in game to see who is the 16th seed. Right now, those two autobids help eliminate these four teams just outside the bubble in the PairWise: Minnesota Duluth, Notre Dame, Vermont, Harvard. No offense to anyone, but I want Notre Dame in the national tourney with an at-large because they are Notre Dame, they attract interest and they are a good team. Minnesota Duluth was a Frozen Four team a few years back, and lost a late lead to Denver in the semifinals. Denver went on to beat Maine.

Vermont is a name school that would get covered in the Boston market as would Harvard, which has won national championships and produced a ton of NHL players and a couple of Hobey Baker winners. Remember, Stanley Cup winners John LeClair and Martin St. Louis both played at Vermont, as did All Star game-winning goalie Tim Thomas of the Bruins. Take out one of those autobids and one of those four gets in, and I think we established why that is a good thing!

Look at the BCS ratings this past year with the traditional teams not having a presence. They were way down. No Miami, no Florida State, no Alabama, no Notre Dame, no Texas, no Nebraska. Oklahoma wasn’t great, Michigan was average (though it did beat Florida), and Illinois was in the Rose Bowl against a team that everyone knew would blow the Illini out. You’d watch an average Michigan team play USC in the Rose Bowl before you’d watch a really good Illinois or Iowa in that spot. Michigan is national, the others aren’t.

Enjoy the playoffs, the unsung heroes, the great goaltending. Root hard for your team but root smart. The big picture is important for our game on many levels, with continued growth being No. 1. It is with no disrespect that I say the big teams need to be in the national tourney, that Minnesota needs to be in over Bentley. It’s just reality.

Like a rite of passage each year, the early departure season of college hockey has begun with Maine ‘s standout goaltender Ben Bishop inking a deal with the St. Louis Blues.

So starts what has been now going on in college hockey for years: Players complete the season but still have eligibility remaining. NHL teams, agents, family advisors, your local minister, whomever, all come calling wondering what your intentions are for playing hockey at the next level.

Most players know the answer — they’re in college for the long haul. But there are a select few — a number that has grown in recent years since the last overhaul of the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2005 — who are swayed away from completing their college obligations by the lure of contracts and signing bonuses.

The 2005 NHL CBA, which was completely restructured during the lockout that cancelled the 2004-05 NHL season, changed the terms under which an NHL team can sign a college player who has been drafted.

Prior to 2005, the rules allowed teams to hold the rights of drafted players for one full year from the time the player graduates. In 2005, that rule was revised to terminate a team’s rights to a drafted player on August 16 in the summer immediately following their graduation. Obviously, that forces teams to sign drafted players earlier or risk allowing their valued draft pick to become a free agent.

Because of this, some NHL teams are taking that August 15 date out of play by simply inking players to entry-level contracts a year or two early, before their college careers end.

The result, one might say, is the increased exodus, which has seen the number of players who leave college early triple over the last five years, according to Hockey East Commissioner Joe Bertagna.

Still, Bertagna is quick to acknowledge that you can’t put the blame 100 percent on the NHL. The dynamics surrounding the college game have also changed.

College players are entering school later than ever. This past season, the average age of a freshman Division I player was 19.8 years old, or nearly two years older than the average college freshman. That, itself, impacts the overall timeline for college players.

“One might argue that [players] aren’t leaving early in terms of age,” said Bertagna. “Because they’re older, they’re leaving at the same point in their development [as they were in years past].”

All of which makes sense and is easily reflected in the statistics of the NHL draft. In the mid-’80s, the number of collegians drafted hovered near 50 per year, or 19 percent of the total players taken. Since 2002, that number has consistently dropped to a low point of 13 in 2005. Part of the reason for this is age.

Very few draft-age players (players are eligible at age 18) are playing in college right now. Conversely, the number of college-bound U.S. Junior and high school players has increased (though this data isn’t provided by the NHL).

“I know a lot of families who hold kids back very early on. There are kids who change schools and when they do that they repeat a year. And we have kids playing junior hockey and that can add a year or two,” said Bertagna. “There’s a different culture and kids don’t go in a straight line from youth hockey to high school or prep school to college today. Each of these decisions along the way delays enrollment in [college].”

In addition to an older entry-level collegiate player, Bertagna says that the value of the education may not be as important to families any longer.

“Sometimes you hear coaches say that if it were up to the kid, he’d have stayed,” said Bertagna. “It was the parents that wanted them to [leave college early]. That makes you scratch your heads.”

Agents also play a major role, particularly in the new era of the CBA. Entry-level salaries, which include signing and performance bonuses, are capped during the player’s first contract. Those players drafted in 2005 or 2006 can make no more than $850,000. 2007 draft picks can earn no more than $875,000. While these numbers seem significant, they pale in comparison to what players can make in a second contract.

With that in mind, there are more agents pushing players to get an early start at the pro level to in turn get an earlier start on a second contract.

This defense of the CBA doesn’t preclude some blame from heading the way of the NHL. In fact, the change to the August 15 rights date will have continued impact on college hockey.

That’s part of the reason that college commissioners have engaged themselves in discussions with NHL general managers. A meeting earlier in the winter that Bertagna attended with a select group from the NHL included discussions about the increase in early college signings. But Bertagna was quick to point out that this was hardly the focus of the meeting and no recommendations from either side were structured or made.

“We didn’t walk into that meeting with some kind of wish list,” said Bertagna. Rather, the commissioners used the meeting to begin an ongoing dialogue between the NHL and college hockey that will address other issues, among them protocol for how teams communicate with college players.

“The visit was about who we are and where our sport is today,” said Bertagna. “The NHL set up a committee to build a protocol between college players and pro [teams]. Some teams are good about going through the [college] coach [to get to the player]. But then you hear stories about [NHL] coaches calling kids all the time or sending them text messages.

“So the NHL established this committee to establish some sort of protocol.”

Bertagna did say, though, that he felt all the conversations were valuable.

Where does all this leave us today? Not too far advanced from a season ago, when players left schools for the pro ranks at a record pace. Hopefully, though, the valuable dialogue that has been initiated will help stem some leaks that right now threaten the college game.