IS IT TIME TO DEREGULATE JUNIOR HOCKEY? When more teams operate outside the jurisdiction of USA Hockey than within, clearly there is a problem.

“You have been taking a lot of shots at USA Hockey lately,” a district staffer complained recently. Maybe so, but if USA Hockey spent a little more time enforcing standards, instead of simply hiding them, I would have less about USA Hockey to talk about.

Let’s be honest, bans and suspensions never carry over to USA Hockey any more than the many other players suspended from USA Hockey who quickly reappear in a non-sanctioned league. Simply said, suspensions now mean nothing.

Add that problem to the growing list of concerns around the divide between sanctioned and non-sanctioned junior hockey.

How do we, as a sport, discuss the issues that divide the game?

Deregulation of the level of play, and eliminating USA Hockey's junior council, would be a great first step. The reality is that the market can discuss shortcomings more effectively than whatever USA Hockey and the non-sanctioned leagues can.

USA Hockey’s Player Rights & Responsibilities document has been proven to be worth little more than the paper it’s written on. The failures are so many that it has become little more than a joke.

Deregulation, and limiting USA Hockey to more of an administrative (protected lists, international transfers) and supplemental insurance provider would remove the necessity for leagues to run outside of USA Hockey’s jurisdiction. 

The North American Hockey League’s Mark Frankenfeld should not have any influence over the expansion of leagues or relocation into new markets. But he does. If there is a group in Minnesota that wants to put a team into the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, it’s frankly none of Frankenfeld’s business.

The problem is that USA Hockey has allowed both the United States Hockey League and NAHL to be a monopoly at the Tier I & II levels of play. Enough already. USA Hockey’s refusal to enforce the standards has resulted in the devaluation of both the USHL and NAHL brands. New groups should be free to form under USA Hockey without interference from the NAHL and USHL.

The United States based teams playing in the Western Hockey League should not have to get permission from the competition (USHL) if they made the choice to create a pacific coast league. USA Hockey has given that Tier I designation exclusively to the USHL. Same goes for Tier II to the NAHL. Not that it really matters.

Simple deregulation leaves enforcement of standards up to each league. When all of the country’s domestic junior hockey leagues are operating under one sanctioning umbrella, disciplinary measures carry much more weight.

What can we do to unify the level of play? 

The quickest remedy is to eliminate mandatory import restrictions. That's a decision that each league should be able to make. Burger King and McDonald's both make hamburgers. They don't have to agree on the ingredients or preparation methods. They do have to operate safely within the standards provided by the health department. The same standards for steak houses, breakfast dives, and even sushi joints.

It's funny, the health department does not get in the way of each restaurant's offering,  location, or well employees. Those choices are left up to the brands and entrepreneurs making the investment. 

But that's exactly what USA Hockey has done, get in the way of natural growth of the game in favor of protecting territories of established leagues and clubs.

let's dream a bit. I hit the Powerball jackpot for $1.7 Billion and want to do something great for the game and level of play I love so much. Put all the money into a trust with a nice endowment. If it only generates 5%, that can fuel my monster. What could we do to have to biggest impact on the game, while driving the rest of junior hockey bonkers?

Build a 7,500 seat hockey arena with four attached ice sheets and hotel within a single complex. Maybe even next door to or part of a mall. A good location would be the Chicago area, but let's not ruffle any more feathers than needed. So let's say Duluth, Minnesota. That's a hockey town and should appreciate the love.

Since I want to keep the place rocking, let's drive the establishment crazy with a complete European style club with free-to-play teams starting at 16AAA to the ECHL (we have to pay those guys). 

While the ECHL team would be easy to get, the next levels down from there get complicated quickly. the Ontario Hockey League would love to have such a market in the league. USA Hockey would have a cow trying to stop it, with the USHL holding on to the hot stick.

Maybe we add an USHL team too? That league would never want to be second fiddle to the OHL, so no can do.

I could buy the Minnesota Wilderness and move them over easily enough. The NA3HL too? Why not. Since the Wilderness were in the Superior International Junior Hockey League at one time, and the SIJHL is often a nice mid-step between the 3HL and NAHL, why not that too? That covers junior hockey.

AAA in Minnesota? Free-to-play too? Now we've opened Pandora's box. The Minnesota establishment will throw an absolute fit. How bad could it get? Very. The established AAA leagues would feel pressured to not include the super club, but in the end, money will always supersede political pressure.  

Why would such a club create a tidal wave within the game? Because families would flock to the program in droves, much in the same way European families mortgage their souls for their kids to get into the academy programs of the top soccer teams. 

Back to reality, FREE is a four-letter word with the majority of the junior hockey community, outside of the major junior structure.

Junior families generally are not looking for something for nothing. The most important thing would be to actually get exactly what they are paying for.

If USA Hockey got out of the business of being an insurance provider, creating monopiles, restrictions, and over regulation, maybe the non-sanctioned leagues would come back. Just stick to the Rules of the Game, National Teams, and fee-based international transfers. It may help to trim the fat that is local affiliates that treat the game as their own piggybank/communist power bloc.   

At EVERY level of play, there needs to be a document that grants players automatic and absolute free agency, along with a release of financial responsibility, in the event the team fails to keep their end of the written deal.

Teams that are unwilling to add such an addendum to the player agreement should be taken out of consideration, regardless of what league the team in playing in. Such a document is a game changer for hockey. We want to put the power back into the hands of where it should have been all along, with the participants.

We need to end the ridiculousness of one-sided player agreements, ineffective tier standards, and teams’ continued failure to live up to their end of the deal.