Monday LNN: NCAA Lawsuit, Predicting the 4 Nations Rosters, and More!
Plus, the Oilers continue to be the only team doing anything
- It’s been a quiet week around the hockey world, but the Edmonton Oilers have been busier than most. Last night, they acquired Vasily Podkolzin from the Canucks in exchange for a 2025 fourth-round pick that they actually originally got from Ottawa. Sens mentioned!
- Sportsnet is predicting the rosters for the 4 nations face off, which is supposed to happen in February 2025, so in the middle of this coming season. They don’t have any Sens players making team Canada, which checks out, although I’m still holding out hope for Chabot to have a great start to the season and play his way onto the roster. Let me dream. Naturally, they expect Brady Tkachuk to make team USA, with Jake Sanderson potentially in the mix as well.
- A class action lawsuit has been filed against the NCAA on behalf of former CHL player Rylan Masterton .The issue is that the NCAA, as an amateur league, does not allow anyone who has previously played a sport professionally to play that sport in the NCAA. Because CHL players receive a small stipend, they count as professional athletes. The lawsuit alleges that this forces players to make big decisions very early in life - often at 16. I have to say that I agree with Masterton here. 16 is way too early to be making that kind of decision, and it sucks that players have to turn down the CHL if they want to play college hockey one day, all over stipends that hardly seem big enough to count as a professional salary. It this ends up changing things, it would obviously hurt the CHL a lot, but I don’t necessarily think it would be a bad thing for the league to have a bit of competition.
- A lot of us have mixed feelings - and that’s putting it generously - about the Sens’ big free agent signing, David Perron. The Hockey Writers wrote up some fun facts about the player that might endear him to Sens fans (I’m still mad about the Zub incident).
- The Ice Garden published a fantastic piece about how the PWHL can learn from what happened with Imane Khelif in Olympic boxing. The PWHL seems very unprepared to defend players from transphobic harassment, which recent events have shown us can happen even if there are no trans athletes competing.
