Could Irish lose recruit?
STEVE WOZNIAK
Losing committed recruits is usually reserved for teams that have just had a woeful season or dismissed a coach, not teams that have just played for a national championship.
But that may be the case with Notre Dame hockey and the strange saga of Cam Fowler.
Fowler, a defenseman who was recently pegged by The Hockey News as the likely No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2010 NHL Draft, committed to the Irish back in the fall of 2006, when he just 14 years old. At the time, Fowler spoke glowingly of Irish coach Jeff Jackson and his staff, and the potential for greatness that there was for the Windsor, Ontario, native on the South Bend campus.
Now 16 and playing with the U.S. National Team Development Program — Fowler has dual citizenship — the defensive wunderkind has been pulled in a number of directions, most recently by Canadian junior teams convinced they could steal his services for a year or two.
Last year, it was the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League that took aim at Fowler, picking him in the first round of that league’s draft. For a year, Fowler held steadfast, restating his commitments both to the USNTDP and Notre Dame.
Kitchener last week returned Fowler to the draft pool in exchange for a compensatory pick. Then Fowler’s hometown Windsor Spitfires took Fowler, confident that they could convince Fowler to abandon the NCAA for an NHL-bound trek through Canadian juniors.
So far, no go. Fowler is staying in Ann Arbor with the USNTDP for next season. Beyond that, though, his camp has refused to say what will happen.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Here is one of the problems with recruiting verbals
Hey all of us were young and know how kids change their minds, this is one of the down falls of excepting a verbal commitment from a kid that is 14, 15 or 16 a lot can happen between the verbal and his arrival to campus. This is also one of the pitfalls of being a top program and recruiting young blue chip talent; these recruits will and do change their mind. It also appears taht he is being badgered hard by the major junior teams from Canada. I don't blame them, a verbal to a college team means nothing. I would predict this kid will never play for the Irish and would be a one to two year player at best in college anyways.
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A few things about your post.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, a verbal commitment to a school means one thing and one thing only. It means that if Cam Fowler plays U.S. college hockey, he will do so for Notre Dame. All this does is stop other colleges from trying to recruit him. Note, the use of the word "recruit" here. When U.S. colleges do it, it's recruiting, when major junior teams do it, you call it "badgering."
He is not under contract to play for Notre Dame, nor is he obligated to play U.S. college hockey. He has options to play in the USHL, play U.S. high school, or play major junior. It's a free market and any team from those leagues could make overtures to try to get him to play there.
If they do so, they are not badgering him any more than Notre Dame did.
And if any team does convince him to play somewhere other than Notre Dame, they are not stealing his services.
They are just as entitled to recruit him as Notre Dame was. The difference being Notre Dame can do it earlier. Junior teams have to wait until a player is 16 before they draft a player.
If Cam Fowler decides to play for Windsor, it won’t be because he was badgered. It will because he’s decided that’s what’s best for his hockey career. If Windsor is able to convince him to come, it won’t be because they stole him or did anything underhanded. They drafted him according to the rules of the league and they are allowed to make overtures to players that they’ve drafted.
Your post has a distinct bias to it. It’s not the first time I’ve read such opinions from U.S. college hockey fans, but the holier-than-thou attitude is getting a little tiresome.
I’ve got nothing against the States, or U.S. college hockey. Lots of talented players have come out of both pipelines. What I can tell you though is that the negative attitude toward major junior hockey is not reciprocated. Major junior fans, at least most of the ones I’m familiar with, don’t begrudge the NCAA or its ability to recruit players earlier than they can. When Notre Dame gets a verbal commitment from Cam Fowler or Michigan gets one from Jon Merrill, they do so within the rules. That major junior teams aren’t the first to be able to make overtures according to the rules does not make them the leeches some people make them out to be.