College hockey’s new pipeline is bigger than its biggest names

Gavin McKenna, understandably, has been the face of the new world order for college hockey. 

The presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, and No. 2-ranked prospect by Elite Prospects’ scouting team, McKenna left the WHL for his draft-eligible season and enrolled at Penn State, where he put up 51 points in 34 games, including an eight-point game against Ohio State in late February. 

McKenna, who lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament with Penn State already having secured an at-large bid, leads a slew of CHL-to-NCAA big names that have made an impact this season, including Porter Martone and Jack Ivankovic who went from OHL teammates to Big 10 rivals, and there’s a good chance that sooner than later the Hobey Baker Award, college hockey’s top individual prize, will be awarded to a player that developed in the CHL. 

In fact, all four teams in the Frozen Four have starting goalies who previously played in the CHL. 

And those are important stories, ones that are really shaping the sport, but it’s only part of the larger impact that the CHL-to-NCAA pipeline is creating. 

Consider what happened at Ohio State, which reached the Big 10 championship after upsetting Michigan State in the semifinal. 

Jake Karabela had a hand in all three goals for Ohio State in the 3-2 overtime upset in East Lansing and leads the Buckeyes this season with 36 points in 36 games as a 22-year-old freshman. Originally a fifth-round pick by the Washington Capitals in 2022, Karabela wasn’t signed after finishing his OHL career with the Guelph Storm and was able to go the college route. 

“I don’t know his story exactly; he wasn’t our prospect, but that type of player is probably playing in the ECHL, maybe, or back in Canadian USport under the old system,” one NHL assistant GM told Elite Prospects. “Instead, he gets a chance to play college hockey, perform in big environments and get a chance on the radar he never would have had before.”

In fact, the Karabela story, one NCAA coach told EP, is the more replicable path for where this CHL-NCAA future is heading. 

“There’s only five or six guys, and that’s probably even too many, that are really gonna be NCAA difference makers at 19. That’s just the reality,” they said. “But if your program can go and add those 21 or 22-year-olds that have experience and need an opportunity, it’s going to be a real game changer for programs that approach it the right way.”

Look at it this way, only a handful of schools will ever land true blue-chip prospects in their draft, especially in a new NIL era, but every NCAA team has a chance to add ex-CHLers that are looking for an extended runway to a pro career. 

Another NHL assistant GM told EP they thought this was for the better.

“I think we get to learn more about players, we get to keep some in the hockey world that in the past might have been discarded or lost or been overwhelmed at 22 because they weren’t ready for pro hockey after the CHL,” they said. “We now have a chance, I think, for more late bloomers to actually eventually make the NHL.”

There’s also some fascinating layers to this, and that same NHL assistant GM said they were fascinated to see how CHL teams and NCAA teams might eventually work in tandem from a recruiting perspective. 

“It’s not something where they have an official partnership or anything, but look at it this way, eventually team A becomes a pipeline for college B,” they said. “Maybe that’s through a coaching relationship or something, but I bet that happens sooner than later, and you see some patterns with that.”

It’s not a crazy thought and fits what happens in other NCAA sports, specifically college football, where there are some well-defined high school to college pipelines developed because of coaching relationships. 

It’s also important to remember that all of this is still an ever-changing ecosystem. 

“There are things that have and haven’t worked for teams that got players from the CHL,” one NHL assistant GM said. “People will learn from that, it’s going to evolve, and I think we are still learning about how this is all going to go.”